What every Christian should know
It is said that 97% of the world has heard of Coca-Cola, 72% of the world has seen a can of Coca-Cola, 51% of the world has tasted a can of Coca-Cola. Coke has only been around 122 years (2020). Would the task of letting the world know the facts about Jesus Christ be completed by now had it been given to the Coke company instead of the church!
The Church’s Mission
When Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, he reminded them of the commission God had given him, to be the servant of God’s church, and he explained what this meant,
“I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fulness . . .” Colossians 1:25
This remains the priority of all churches and all Christians, to teach people what God has said. This message is for all people of every nation, not just for religious people. Please note that all those who become Christ’s followers are called ‘saints’, which simply means the ‘set-apart people’.
“The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:26-27
Sharing the news about the salvation that Jesus can give to everyone is the responsibility of all Christians. Paul continues to emphasise this,
“We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28-29
Notice the change in pronouns in the above verse. Paul starts by reminding his readers that sharing the gospel is the responsibility of all saints, the ‘we’ in this verse, and then illustrates this by saying that this is his priority too. He was undertaking exactly what he taught.
The structure of this sentence in the original Greek stresses that the responsibility we have is to everybody. ‘Every man’, meaning ‘every person’, is repeated three times. Literally the Greek reads,
“Whom we announce, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom in order that we may present every man mature in Christ.”
The church’s mission of proclamation, our mission, is here subdivided into three areas.
1. Warning every person – the problem
The first part of the Christian message is bad news. Sometimes referred to as the Fall of Man, the bad news is a vital truth, that must not be overlooked. If the bad news is forgotten, churches will prioritise social actions as an end in itself. What is the bad news? Daniel explained this to King Belshazzar,
“You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honour the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.” Daniel 5:23
God is God and will not be trifled with. King Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar’s grandfather, who had ruled Babylonia, then the most powerful kingdom on earth, had been forced to understand this through illness and had then concluded about God’s sovereignty,
“His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No-one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” Daniel 4:34-35
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1983. In his acceptance speech for this prize he said,
“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
If the root of sin is to forget that God is real and demands to be recognised, then we will also forget that God will, in due time, judge us all for the way we have treated him.
“Man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment.” Hebrews 9:27
“He (the Lord God) will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.” 1 Corinthians 4:5
“There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God.” Romans 3:11, quoting Psalm 14:1-3
“There is no difference (between Jew and Gentile), for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
The bad news is stark and worrisome. All of us will stand before God in judgment and our spiritual nakedness will be obvious for all to see! Our efforts at self-improvement and our attempts to satisfy God by our religion are paltry efforts to correct what we ourselves cannot correct.
Every man needs to be warned about the dire situation we all are in and that we should therefore not cease searching for an answer before it is too late.
Several years ago a family visited Niagara Falls. It was spring, and ice was rushing down the river. Large blocks of ice were flowing toward the falls, and there were carcasses of dead fish embedded in the ice. Gulls by the score were riding down the river feeding on the fish. As they came to the brink of the falls, their wings would go out, and they would escape from the falls. One gull seemed to delay. It was engrossed in the carcass of a fish within the ice, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and even lifted the ice out of the water, and it seemed it would escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged into the abyss.
Material possessions of this world can entrap us if we become too attached to them. They can blind us to the peril we are in and will take us to our destruction if we cannot give them up - ‘Oh, the danger of delay!’
2. Teaching every man – the answer
Just as every person needs to be warned about the crisis we face, so every man needs to hear of God’s solution to the problem. In spite of our rebellion against him he still passionately loves us and wants to have a warm relationship with each of us. Although we are totally unable to restore a relationship with God by ourselves there is an answer, one that has been provided by God himself. In John’s gospel the term ‘the world’ is used for a people who are in rebellion against God. The remarkable fact is that God still loves us rebels and wants the relationship with him to be restored.
Many ancient societies recognised their shortcomings in God’s eyes and consequently offered sacrifices to hopefully appease the God they had displeased. In the Old Testament the Jews offered animal sacrifices and transferred their sin to an animal. Not that an animal could itself bear the sins of people, and the animal’s death could not satisfy God. These sacrifices were symbolic of what God himself was going to do for us, once for all time, by the sacrifice of himself in the person of his Son.
Isaiah looked forward to the day when God’s Messiah would enter this world to be the final solution to the problem of sin.
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:4-6
Jesus then comes and claims to be God’s Messiah, the one and only Son of God; he claimed to have a unique relationship with his heavenly Father.
