What Do You Hear When You Hear the Gospel? Matthew 1:21 - Cities of Tears and City of Promise

The above question is critical especially in light of the recent events in Ferguson, New York, and Paris. Although not surprised, I am continual amazed at blog posts created by those who call themselves "evangelical Christians" and their various assessments of Christian leaders such as Voddie Baucham, for example, and the things he has commented on related to the events particularly in Ferguson. My point here is not to necessarily defend Voddie, but to raise a bigger question related to how we hear and understand the gospel.

It is true that when many, like Voddie, call for  individuals and families to take greater responsibility for their lives, we who listen need to be alert to how we hear such calls. Many bloggers and writers react to such statements because comments like these might appear to avoid addressing the injustice that in their minds exists in these situations. So we react to calls for taking greater responsibility. The challenge however comes when terms such as "responsibility" used in a politically charged way or heard in the same fashion become confused with language or principles that are actually centered in the gospel and the Scripture. Consider how this happens. A  call, for example, to repentance is heard as a call to take responsibility for your life.

This occurred when one writer reacted to a call for repentance from another evangelical leader like it was a call for taking responsibility. Repentance is a kind of taking responsibility and yet it is not. If you mean taking responsibility as in "taking responsibility for the fact that you have sinned" - yes you can include the idea of responsibility in your understanding of repentance. But only in this way. So when Christian leaders address social issues with calls for repentance we need to listen carefully so that we do not read our political bias into such calls. In fact, depending on how you define "repentance" means the difference between a call to be a better more responsible person or the biblical way of admitting that you cannot change your life at all by your own power. The difference is huge.

The gospel is not initially a call to take responsibility and become a kind of "conservative thinking person," but instead it is a call to turn from something and turn to something - more perfectly someone.

Matthew 1:21 is clear - Jesus came to save his people from their sins. The work of salvation from sins as it is revealed in the gospel is accomplished by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. As a result of all that Christ has done than there comes the call for repentance and faith in him only. This is not a call to be either "conservative," "progressive," or "liberal." It certainly is not a call to take responsibility and pull yourself up to a better life. It is a call to turn from sin and turn to God. When one does this - when you and I do this - we are turning to the only one that can bring the change we so desperately need.

The gospel is a call to turn from sin and have faith in Christ. When the gospel becomes our conservative views or our progressive/ liberal views we not only misspeak the message we also do not correctly hear it.

Gary Finkbeiner



 

Cities of Tears and City of Promise - Returning to Bethlehem

Today Paris is in the news as yet another city where violence erupts and tears flow. More families lose members who will not be at the dinner table tonight. Returning to a city of promise such as Bethlehem stirs our thoughts as to the power the gospel provides for a world that needs to experience the saving grace of God. The saving grace of God is given to us in the gospel.

Matthew 1:21 states, "She (Mary) will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." Possibly never has one line of a passage from Scripture held out so much hope and promise. In fact this line is so loaded with God's resolve of the human condition that it is worth unpacking. Consider the main features of this relatively small verse.

Joseph is  told by the angel to call Mary's soon to be born Jesus, which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua. The name holds the destiny of Jesus' reason for being born. Jesus like Joshua means God saves or God is salvation. Here we understand both the meaning of Jesus' life and what its outcome will be. Jesus not only saves as a result of what he does, but he is salvation. This means that we are saved by his work and are saved by his presence. The next name that Christ is designated by reinforces this when he is called Immanuel - God with us. Christ not only saves us by his work, he also commits himself to us in life to be "God with us."

Why we may ask? "Because he will save his people from their sins." The word "because" carries the force in the Greek of purpose and tells us that this is "the properly assigned reason" for why Christ came into the world. Jesus came to us in order to save us from sin. More specifically, not just sin in general, but "their sin." The pronoun "their," as in their sin, is reflexive in the original in which the object and subject of the sentence are the same as it is understood in English. An example of this is contained in the sentence - "I shot myself." In other words, it is an action one does against oneself. Our problems often are not due to others, although others can cause us serious harm, but instead are a result of our own fallen condition brought about by sin in our own lives.

For those living in the time of Jesus' earthly ministry their ultimate problems were not the Romans or the temple priest or even the tax collectors, but the gospel tells us like them our major problem is our own sin. King David recognized this when in Psalm 51:4 he says, "Against you (God) only have I sinned." Sin is personal and ultimately against God. To be saved "from" means to become separate from it and the thing inside of us that causes our sinful behavior. The good news of the gospel is that we can indeed be saved!

Salvation from sin means to be delivered from the danger, separation, peril, and destructive force of sin. To be saved in the original means to be safe and kept safe, to be preserved. When Jesus is for us our Savior, in the way that Matthew here proclaims it to us, this means to have the union between us and sin destroyed. Salvation in the way Jesus provides it here in this verse brings separation from the power of sin. This of course does not imply that those saved by Jesus do not battle sin anymore, but the defeat of sin is decisive. Your fellowship with sin is broken and your union with God is restored.

Cities of tears and more perfectly people of tears become the recipients of promise when they repent of their sin and exercise faith in Christ the Savior.

Gary Finkbeiner
Advent 2014