WHY WE STILL NEED THE GOSPEL - Part 2

I remember reading the first chapter of 1st Peter when I was around 19 years of age and being confounded by verse 9. I was reading the King James Version at that time so I will cite the verse from that version:

"Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls" (1 Peter 1:9 KJV).

What baffled me here was Peter's language of "receiving the end of your faith...the salvation of your souls." I can still see myself sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table scratching my head wondering to myself, "If I am saved, how is it that I still need to receive salvation?" I did not get that. As I devoured my commentaries I would soon discover a great mystery of salvation that would be the framework for an even greater investigation and a learning that still is taking place today. I learned in that season that salvation, though it is instant and full at the moment of faith that is but one aspect of it. The framework that shaped my learning about what God was and is doing in salvation is this:

I have been saved; I am being saved; I will be saved.

For the next three days (today included) I want to touch on each of these phrases to show why we still need the gospel and, it is hoped, encourage your faith in Christ. Each of the phrases above connect to a specific work of God in the salvation of our souls. When I say that we have been saved this refers to the redemptive act of God known as “justification”. Justification is a refers to the act of God whereby he makes us righteous before Him as men and women whose lives are without spot and blemish. This act of justification is a declaration by God that, in Christ, we are without fault or blame. It is a legal term meaning to declare sinners not-guilty of sin when we trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of (salvation from) sin.

In other words, there is nothing that a man can do that can merit the forgiveness of God. There is no ability, no intelligence and no degree of piety that can make God saw "Wow! She sure is worthy of me." No. Nothing in us is good enough to satisfy God's wrath for the rebellion enacted in the Garden and executed, still, in the hearts and minds of humanity. Even believers, those redeemed by His blood, if it were not for His faithfulness to His Word (covenant) we would be doomed. Outside of Christ, Paul describes all of us

10 … “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have

turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one”

(Romans 3:10–12 (ESV).

If the Lord does not intervene on our behalf and supply the righteousness that we so desperately needed but so eagerly ran from, we would all be without hope. But God did the unthinkable: He took on our humanity so that He, in Christ, could die in our place - the death we deserved to die - and we might stand before Him with the life we would and could never achieve. Christ became our substitutionary atonement so that we, by faith in Him, might benefit from the great exchange:

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the

righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21, emphasis mine).

To be justified, again, means that we have been saved from the penalty of sin. Sin no longer has reign or power over us. It no longer stands as a believable witness against us in the court room of God. When we trust Christ, we have been, at the moment, freed from sins power and from its eternally destructive verdict. This, however, is not because sin cannot, any longer, be found in us. It is not because some of the accusations people level against us will be without merit. No, we still battle with sin and, at times, lose the battle. But being justified does not mean being perfect; it means being forgiven. This is why Paul, with courtroom imagery, writes,

"Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies" (Romans 8:33).

The only courtroom that matters for the saint is the heavenly courtroom because the only verdict that matters is the Lord's verdict of not guilty. The charges of man and the charges of the enemy hold no weight or water in the courtroom of God. It matters not the evidence that they may summon or the testimony they make offer. When God declared us saved He declared us innocent of all charges of sin - past, present and future. God is the universal Supreme Court Justice and there is no other court of appeal. Yet, what's more and, perhaps, of even greater amazement is what Paul teaches in Romans 8:38-39,

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to

come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to

separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Nothing, Paul says, can separate us from this amazing, justifying love of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing! Not even me. Not even you! Is this not amazing?

God's justification is so final that even when His people stumble or walk into sin His love is greater, as the hymn says, "greater than all our sins." So, the next time you are tempted to think that you have committed the "big one" and begin to stumble backwards like Fred G. Sanford (the G is Grace!), recall this to mind: nothing and no one - not even you, can change the verdict of God.

This is why you should memorize at least this one verse in the whole Bible and hold it close as the Word's reminder of your justification: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).

We still need the gospel because we still need to be reminded that, when we sin, we have been saved from the eternal penalty of sin.