Thoughts from The Bible

Thoughts from the Bible

Monday, 25 November 2024 12:09

The Gospel is All of Christ
by Sarah Wootten Corinith Missionary Baptist Church

6I hope you’ve realized over the past few weeks that the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world are polar opposites. The world would expect God to save men of renown, yet God more often saves the lowly (1 Corinthians 1:26-28). The world would expect a conquering savior, which does, in fact, describe Jesus, but He conquered through His death, not by any political might (1:22-23). The gospel is the wisdom of God to all who believe, but to those who reject the gospel, it’s foolishness (1:18, 24).
Which leaves us with a question. Why would God design a gospel like this? If the gospel made sense to the unbelieving, wouldn’t more unbelievers be attracted to it, and thus more people would come to know Him? The answer is remarkable. Paul says that God made the gospel appear foolish “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God,” (1:29, ESV; also see 1:31). As I said a few weeks ago, if mankind could in any way take credit for the gospel, we would boast in our own accomplishments and abilities, and not in God alone.

Paul says this in another way when he writes, “And because of [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” (1:30, ESV). Every part of the gospel is about Christ from beginning to end, which leaves no room for any man to boast in salvation as if he accomplished it. It was all of God. Each of these four terms deserve careful consideration, but for now, we will turn to each of them briefly.

First, Jesus is wisdom from God (1:30), who came as a humble man to bear the punishment for the sins of the world. The gospel isn’t a tale that we conjured up and decided was the way to salvation. The gospel originated with God, and it was revealed to mankind through the person of Jesus Christ, leading to the salvation of sinners.
Second, Jesus is our righteousness, which is required in order to have peace with God. Without it, only God’s wrath awaits us. However, righteousness is unachievable on our own. Jesus credits His righteousness to the believer’s account. So while we don’t have righteousness by ourselves, Jesus gives us His, making us able to draw near to God and live.

Third, He is our sanctification, our holiness. Through His death, all of our sins have been removed. There’s a fantastic picture of this in Zechariah 3. The high priest is clothed with filthy, dirty clothes representing his sinfulness. But then his dirty clothes were taken away, and he was given clean clothes, showing his iniquities had been forgiven by God, and he was left with holiness. Then the high priest was charged to walk in God’s ways and rightly perform his duties in the Lord’s temple. This is what Jesus does for all who believe. Our sins are removed, and we are made holy, completely clean. Just like God did with the high priest, God also calls us to a new life full of purpose – that is, to obey His ways.

Fourth, Jesus is our redemption. Redemption is a funny word. It comes from the word “redeem,” which refers to a price that is paid in order to repurchase something. The price that we owe because of our sin is death. Yet Jesus paid our redemption price with His own death, and because of this, we have been freed from guilt, and our need for punishment has been taken away (Ephesians 1:7). We were delivered from the enslavement of sin, which was the only life we knew (Romans 6:18). We are brought into God’s family as adopted children (Ephesians 1:5). And, of course, because we are redeemed, we have peace with God (Romans 5:1). It was a high redemption price (Jesus’ death), and we receive many eternal joys because He paid it.
The gospel is all about Jesus Christ from beginning to end. Believers understand that we cannot boast in our salvation any more than we can boast in the fact that the sun rose this morning. Christ accomplished salvation for us.