Jan 12
2
THERE IS ONLY ONE GOSPEL
Todd Nibert
My heart breaks as I watch people compromise the Gospel. But I must say again … There is only one Gospel! The Gospel of the free and sovereign Grace of Christ my Lord. The Gospel that gives Christ all the Glory in Salvation and excludes human boasting. The Gospel that exalts the electing love of the Father, the effectual redemption of the Son, and the irresistible Grace of the Holy Spirit. This is the gospel and where this is not preached, the Gospel of Christ is not preached! Call me bigoted, narrow, or cultist, if you will, but this is the only Gospel that will save a sinner like me. I am captive to this Gospel. I really have no choice but to preach this Gospel! While many around us turn back, and while others criticize us for our stand, “I must say with Martin Luther of old, “Here I stand. I can do no other!” By God’s Grace, I am willing to die for this Gospel, and I say with the Apostle Paul, “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord, TO TESTIFY THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD” (Acts 20:24).
GOD IS SOVEREIGN
The scriptures declare that God has the prerogative (right) and power to do as he will in heaven and in earth, using all men good and evil, all things good and evil, all powers, principalities and rulers of the darkness seen or unseen good and evil, in the way which pleases God for the purpose of bringing the gospel to chosen sinners whom he has elected to save from spiritual death unto eternal life through Christ Jesus the Son of God. (Ps 115:3; 135:6; Is 14:24, 27; 40:12-25; 46:9-11; 55:11; Jer 32:17; Lam 3:37; Dan 4:34-37; Mt 28:18; Rom 9:20-24; Eph 1:11, 22). Clay Curtis
Free Grace
Tommy Robbins
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” 1Co 2:12
“Free Grace” is a term we often use but I wonder how many understand its true meaning by experience. To really appreciate something it is of necessity we must experience it. To give an example; we may believe with all our being there is warmth by the fireside, yet if we remain bound outside in the subzero cold we will never experience and appreciate the warmth of the fire inside.
So it is with the grace of God. It is only those who have been brought by God’s omnipotent, sovereign, irresistible grace to Christ that bask in the enjoyment and comfort of the reality of the freeness of the same. There is nothing that we can do to merit or earn God’s wondrous favor of grace. Salvation is solely owning to the pleasure and purpose of God. God, constrained only by His everlasting love for His children, freely sent His blessed Son into the world. The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, freely, gladly, joyfully, without reservation, suffered and gave His life a ransom for us. We had absolutely nothing to do with the great work of redemption.
What God did in Christ for His people, He did freely. Then, thanks be unto God, in His time He sent His Word by the power of His Holy Spirit and brought us to Christ. This He did freely, giving us life, revealing Himself to us in the experience of grace. Now, having experienced the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, the believer’s life is an experience of free grace.
Some may conclude that I place too much emphasis upon experience. Judge my words however you must. I agree it is truth that we are not saved by experience. However, it is equally of a truth that where there is no experience there is no life. There is a vast difference of thoughts in our head and believing with our heart.
Another Jesus
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted…” (2 Corinthians 11:4)
From time to time there arises a debate on what constitutes “another gospel”. We all know that there are differences among true and honest believers over various doctrines. When do these differences cross the line from mere differences to heresy? When must we cry, “That is another gospel!”?
The answer is so simple that there should never again be a debate on the issue. It is “another gospel” when the message is of “another Jesus!” This is the only issue worth dividing over, and on this issue we must divide with all who disagree. Who is the true Jesus?
Of all the adjectives I could use to describe our Lord in the gospel, the one that seems most fitting to me is “the successful Jesus.” The true Jesus is the one who “by Himself (actually did) purge our sins” (Heb. 1:3), the one in whose hand the will of Jehovah prospered (Is. 53:10), the one who is the Word from God that does not return to God empty but actually accomplishes what God sent Him to do (Is.55:11), the one who has already successfully “obtained eternal redemption for us, (Heb. 9;12)
That Jesus, and only that Jesus in the Jesus of the gospel! Other Jesus’ may be very nice and kind; they may fill your heart with warmth and your eyes with tears, but they cannot save your soul! Only the Jesus of definite, successful, and therefore, particular redemption can deliver your soul to God without spot and blemish. Trust Him, and tolerate no other! Fix your soul fast to Him and your soul shall live! Trust any other Jesus and you shall perish.
Joe Terrell
The Man Christ Jesus
“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5)
This Man is no ordinary man. This Man is himself God. He is the God-man. He became a man that he might redeem men. He lived in this world as the Representative Man, the Representative of God’s elect. He lived the full age of a man in perfect obedience to the will and law of God to establish righteousness for men, even the righteousness of God, by magnifying the law and making it honorable. Then, when his hour had fully come, this Man, the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, died upon the cursed tree as our Substitute, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Now, this Man, who as a man put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, is seated upon the very throne of God in glory, accepted as a man, with God! Hear the good news of that fact. — Since there is a Man in glory, accepted of God, there may be another, and another, and another! Because this Man, the God-man, is in glory, “He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him!”
Who is he?
This man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is “the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person.” Christ is both God himself and the singular revelation and expression of the glory of God. “The reference,” Henry Mahan wrote, “is to the sun and its rays. The Father and the Son are the same as the sun and its rays. One is not before the other, and they cannot be divided or separated. He is the perfect revelation and the exact image and character of the Father (Isa. 9:6; John 1:1-3; 10:30; 14:8-10; Matt. 1:21-23).”
What has he done?
Much needs to be said in answer to this question; but allow me to simply declare that which is the essence of all our Savior did as the God-man, our Mediator. The Lord Jesus Christ has “by himself purged our sins!” The Lord Jesus, of himself, by himself alone, and by the sacrifice of himself, made atonement for all the sins of God’s elect. He took our sins upon himself, bore them, and died under the penalty of them, thereby abolishing them completely and forever (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 9:26; Col. 1:19-22; Isa. 53:4-6).
Where is he now?
He is yonder in glory, where more than two thousand years ago “he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” The “Majesty on high” is God the Father to whom majesty belongs and who is clothed with majesty. His right hand is the place of power, greatness, acceptance, and glory. There sits the Man, Christ Jesus, and all his elect in him. We have been made to sit down with him in heavenly places!
“There, like a man, the Saviour sits; the God, how bright he shines;
And scatters infinite delight on all the happy minds.”
Do you see him?
“The head that once was crowned with thorns, is crowned with glory now;
A royal diadem adorns that mighty Victor’s brow.
No more the bloody crown, the cross and nails no more:
For hell itself shakes at his frown, and all the heavensadore.”
Don Fortner.