The Gospel in Twenty Questions (28 page)

If you were to
wander like a stray sheep, the good news is you won’t get kicked out of the
kingdom. Since a Christian by definition is one who has been united with
Christ, the only way you can go to hell is if Christ goes
—
and
Christ isn’t going.

Jesus
is the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep. He won’t lose you. Nor will he come
after you with a rod to break your leg, for he is compassionate and deals
gently with those going astray (Hebrews 5:1
–
2). Nevertheless, the Bible identifies at
least ten bad things that can happen to you if you get distracted, seduced,
deceived, or led astray.

1. You may
end up enslaved to rule-based religion (Colossians 2:20).
We never call it legalism, for that would alert us to
the danger. Instead, we call it “Christian responsibility” or “duty” or “doing
our part.” We think,
God has done his part, now it’s up to me to finish what
he started.

We worry
about cheap grace (there’s no such thing) and invest in a little
works-insurance (there’s no such thing). We tell ourselves, “I gotta pray more,
fast more, attend more. I gotta witness to two people this week. I gotta be a
good Christian for Jesus.” This sort of thinking appeals to our religious flesh,
but it’s not long before …

2. You’ll
feel unworthy and unqualified (Colossians 2:18).
The NIV Bible says, “Do not let anyone … disqualify
you.” This is not a reference to salvation, since no one can disqualify those
whom God qualifies (Colossians 1:12). This is about falling under the influence
of frowners, finger pointers, and self-appointed judges.

The point is
not that we can disqualify ourselves, but when we get distracted from Christ
and his perfect work, we start to
feel
disqualified. If we compare
ourselves with others who seem to be doing better, we may begin to doubt our
secure position in the Lord. Although Christ makes us worthy, we
feel
unworthy.
And when that happens …

3. Your
conscience may condemn you and sabotage your faith (1 Timothy 1:18
–
19).
What does it mean to shipwreck your faith? It means
you allow your condemning conscience to drill a hole in your ship of faith.

Condemnation
is a faith killer. Condemnation will cause you to be timid before God, making
it difficult to receive from the abundance of his grace. If God says you are
holy and righteous but your conscience responds, “No, I’m a miserable sinner,”
it will sabotage your faith.
This is why Paul
encourages us to hold onto faith with a clear conscience (1 Timothy 3:9). He’s
saying, “Be Son-focused, not sin-focused.”

I
sometimes meet people who are obsessed with their sins. They are living under
self-imposed condemnation and they have difficulty receiving grace. The problem
is not that their sins are too great for Jesus, it’s that they are being cowed
by their condemning consciences. This is a problem because i
f you have trouble receiving grace, then …

4. You’ll
miss out on all God has in store for you (2 John 1:8).
Jesus said those who went all out for the sake of the
gospel would receive back in this life 100 times what they gave up (Mark 10:29–30).
Live to reveal the good news of the kingdom and you’ll be rich in eternal
friends—people whose lives have been blessed by your revelation of Jesus. But
if you are not walking in the power of his grace, you won’t achieve anything of
lasting significance. This can happen if …

5. You get
bogged down in time-wasting, life-sapping discussions (1 Timothy 1:6).
In his warning about those fascinated by myths and
fables, Paul did not say, “Some have turned aside
unto damnation
.” He
said, “Some have turned aside to
idle talk
.” In other words, they’re
wasting time in conversations that are going nowhere.

An excessive
interest in controversy is a sure sign one has wandered from the
uncontroversial gospel (1 Timothy 1:4, 6:4). It’s good to ask questions, but
when it comes to the big issues of life, Jesus provides emphatic answers. At
some point you have to stop asking and start believing. At some point you have
to say, “Okay Jesus, let’s do life together.” If all you do is talk, then …

6. You’ll
live a life of regret (1 Timothy 6:6
–
10).
“Godliness
with contentment is great gain,” said Paul. Yet many in the church don’t know
they are godly, and as a result they are not content. Discontentment may cause
you to wander. Paul knew folk who “wandered from the faith and pierced
themselves with many sorrows.”

Sorrow and
regret are what you get when you run after inferior pleasures like money and fame.
Only Jesus satisfies the deepest longings of your soul. Until you make Jesus
your resting place  …

7. You
won’t mature (Luke 8:14).
A lot of
maturity teaching is based on the idea that you need to do more of everything
in order to grow. You need to pray more, give more, serve more, and so on. But
growth is a natural process. Once you plant the seed of the word in the good
soil of a receptive heart, you don’t need to do a thing. Growth just happens (see
Mark 4:27). The only thing you can do is hinder the process by choking the seed
with the cares of this world or contrary teachings.

