Worthy of the Gospel

Philippians 1:27-30

^27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel ^28 without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. ^29 For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, ^30 since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

This jar of beans is the key to your Christian life. J (from last Sunday’s message) I need to tell you one of the reasons I love my wife so much. Last Sunday morning while we were singing, I leaned over and said to Karen, “I have this sermon illustration and I’m going to pour a jar of beans in your lap. Is that alright?” She gave me this look which said, “here goes my husband and his antics again,” but she simply said, “sure.” Now how many wives would allow their husbands to pour a jar of beans on them in church?! But as I walked toward Karen to pour the beans, I saw Doug just across the aisle from Karen, I just couldn’t help myself—I had to give the gift of beans to Doug!

I trust that you caught the idea from last Sunday of the overflowing grace of God that is poured into our laps. It is the infinite grace of the gospel that is poured into our laps which is supposed to transform our behavior. Someone said to me that they understood and appreciated v. 27, to “live as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ,” but they needed more specific examples of what this looks like. These are always the right questions to ask—do I understand this and how do I apply it? We did spend all of our time last week on the first half of a single verse. Paul does get more specific in this passage and we will get there, but before we get more narrow in our application, first I want to make sure we understand the broad scope of this truth.

When Paul said to live as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ, what part of our lives does this apply to? Maybe I should ask, what part of our lives does this NOT apply to? It touches every single area. The gospel is the message of salvation in Christ, but the application of the gospel is intended to penetrate into every corner of our lives—personal, family, marriage, work, entertainment, sports, creativity, service, education, health, money, dating, clothes, etc.

This is why I like the new changes to our denominations statement of faith. If you recall, I sent out an email a few months back detailing the new changes to our statement of faith. The changes were put in place to make our doctrines more certain and to prevent heresy from creeping in. I especially like how the eighth statement reads.

8. We believe that God’s justifying grace must not be separated from His sanctifying power and purpose. God commands us to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our faith with care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the oppressed. With God’s Word, the Spirit’s power, and fervent prayer in Christ’s name, we are to combat the spiritual forces of evil. In obedience to Christ’s commission, we are to make disciples among all people, always bearing witness to the gospel in word and deed.

The first sentence inseparably links justification with sanctification. Justification is the part of our salvation in which we are declared righteous. Our sins are paid for in the atonement of Christ’s blood and then the righteousness of Christ is credited to our account. Like the old hymn, Rock of Ages says, “Be of sin the double cure—saved from wrath and made me pure.” The gospel does not merely cover our sins but it also makes us pure. This is justification—the legal declaration of our righteousness. Sanctification is the ongoing process of spiritual maturity empowered by the Holy Spirit that continues throughout our lifetime. Sanctification is the application of the gospel through love, forgiveness, service, repentance and good deeds.

In this sense, justification is the gospel message and sanctification is the good works, the fruit of our salvation. These two cannot be separated from one another. That is why the last phrase of this statement reads, always bearing witness to the gospel in word and deed. We bear witness to the gospel with our words—which some call creeds, meaning beliefs, and we bear witness to the gospel by our deeds. Creeds and deeds—these two cannot be separated.

But we must realize that there is a continual temptation to separate deeds and creeds. There is a movement called the emergent church which speaks a common phrase that is at the core of what they are about. The phrase is “deeds, not creeds.” These folks say they want to follow Jesus and they rightly see that Jesus was constantly doing good deeds, so that’s how they define Christianity. In part they are reacting to the abandonment of evangelicals in the realm of doing good deeds. Do you recall my explanation of gospel dilution from last week? Gospel dilution happens when a church, denomination or group slowly begins to separate their deeds from their creeds. I gave the illustration of the rescue mission who began preaching the gospel as they also ministered to the poor through good deeds, but eventually they separated the deeds from the creeds so much that creeds are left behind. Good doctrine is ignored and the gospel is redefined not as creeds, but as deeds.

