February 20, 2009

BY THIS GOSPEL YOU ARE SAVED

I Corinthians 15:1-5

We have witnessed the baptism of 27 people this morning. What I would like to do in my message morning is to challenge all of us to weigh our own experience and spiritual journey in the light of what these individuals have done and the significance of their act.

The passage we are considering is I Corinthians 15:1-5: (Read)

In this passage, Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the basic facts of the gospel, the Christian message. They are the simple historical facts upon which the Christian faith rests. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according the Scriptures, and that he appeared to eye-witnesses.

That is the Christian message in a nutshell. That is our gospel, our good news. But where I want to focus our thoughts this morning is on verses 1-2, and especially on the verbs in those verses that deal with our response and reaction to the Gospel. You see, there are large numbers of people who are familiar with the Gospel. They know the facts. Maybe you are one of those people. Nothing in those verses surprises you. You are very familiar with them. You have heard them before. Maybe you’ve been hearing them all your life. But my challenge is this: What have you done with this message?

The first verb is in verse 1: RECEIVED. The first thing the Corinthians did was to receive the Gospel. This was also the first act necessary for those being baptized today. You might ask, “What does it mean to receive the Gospel?” First of all, it obviously involves hearing the message. I would go beyond that to say that it also includes understanding the message. But this word goes beyond simply hearing and understanding. It also contains in it the element of welcoming the message. Just like you receive guests into your home, you take this message into your heart and mind, welcoming it and accepting its truth.

So Paul says to the Corinthians: I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received.

I also want to point out the tense of this verb. It is what is called an aorist tense, which speaks of action which takes place at a certain point in time. At some point in time, these Corinthians, having heard the message of the Gospel, received it and welcomed it. My question to you is: Have you received the Gospel? Have you accepted it, welcomed it, made it your own?

The second verb, also in verse 1 is translated: YOU HAVE TAKEN YOUR STAND.

This takes us a step further, does it not? The Corinthians not only heard and accepted the message mentally and internally. They also based their confidence, their eternal future on this message. An assent of the mind and the understanding has now become an act of the will. It is a deliberate act by which we place our faith and trust in Jesus and his death on the cross as our source of salvation and forgiveness of sins. What is more, under normal circumstances I believe that we should be willing to make our stand public. I believe that is why baptism is an important act for a Christian. Baptism is a way of making our stand public. It’s a way of going public with our faith. It is a way of taking the internal act of believing and receiving the Gospel, and making it visible before witnesses. It is a powerful way to make our commitment known.

The tense of this verb is also important. Paul uses what is called the perfect tense. This is a tense which expresses past action with present result. I did it in the past and it’s still true. I took my stand and I’m still standing. I put my trust in the Gospel and I’m still trusting. I wanted the world to know that I’m a follower of Christ, and I still want them to know. I put on the uniform, and I’m still proud to wear that uniform.

My question, then to you is: Have you taken your stand on the Gospel? Has your intellectual understanding and assent become an act of the will to trust Christ as Savior? And have you made your stand, your commitment public?

But then Paul adds yet another verb. This one is found in verse 2: HOLD FIRMLY TO THE WORD.

The “word I preached to you” is, of course the Gospel message. The Corinthians first of all received it. Then they took their stand on it. Now he admonishes them: Hold firmly to it.

The tense he uses here is the present tense, which describes ongoing, continuous action. I think it is important to realize that once we have received the Gospel, and once we have taken our stand on it, that is not the end of the matter. We are to continue to hold firmly to the Gospel. In fact much of the New Testament was written precisely because the Gospel was under attack, and Paul and the other writers wrote to say: “Hold on firmly to the Gospel.”

Let’s consider Galatians 1:6-8: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.

Some of the harshest words in the New Testament are reserved for false teachers who sought to confuse and pervert the pure Gospel of Christ. The Gospel will always be subject to attack, institutionally and in our own individual lives and understanding. We must hold fast to the truth of our faith and our message.

This is a consistent theme of the New Testament. Let’s consider some other texts.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus comes finally to the seed which fell on good soil. Here is how he describes it in Luke 8:15:  But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it and by persevering produce a crop. Retain is the same Greek term Paul uses in I Corinthians.

The writer of Hebrews was speaking to a group that was under intense pressure to forsake their faith in the Gospel and return to Judaism. Listen to his words in Hebrews 3:6: But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. That’s also the same term.

Again in Hebrews 3:14: We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. Same term again.

Again in Hebrews 10:23: Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

So to all of us the challenge is clear. Hold on firmly to the Gospel. We cannot afford to settle back in complacency. We cannot afford to say: “Well, I’ve believed, I’ve accepted Christ, and I’ve been baptized. That’s an end to the matter.” No, the point in time action of receiving the Gospel, which led to the past action with present result of taking our stand on the Gospel must now become the persevering, ongoing action of holding on firmly to the Gospel.

So, speaking to an audience like this, knowing that most of you are familiar with the facts of the Gospel, my challenge is this. What have you done with the message?

Have you received, accepted it, welcomed it, believed it?

Have you taken your stand on it? Have you made a commitment, even a public confession as one who is trusting in Christ for salvation?

Are you holding firmly to it?

The stakes are huge. Look at Paul’s words again in verse 2: By this Gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain. If you fall short at any one of these challenges, if have not received the message, and if you have not taken your stand on it, and if you fail to hold firmly to it, then the final conclusion is clear. Your belief, your faith is a false, empty, useless one.

We have been seeing this in our studies in the Gospel of John. There were people in the crowd who were caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, and the excitement of Jesus’ miracles. The Gospel actually even says, “they believed in him.” But when the going became hard, when they didn’t like what he said or what he did, they turned back and followed him no longer. Their belief was an empty, useless kind of faith.

During our years in Kenya, the church I pastored used to have baptism classes for young people around the age of 12 or 13. I used to teach those classes. We held them during school holidays; two weeks of classes every morning. Then I would meet individually with the young people and make as sure as I could that they understood the significance of the Gospel and of what it meant to follow Christ and be baptized. I would receive many correct answers and we would go ahead with the baptisms. But what broke my heart was to see that some of those young people, once they had fulfilled the formality of baptism, would quickly drop away, drop out and we would not see them anymore.

I believe their faith was in vain. You see, the Bible teaches us that true faith, real faith is a persevering faith. It has three tenses. There is a past tense: you received the Gospel. Then there is a perfect tense, of past action with present result: you have taken your stand on the Gospel and you are still standing on it. And finally there is a present, ongoing tense; you are continuing to hold firmly to the Gospel.

When all three tenses are present, listen to this fantastic truth: By this Gospel you are saved.