Do you desire
good teaching? Do you crave good food? Then “grow in grace and the knowledge of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Jesus is the best teaching
and he alone is the bread of life. Everything else is junk food. If you feed on
anything other than the bread of life …

8. You’ll
look less and less like Jesus (2 Timothy 2:16
–
18).
Review this list and you will see nothing that
describes the Lord. Was Jesus enslaved to religious demands? Did Jesus cast off
his good conscience when accused of law-breaking? Did Jesus indulge
time-wasters and get bogged down in idle chatter? No. Everything about Jesus
speaks of life, freedom, and intentional living.

Paul said,
“Those who indulge in godless chatter become more and more ungodly” (2 Timothy
2:16). In a sense, you are what you talk about because what you talk about
reveals your heart. Jesus spoke about his Father because his Father is his
treasure. Conversely, the Father’s treasure is Jesus. It’s also you and me. But
if you don’t know that …

9. You’ll
fear God’s punishment (1 John 4:17
–
18).
Those
who are secure in their Father’s love can look forward to judgment day with
confidence. But those who are insecure will wonder,
Have I done enough? Will
God find fault with me?
These are the questions asked by those who have
wandered from the faith and fallen from the secure place of God’s grace. If
this describes your thoughts, then …

10. You’ll
be ashamed (but not condemned) when Jesus comes (1 John 2:28).
John doesn’t say, “Abide in Christ or you will lose
your salvation.” He says, “Abide in Christ so you won’t feel like a fruitless
schmuck when he returns,” or words to that effect. This is how the Message
Bible translates John’s words:

And now, children, stay with Christ. Live deeply in
Christ. Then we’ll be ready for him when he appears, ready to receive him with
open arms, with no cause for red-faced guilt or lame excuses when he arrives.
(1 John 2:28, MSG)

Imagine the shame some are
going to have when Christ shows up and all their futile attempts to impress him
are burned up in the splendor of his glory. All our manmade programs, all our
self-efforts—
poof!
—gone in a flash of flame. How embarrassing to arrive
at the wedding feast with the smell of smoke in your hair (1 Corinthians 3:15).

We have
listed ten things that happen when we stray from Jesus, but we haven’t yet
asked the critical question, which is this:

Why did Adam eat the forbidden
fruit? Why did the prodigal leave home? Why do any of us walk away from God?
There is one reason and one reason only—we lose sight of our Father’s love for
us.

Jesus told
the Ephesian Christians, “You have left your
protos agape
,” or primary
love (Revelation 2:4). What is our primary love? It is not our love for him; it
is a revelation of his love for us. As John says again and again, love
originates in God:

Love comes from God … This is love: not that we loved
God, but that he loved us … We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:7a,
10, 19)

You were made to
receive and respond to your Father’s love. If you become distracted from your
true source of love, you will wander the earth in search of it. You may search
for love and affirmation through religion or worldly pleasures, but until you
encounter the love of God expressed in Jesus, you will be a restless wanderer,
a stray in need of a shepherd.

Why would
Paul pray that we might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
(Ephesians 4:18–19)? Because there is a danger you might
not
know. You
might forget it or leave it. God’s love is like air for us. We cannot live
without it. When we fall from the high place of his love, everything gets
complicated. Our minds become corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
We start thinking,
I know God loves me, but …

And that’s
the thin edge of a bad wedge.

Next thing
you know, the good news is not so good anymore. It needs qualifying. It needs
balance. Those scriptures that once filled you with joy are now tempered by
contrary scriptures calling for effort and toil. The Christian life, which you
were told would be an adventure, proves to be hard work, a burden on top of
your already exhausting life.

Lose sight of God’s love and
the odds are good you will experience most of the bad things listed above. Perhaps
this has already happened to you. You may be enslaved to the expectations of
others or crippled with guilt and regret. Don’t despair; it’s not the end of
the world. There is a way back.

