Getting the Gospel Right


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"The apostle Paul obviously is the great New Testament apostle given the responsibility for clarifying the gospel in its most careful way; thus, he has written all his epistles, which in one way or another enrich our understanding of the life and ministry, death and resurrection, ascension and return of our Lord Jesus Christ, all of which encompasses the glory of the good news. It’s going to be important for us to understand the gospel as its revealed through the Holy Spirit in the letters of Paul, and most particularly the book of Galatians...


...It’s in Job 9 and verse 2: “How can a man be in the right before God? How can man be right with God?” That was Luther’s question, and that was Job’s question, and that – listen – is the question that every religion in the world attempts to answer. All religion assumes a deity, and all religion assumes a means by which you can pacify that deity and move from being harmed by him to being blessed by him.

That’s what religion is. All religion proports to offer an answer to the question: “How can a man be made right before God?” And, I might add, all religion gives hell’s answer. Only the gospel gives the true answer. But that is the question: “How can a man be in the right before God?” “How can I be right with God?” That was Job’s question.


...“What am I going to do to be right with God? My days are slipping by;” – verse 25 – “what is my future? How can a man be right with God?” This kind of angst, this kind of fear, this kind of dread comes to the heart of one who fears God, who fears judgment, who fears wrath. That is the missing proclamation in the church today, and so sinners live with a deception. They constantly hear, “God loves you unconditionally.” You’re headed for God’s eternal wrath unless you are reconciled to Him.

Job’s question is the original statement of the issue of all religion: “How can a person be right with God?” And Bildad gives the answer that everybody in other religions gives: “You just need to be better; you just need to be blameless. You need to be more righteous, have more integrity.” It’s the question the psalmist asked in Psalm 130, verse 3, “Since You, Lord, mark iniquities, since you keep a record of iniquities, who can stand?” Or Psalm 143:2, “In Your sight no man living is righteous.”


...“How can I be righteous before God?” That is the pleading cry of psalmists, and prophets, and Job, and Martin Luther. “How can I escape guilt? How can I escape death? How can I escape eternal punishment? How can I receive eternal life and heaven?” All religion gives the wrong answer: “Be good. Be better. Go about to establish your own righteousness.”

Paul faced that in Romans 10: “They don’t know about God’s righteousness, so they seek to establish their own righteousness rather than subjecting themselves to the righteousness of God, which is available to them” – he says – “through Christ who is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” It doesn’t come by working, it comes by believing in Christ who puts an end to the tyranny of the law.

That’s Paul’s gospel, and that’s what Luther found when he was teaching Galatians. So in reality there are only two possible options to acceptance with God. There is, what Jesus called, the narrow way and the broad way: they both say heaven, they both don’t go there. The narrow way is the way of the gospel, the way of grace, the way of faith, and it leads to life. The broad road is the way of works and religion; and it says heaven, but it goes directly to hell. There’s no salvation apart from belief in the true gospel. All other messages, all other religions, all other gospels are demonic deceptions, Satanic religions in one form or another...."

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