Ashamed of the Gospel
My text today comes from the first chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. I focus today’s message on this text because it’s a necessary and critically important truth that we must hear, especially in our religiously pluralistic American culture:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, (the apostle wrote,) “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the [Gentile].” (Romans 1:16)
One definition of ‘ashamed’ is to be reluctant or unwilling to do something because of embarrassment. Paul’s text here in Romans 1 cuts to the heart of a growing problem facing many of today’s Christians in America because the media, the educational system, the courts, the marketplace, Hollywood, and even many churches have been slowly squeezing Christians into the mold called ‘religious pluralism.’ That ought to frighten us because that mold has the effect of reducing Jesus the Christ to just one of many religious teachers and prophets.
Religious pluralism is the belief that different religious worldviews are equally valid, equally true, and equally acceptable to God. Therefore, all religious roads lead to God.
If anyone thought the ‘all roads lead to God’ philosophy through to its logical conclusion, the idea doesn’t make sense on any level. There can only be one truth, not a half-dozen. For example, the doctrines of Judeo-Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are not only diverse in their understanding of sin, righteousness, and judgment, but they are each diverse in their understanding of the nature of God.
Tragically – and I use that word purposely – a growing number of Christians in our modern pluralistic era – even those who have been in the Church for decades – are becoming increasingly reluctant to draw a proverbial line in the sand and boldly and unapologetically declare what the Bible declares to be the ONLY truth – that which is found in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures about sin, righteousness, judgment – and specifically what God tells us of the Person and role of Jesus in our eternal destiny.
A study conducted last year by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research found that almost half of evangelicals (47%) believe “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” Another eight percent are unsure. Said another way, only 45% of evangelical Christians fully believe the Bible when it tells us Jesus Christ is the ONLY road to eternal life that is acceptable to God.
Clearly, that's a hard truth for many today to swallow in our age of religious pluralism. But God has never been one to mince words. He has never been one to equivocate or be ambiguous. And neither should we His servants when people ask us the reason for our hope of eternal life.
Only biblically-based Christianity holds the definitive answer to the question about sin, forgiveness of sins, eternal judgment, and eternal life. And I emphasize ‘biblically based’ because there are multitudes in seminaries, church pulpits and church pews who do not believe the bible to be the final and unconditionally authoritative verdict of Almighty God, revealed to humanity as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Let me repeat that for emphasis. There are not multiple truths about sin and forgiveness of sins, eternal judgment and eternal life. There is only ONE truth. And that truth is what we call the ‘gospel’ – the manifestation of God’s love for humanity and fully evidenced by His sacrificial offering of His Son Jesus as payment for our sins.
God tells us from Genesis through Revelation, our nature is thoroughly and hopelessly corrupted by sin. On the other hand, God’s nature is thoroughly and ineffably holy. The bad news is in all that is this: Without God's personal intervention, our utter sinfulness and God’s incomprehensible holiness can never be reconciled. But the good news is in all that is this: God DID intervene in humanity’s otherwise hopeless situation.
Therefore, it is only that gospel message – that ‘good news message’ – that holds the only key to eternal life. Why? Because the gospel is God’s specific revelation how and why God sent His Son to die on that cross and be resurrected from death on the third day.
Please do not mistake this point: God’s divine revelation in the Christian Bible and His divine intervention into sin-saturated humanity that completely separates Christianity from ALL other religions – past or present.
I wonder if many of those in pulpits and in pews each Sunday have developed a scorn of the apostle Paul’s warning: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) And do they summarily dismiss what he added later in the same letter to the church at Rome: “The wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)
The preposition, ‘in’ Christ Jesus our Lord, is critical. It is only those who are IN Christ Jesus who receive the free gift of God. No one else. Not Muslims. Not Hindus. No one. Not even Jews who reject Messiah Jesus’ sacrificial atonement for their sins. Only biblical Christianity can correctly answer the question: What can wash away my sins? What can make me whole again?
The answer is: Nothing can make us whole again except the blood of Jesus.