When the
Ephesians wandered from their first love, their first love came looking for
them. And when he found them he showed them the way home, and here it is:

Remember the height from which you’ve fallen! Repent,
and do what you did at first. (Revelation 2:5a, NIV1984)

Remember! What a simple yet
powerful remedy for those who have strayed. Why did the prodigal head home? He
remembered the height from which he had fallen. What will bring you back when
you stray into sin or dead works? Remembering the high and lofty love of your
heavenly Father. His love is your true home. It’s where you belong.

Jesus says,
“Repent,” but not in the old covenant fashion of turning from sin. Rather, it’s
“Repent, and do what you did at first.” What did you do when you first came to
Christ? Can you remember? You probably didn’t do much at all other than receive
his love and favor. “Do
that
,” says Jesus. “Stop doing this other stuff
and receive from me. Stop trying to impress me with your labor and let me
impress you with my love.”

It really is
that simple.

Rest in the
love of God and you will never put a foot wrong; but miss his love and you will
miss everything. This is why the number one takeaway in the New Testament, and the
number one message preached by every gospel preacher, is to abide, remain, hold
fast to, and dwell in the love of God. Jesus said it best:

I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make
yourselves at home in my love. (John 15:9, MSG)

Make God’s loving embrace your
permanent resting place, and it will be impossible for anyone to lead you
astray. When you allow yourself to be apprehended by the wild and relentless
love of your mighty Father, no one will be able to seduce you out of it.

There’s an old
story about a man who wanted to take his wealth to heaven. His minister said,
“You can’t take it with you.” But the man replied, “I’m going to try.” Nearing
death, he sells all he has and buys two gold bars. “Bury me with my gold,” he
says. His plan works and he finds himself outside the gates of heaven with his
precious gold. Holding up the two bars he says to St. Peter, “Look, you
can
take
it with you.” But St. Peter is puzzled. “You brought paving stones?!”

The
joke works because it plays to our confusion regarding the riches of heaven. We
know there are heavenly rewards, because Jesus says so, but what are they? Some
say God is going to dispense treasure, mansions, and even cities to those who
have proven faithful. “There had better be some reward for my hard work
—
a
gold star at least
—
otherwise why I am working?” Others say
there are no rewards at all. “Everything comes to us by grace alone, so there
can be no rewards for effort.”

I
have problems with both views. My problem with the God-of-the-gold-stars is that
he promotes a servant mentality when we are sons. And my problem with the idea
that there are no rewards, is that it contradicts what Jesus said:

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and
steal. (Matthew 6:20, NKJV)

Paul said something
similar:

The one who plants and the one who waters
have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.
(1 Corinthians 3:8)

Rewarded
according to his labor?
How does that fit in the economy of grace? In the Greek the word for
reward
means pay or wages.
God is going to pay us like a paymaster?
How does
that work?

The
issue of eternal rewards or heavenly treasures is riddled with question marks.
It’s a subject that has been abused by some (“Store up treasure by giving to my
ministry”) and left in the too-hard basket by others. Grace-minded folk seem
particularly allergic to any talk of earning rewards, and this is
understandable. Grace and rewards just don’t go together. And yet, here we have
Jesus (Mr. Grace) and Paul (the apostle of grace) saying they do.

“You
must be reading this wrong. Don’t you know that in Christ we are heirs of all
things? What need have we of rewards?” It’s true that Jesus is our reward, and
what greater reward could there be?

No one can please God without faith, for
whoever comes to God must have faith that God exists and rewards those who seek
him. (Hebrews 11:6, GNB)

What is the reward
of the seeker but to find that which is sought? If you are searching for God you
will find him and he will be your very great reward (see Genesis 15:1).
Whatever the treasures of heaven may be, they are nothing in comparison with
Jesus, who is
the
reward for those who seek him. This is why those who
are slaving for mansions are misguided. When Jesus is your home, what need have
you of mansions?

This
is not the place where I talk about our inheritance in Christ. All you need to
know about that is it’s good! Even if you are the newest Christian or the
eleventh-hour worker, you will be as richly blessed as the oldest, most
faithful saint. Eternity will not be divided into the haves and have-nots, for
we are all one in Christ.

But
we can distinguish Christ our reward from the heavenly treasure that Jesus said
can be stored up, and the rewards Paul said are given according to our labor.
At the risk of sounding like a grace-killer, let me say
all
believers
have a glorious inheritance in Christ, but
some
will also get eternal
rewards. There is a difference. Our inheritance comes to us through grace
alone, while eternal rewards can be worked for and accumulated.

But
eternal rewards may not be what you think.