But when evangelicals witnessed this separation of deeds and creeds, how do you think they reacted? They saw it as an abandonment of sound doctrine, which it was. If the Biblical balance of deeds and creeds is like a balanced pendulum, this social gospel swung the pendulum all the way to deeds. Of course the further that you go on this pendulum the more liberal you become until the actual good news is completely left out. This is how you end up with two billion Christians in the world and very little evangelism. This is why I could be raised in a church my whole life and not hear the gospel until I was sixteen years old. But this pendulum swing toward the social gospel and abandonment of the gospel message caused evangelicals to react too strongly. For good reason they did not want to be associated with a social gospel or a Christianity that emphasized good deeds but left out good creeds, so they swung the pendulum too far the other way and vastly underemphasized good deeds. Understand that I am speaking in generalities here. There have always been exceptions to the rule—Christians and churches who were more toward the Biblical center, but the majority have swung too far to either side.

What do you think happens when this pendulum swings toward creeds and leaves out deeds? Eventually you’ll get some people who see this imbalance and begin to swing the other way again. This is where the emergent church appears on the scene. They have largely emerged from the evangelical church and have rightly criticized the evangelical church for its lack of deeds, but their reaction didn’t really correct anything. Most of them have swung so far the other way that they have left deeds and only emphasize creeds.

Our doctrinal strives to correct this imbalance by stating: We believe that God’s justifying grace must not be separated from His sanctifying power and purpose. We are to bear witness to the gospel in word and in deed. Deeds and creeds cannot be separated and must be emphasized to an equal degree. But let me stop and ask a question. What is going to prevent us from becoming imbalanced? We are going to forever be bouncing between the two extremes unless we understand something vital at this point. In other words, if I have the correct beliefs and I try to live like a Christian, then I have achieved the balance between creeds and deeds. I have to be on guard against becoming imbalanced toward one or the other, but if I strive to remain in the middle, I will achieve a balanced Christian life.

But this is not at all what Paul meant or what the Bible teaches about the intersection of right beliefs and right actions. The Christian life is not a balanced mixture between beliefs and actions, but rather all of my actions, all of my good deeds flow out of my belief in the gospel message. That is, my creeds actually produce my deeds. Let’s go back to Jesus’ teaching in Luke g and the illustration of the beans. According to Jesus, why should I forgive the person who has caused me harm? Because I have been forgiven an insurmountable debt and therefore I have enough forgiveness to spread around.

We al know about the $700 billion bailout from Congress. What if Congress granted a personal bailout to you in the amount of $700 billion? Pretty nice, you say? Now imagine that you are walking through the parking lot of Walmart and a man stops you and asks for $50 to buy a new car battery. You can see that the hood of his car is raised and you can verify that he indeed does need a new battery and he doesn’t have enough money. Are you going to give him the $50? I am sure you would because you have $700 billion! Fifty dollars is not even a drop in the bucket. You won’t feel an ounce of pain when you let go of the fifty. Now imagine you meet the same man in the parking lot, but this time there is no $700 billion, it’s two days before payday and you have three dollars in your wallet. Are you going to help him? The chances are quite slim. Which one of these scenarios illustrates the gospel?

The first scenario illustrates our inexhaustible source of forgiveness given to us through the gospel. There is never a reason not to forgive another person because to do so, in light of your so-called “reserves” would be far stingier, far more selfish than refusing the parking lot stranger his fifty bucks. You see, Jesus did not give $700 billion worth of forgiveness—Jesus gave you an infinite amount of forgiveness. Prior to our salvation, our sin was so big and our separation from God was so enormous that even if we could do good deeds for all eternity, we would never be able to pay our debt and earn our forgiveness. The debt of our sin was an infinite debt that only an infinite gift could cover. If infinite forgiveness has been given to us, how can we possibly withhold forgiveness from others?