I want to make sure I am as clear in my explanation as I possibly can. What do bible-based Christians mean when we talk of Jesus’ sacrificial atonement for our sins? It’s this:
God’s utter holiness requires divine judgement of sin. There is no wiggle room in God’s righteousness to overlook even what we might call minor sins. But on the other hand, God’s love arouses His mercy toward the sinner.
The tension between God’s judgment and His love resulted in the Mosaic sacrificial system which joined the two under the cleansing power of blood – sacrificial blood. The last half of Exodus, and the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy especially focus attention on the animal sacrifices which functioned as a substitutionary atonement for the sinner. When the Jewish Levitical priests laid their hands on the heads of the sacrificial animals, the sins of the penitent were transferred to the animal who then shed its blood in atonement for the penitent’s sins.
I believe it was St Augustine who said, “The New Testament is concealed in the New, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New.” In other words, the Old Testament lays the groundwork – the foundation – of the truths revealed to us in the New Testament. And so, back to the Mosaic sacrificial system – the blood sacrifices pointed to what God would do centuries later on Calvary’s hill.
This divine truth of Christ’s atonement for sins is only one of the scores of God’s truths that make Christianity completely incompatible with every other religion and religious faith.
Speaking of the New Testament concealed in the Old, listen to Isaiah, written seven hundred years before Jesus was born, listen to him speak of that reconciliation:
“He [the Messiah] was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.” (Isaiah 53:3-6, NLT)
Jesus, the perfect and spotless Lamb of God, removed – erased, atoned for – our sins with His own blood when He died on that cross. His bloody death became a substitutionary atonement for all who call on Jesus for forgiveness of their sins. As the apostle Paul reminds us: [God] made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Most people bristle at the idea that we are each and all sinners who justly deserve eternal and forever agonizing punishment. Many of us think of ourselves as not-so-bad, especially when we compare ourselves with REAL sinners – like cold-blooded rapists and murderers.
But when we compare ourselves with others, we merely demonstrate our total ignorance of the infinite holiness of God. The sun itself, in all its noonday brilliance, is as dark as night when placed next to God’s holiness. And God demands our holiness be as HIS holiness. Jesus was not speaking in hyperbole when He commanded us, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).
Unlike religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Old Covenant Judaism, only the New Covenant Judaism – also known as Christianity – only Christianity holds the answer to the otherwise irreconcilable problem of sin and God’s forgiveness. No other faith addresses God’s holiness and His mercy as Christianity addresses it.
Other faiths tell their adherents if they pray often enough and in the right way, or if they do enough good deeds to outweigh their bad deeds, they might get into heaven.
Christian faith is eternally unique because in – and only in – the Christian Bible God tells us the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. It word tells us salvation is a gift not based at all on our works or our heritage. Salvation is granted to us solely by God’s grace. And because salvation is His undeserves gift, no one can boast and say, “I deserve eternal life.” (see Ephesians 2:8-10)
Listen to what the former Pharisee, St. Paul, wrote to a disciple named Titus: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)
When the same former Pharisee wrote, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the [Gentile] – he was writing to a people steeped in religious pluralism. Rome, and the nation of Greece before Rome, were known for the multiplicity of gods. But God sent Paul to Rome – and throughout Greek speaking Europe and Asia Minor – to tell them the truth about salvation.
God sent Paul, just as He sends us, to a religiously pluralistic world. It’s the Great Commission Jesus Himself commanded of us: Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Trinity – in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28)
Declaring Jesus as the only way for men and women to gain eternal life will not win many friends among those who want to live and let live, who insist on being open to other ideas about God and eternal life. In our pluralistic culture where it is unpopular to believe in absolute truth, the message of the gospel is a lightning rod for those who disagree with Christ’s exclusive message. Telling others Jesus is the only door to eternal life might also get us killed.
Well, so be it. As St. Paul wrote to the Christians at Galatia, “If I were trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)
As disciples and followers of Jesus, we must decide every day, will we compromise with those who believe all roads lead to heaven? Or will we stand unashamed with Christ, and the history of all the martyrs who died for God’s eternal truth?
God became Man. He lived a sinless life. He died as a substitutionary sacrifice for your sins and mine. Only through Christ can anyone be reconciled with the Father. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