“‘I and the Father are one.’ Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him . . . ‘because you a mere man claim to be God.’” John 10:31-33
Jesus knew that it was his fate to be killed,
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45
The apostles understood that this was why Jesus entered this world. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice to pay for our sin. Peter wrote,
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been saved.” 1 Peter 2:24
Paul wrote,
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
John wrote,
“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours but also for the sins off the whole world.” 1 John 2:2
There can be no better news to share with people. This is what everyone needs to hear. Anyone can be forgiven and become a member of God’s kingdom by turning to follow Christ. Without him we will perish. John summarised this in his famous verse,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
A headmaster wrote the following in his autobiography,
“I was happy in conversation with boys always to tell them what ideal behaviour was and where selfishness, cruelty and exploitation lay, but unwilling to talk of the very centre of Christianity, the meaning of the cross, because I found it at times repugnant and in part beyond belief. With this semi religion I was able to live with some contentment, but I knew well that it was ‘non-infectious’. That if what I believed was all Christianity amounted to, it would attract few. I knew that our Lord did not walk about Palestine beginning a world revolution, by saying,
“Come along everyone, be nice to everybody, be truthful, be honest. No, he spoke of repentance, of salvation from sin, of conversion.”
How right this headmaster is. People need to know that our root problem is our natural rebellion against God and that the solution lies with Jesus Christ.
But the good news doesn’t end there. When a person asks the Lord Jesus to be their Lord and Saviour he gives them the gift of his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants us to become like Jesus. We receive the Spirit when we first put our trust in Jesus.
“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” Ephesians 1:13
The Holy Spirit motivates and encourages Christians to keep on living for Christ. His work is to point people to Jesus. Without his work we will never keep going as a godly set-apart people. We know we have the gift of the Holy Spirit when we,
a. We love Jesus and want to live pleasing him.
b. We love his word, the Bible. This is the main way God speaks to us today.
c. We love Christ’s people. There is a unique bond between all those who love Jesus.
d. We love to pray and involve our Lord in all we do.
e. We love to share the news about Jesus with others so that they too may be saved.
f. We come to hate sin. Our consciences become more acute.
We need to teach every man these vital truths and promises. In essence there are three aspects to the Christian good news which has been called the Tripartite gospel.
1. God has entered his world as Jesus, the Christ or the Messiah.
2. Jesus came to teach the world about himself and to become the final sacrifice for mankind’s sin so that we can have the assurance of being forgiven our sin and accepted into God’s family for eternity. He rose from the dead, so proving his claims.
3. The Holy Spirit is given to all Christians to enable us to keep living for Christ.
Further details of this Tripartite gospel can be found in the chapter ‘What is the Gospel?’ in my new book ‘The Duty of a Disciple’.
Teaching others was the priority of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. When Jesus was inundated with people wanting to be healed of their illnesses, he went off on his own to pray and then told his disciples,
“Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come. So he travelled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.” Mark 1:38-39
What was his essential message?
“Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.’” Mark 1:14-15
But note that in Paul’s letter he adds,
“. . . teaching everyone with all wisdom.” Colossians 1:28
Our purpose in teaching is to promote the Lord Jesus. There are some who try to evangelise in such an obnoxious way that they do the very opposite and manage to put people off the most wonderful person who has ever lived. How we must pray for wisdom so that we do not miss opportunities to point people to Jesus but have the sensitivity to know when to change tack! There are many people around who are looking for answers to life’s deepest problems.
M.V. Varghese, a Christian, was among the crowds gathering at the Ganges. He came across Alila who was kneeling in the sand crying uncontrollably and beating her breast. He knelt down next to her and asked her what was wrong. Through he sobs she told him,
“The problems in my home are too many and my sins are heavy on my heart, so I offered the best I have to the goddess Ganges, my first born son.”
Varghese's heart ached for this desperate woman. As she wept, he gently began to tell her about the love of Jesus and that, through Him, her sins could be forgiven. She looked at him strangely.
“I have never heard that before,” she replied through her tears.
“Why couldn't you have come thirty minutes earlier? If you did, my child would not have had to die.”
The good news is that any and every person can enter into a living relationship with God,
“. . . God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man christ jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men . . .” 1 Timothy 2:3-5
3. Presenting everyman mature in Christ
God is not satisfied with people accepting Christian doctrines in theory. He wants these truths to change people so that we become like Jesus both in character and purpose. Jesus personified the love, honesty and integrity of God and he wants his people to be the same. He also wants all Christians to be involved in sharing the gospel with others.
Churches must never be satisfied with good numbers attending their services. They must ensure that, by teaching the Word of God, Christians mature and live in the world worshipping their Lord 24/7. All Christians are full time workers – never part-time!
Some years ago, I was invited to lead a mid-week Exploring Christianity Course in a popular local Roman Catholic Church. After the first evening, an Irish lady came up to thank me. She finished by saying,
“I don’t know why everyone’s not a Christian,” but then she added, ‘After all, all God wants is one hour a week.”
What a tragedy it is for people to think of their relationship with Jesus in such an empty way.
We must never be satisfied till all Christians understand that full-time commitment is the reason they have been called by God and then determine to make living for him the priority of their life.
So our ambition in life, if we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, must be,
“warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom in order that we may present every man mature in Christ.” Colossians 1:28
Like Paul we should be able to say,
“To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:29
The big questions that God asks of each of us are, ‘Am I in Christ?’ and ‘Am I living as he wants? ‘
BVP July 2020