Allow me to go back to the bean illustration from last week. I want you not to picture one jar of beans poured into your lap, but a steady and infinite supply pouring onto your head at all times and building an infinite supply of reserves around you. So picture yourself in a room with beans pouring on your head and big piles of beans all around you—and every bean represents forgiveness—then someone approaches you and asks, “I am sorry for what I did. Will you please forgive me?”  And then you reply, “No, I can’t forgive you. I don’t have any forgiveness to spare.” Do you see the insanity of such a statement? You are literally buried in forgiveness and yet you claim you have none to spare.

You see, it’s one thing to claim that we must have a balance of deeds and creeds, that we must preach the gospel and live the gospel, but the Bible is saying something very different—that the gospel given to us is the very thing which produces our good deeds. I don’t share the gospel with words and do good deeds, but rather I do good deeds precisely because the good news of the gospel has transformed me and is transforming me. Can you see the vast difference between these two ideas?

Let me try to illustrate using a math equation versus a chemical reaction. The so-called “balanced” Christian life is like a math equation. We know that 2+2+2=6. In a similar way,  

myself + creeds + deeds = Christian life

This is a true statement, but there is one enormous problem with this equation. I must supply the deeds to make it work. If I don’t have good deeds, then I cannot have a genuine Christian life. Do you see how that works? But where do the deeds come from? I must produce them somehow by my effort. I must work and strive and sweat and toil in order to produce good deeds. Sometimes I do OK and other times not so good, but that is what t takes to live the Christian life. God commands obedience, therefore I must obey. And when we do this, we are living out a type of legalism because ultimately, we are the one producing the good works. When I read verse 27, “Whatever happens, live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” many, or maybe most of us immediately feel a sense of guilt. We know that the worth of the gospel is enormous and we wonder how we can ever live a life that is worthy of it. You have two choices—either ignore the call to live a life worthy of the gospel, or else carry his burden of guilt around with you, knowing that you are not worthy.

But instead of a “balanced” Christian life, what the Bible describes is a Gospel-driven life that is more like a chemical equation. Let me start with a simple chemical reaction.

4Fe + 3O₂ à 2Fe2O₃

Does anyone know what this is? This is iron plus oxygen which leads to iron oxide, or rust. Now here is where we must understand something about chemical reactions. A chemical reaction is something that happens, we could say for the sake of simplicity, “all by itself.” If you put iron in the presence of oxygen you will always get rust. We al know this by simple observation—iron will always rust in the presence of oxygen. We know from winter driving that water and salt will accelerate the process of rust and there is nothing in all the world that can stop this reaction. Now you might be thinking that we can stop rust by using galvanization, like the galvanized nails in our church building, or we can stop rust by rustoleum paint or special rustproof coating on our cars. But when you add those things, you have changed the equation by removing oxygen. If you put rust inhibitors on your car, the rustproofing blocks the oxygen from contacting the metal. So you haven’t actually stopped the chemical reaction, you have just stopped it before it started. In reality, you are not inhibiting the rust, you are inhibiting the oxygen. To be precise, instead of calling them rust inhibitors, we should call them “oxygen inhibitors”. Even Jesus knew about rust. He said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy.” (Matt. 6:19) The combination of iron and oxygen drives the reaction forward. Once these two come in contact with each other, rust will begin to form It is unstoppable.

A gospel-driven life would look like this:

Myself + Gospel à Deeds

When the gospel interacts with my life, it is an unstoppable reaction which will produce good deeds. When the true gospel interacts with my life—when I am truly saved—when I have been justified and declared righteous by Christ—then good deeds will be formed in my life. I am not producing the gospel through my own efforts, but rather the gospel is producing good deeds through me.

Therefore, when our statement of faith says, “We believe that God’s justifying grace must not be separated from His sanctifying power and purpose,” the intersection between justification and sanctification looks like this:

Justification à Sanctification

This sounds pretty easy when I describe it this way, doesn’t it. The production of good deeds is an unstoppable force. In this equation, good deeds will always result. Why then does this not match with reality? Too often it does not match reality because we apply gospel inhibitors which blocks the effect of he gospel in our lives. Next Sunday…

Rich Maurer

October 19, 2008