So let's read about the gospel now in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 1-11.
Paul writes this,
That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time,
most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
For I am the least of all the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God, I am what I am.
And his grace towards me was not in vain.
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them,
though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Whether then it was I or they,
so we preach, and so you believed.
This is God's holy word.
All right, we're going to take the next three weeks
to look at 1 Corinthians 15 in the run-up to Easter Sunday.
1 Corinthians 15 is Paul's argument for believing in the resurrection.
And he starts out not with focusing on the resurrection itself,
but focusing on the gospel.
And then he's going to, in the next two weeks,
going to show us how the resurrection fits in with the gospel
and what it means for the whole of the gospel.
Now, the problem that he deals with
at the very beginning of this chapter
is a problem of memory.
So he says, I'm here to remind you, brothers and sisters.
So it's an issue of forgetting.
I don't know how often you forget things.
Lately, I have resorted to really, really, really
intensifying my commitment to Google Calendar
because of missed appointments, missed visits to the doctor,
whatever it may be.
And if I have missed something that I told you I was going to be at,
I'm sorry about that.
Google Calendar is here to help all of us.
Our heads are leaky buckets,
and so we've got to write stuff down,
and we've got to constantly remind ourselves
of what's happening every day.
Paul's coming to say that the memory you struggle with
where somebody at St. Columbus tells you their name,
and then they walk away,
and seven seconds later, you cannot remember it.
Our hearts have an even bigger problem with forgetting.
So the head has a leaky bucket problem,
but the heart is a leaky bucket as well.
And that's what he's really dealing with
is a memory issue deep down in the soul
that we forget the gospel.
And so let's get right into it.
What is it that we've forgotten,
and how is it that we forget?
And then secondly, what is the gospel?
That's really the question Paul's answering for us.
So let's think about those two things.
First, what is it that they've forgotten,
and how did they forget it?
So verse 1, you'll see down in verse 1,
he says,
Now I would remind you.
So the Greek word there,
there's a phrase there for remind,
and it really translates something like,
I need to re-explain it.
So he's saying,
I've got to explain it over and over again to you,
because you're so prone to forget.
And so that's why it's translated remind here.
But you see just before that in verse 1,
the very first word is,
Now I would re-explain the gospel.
And the word now,
that conjunction there,
he's connecting what he's going to do
in 1 Corinthians 15 to the rest of the letter.
And that's a really important moment,
because 1 Corinthians 15 is sort of a moment
where Paul stops and takes a breath,
and says,
Okay, now we've gotten to the big thing,
the most important thing.
And the reason it's just now getting there,
after 14 chapters,
is he's been,
for the first 14 chapters,
basically giving case studies
of all the problems
that have been happening in the Corinthian church.
So Corinth is a port city,
and it's very cosmopolitan,
in the first century,
very urban,
a center for the Roman Empire,
in the west,
in the eastern side of the Roman Empire.
And Corinth is the kind of place
where you could say,
What happens in Corinth,
stays in Corinth.
It's a party city,
for sure.
And what's happened is,
Paul planted the Corinthian church
in Acts chapter 18.
You can go read all about it there.
He was with them for 18 months,
and he's been gone for a few years,
but he's heard,
through other letters
that have been sent to him,
things are not going well at all
in the Corinthian church.
And basically,
what happens in Corinth
stays in Corinth,
and the Corinthian culture
has gotten into the church
a good bit.
And so,
1 Corinthians was really
a set of case studies
on all the big problems
in the church.
And if you've read it,
you'll know that
one of the problems was,
as soon as Paul left,
people started creating factions
around celebrity ministers.
So they said,
you know,
I followed,
I was baptized by Apollos,
and Apollos is a far better speaker
than Paul.
He's a better preacher.
And so they were latching themselves
on to who discipled who.
You know,
they were saying,
you know,
I knew Tim Keller,
and my grandfather was baptized
by Martin Lloyd-Jones,
and so that makes me better
than the rest of you,
and all this kind of thing.
Right?
So they took the gospel,
and they turned it into
celebrity preacher culture.
And then the next thing
we read about
is constant scandals.
So there was big time scandals
in the church,
things that Paul says
not even the pagan,
in the pagan temples
would have been tolerated.
Very embarrassing.
Very big acts of public shame,
and nobody was dealing with it.
Big sin.
Scandal.
Real scandal in the church,
and nobody was saying
a word about it.
And he goes on from there
and talks about
all sorts of other issues,
like in worship,
it was total chaos.
Everybody was speaking
over each other,
and you know,
it would be like some of you
standing up right now
and saying,
hold on a second,
I would be far better
at explaining this
than you are,
and you try to trade places
with me,
and maybe you probably would be.
But that's exactly
the kind of thing
that was happening
all the time
in the Corinthian church.
And so he goes case study
by case study
of these big issues,
and then finally,
when you get to chapter 15,
he says,
now.
Okay.
How are we going
to deal with this?
It's not,
and what does he do?
He doesn't go
for behavior modification.
He doesn't say,
stop it,
stop it.
Though that matters.
What he does is he says,
what you need
is to refill
your leaky hearts
with the gospel.
You need the gospel
over and over and over again,
plunged down into your soul.
Now look,
the central message
of the Christian,
the Christian message,
the core,
is the gospel.
Paul says,
the most important thing
I can say to you
is to repeat the gospel.
And what he's telling us
is that whether you're
a first century Corinthian
or a 21st century
Edinburgh citizen,
resident,
or from somewhere else
in the world,
if you have believed
the gospel
because you heard it preached,
he says,
I preached it to you,
you believed it,
you stood in it,
you put it on
like it was your armor,
and you've forgotten
about it.
He's saying that
every single one of us
struggles to remember
and live out of the resources
of the gospel.
And it could be
that you do
what the Corinthians do.
When churches,
local institutions,
and Christians
get the gospel
into their hands and hearts,
they often,
we will often distort it.
And one of the ways
we distort it
is we do what
the Corinthians did.
We say,
the gospel's all about grace,
it's all grace,
and so I can live
in any way I want.
This is what was happening
in Corinth.
And they say,
we call this antinomianism,
cheap grace.
So we take the gospel,
we distort it
by saying,
if it really is all grace,
if I can be forgiven
for anything,
then I can do anything
I want,
and it's all fine.
Another way
they were distorting
the gospel
is they were saying,
I was baptized by Apollos.
And we say,
boy, I came in
by the gospel,
but I really want
to get a seat at the table
with that celebrity Christian.
Some of us struggle
with that.
And another way
we distort the gospel
is we say the gospel
is just a starting point.
1 Corinthians 12 and 13,
you might remember,
is all about gifts.
And people are saying,
you know,
yeah, I entered in
by the gospel,
but the real measure
in the church
of who's really a Christian
is the people
that have achieved
the ability
to speak in tongues.
Right?
And so they said,
you get in by the gospel,
but you level up
with gifts,
and so the gospel
becomes this hierarchical platform.
You start at level one
and you've got to get
more and more gifts
along the way.
And you remember
in Paul's other letters
like Galatians,
the people had received
the gospel in Galatians,
but he says,
what they did was they said,
Jesus is just a starting point,
but if you want to stay
a Christian,
you have to obey
all the religious traditions
of our culture.
So we take the gospel
and we turn it
into religious behaviorism.
That's another way
we distort it.
When the gospel
gets into sinners' hands,
we often forget about it
and we twist it
and we distort it,
and so we could spend
all day talking
about the fact
that we have often
turned the gospel
into a money-making opportunity.
prosperity,
we talk about
the health and wealth gospel,
the prosperity gospel,
the social gospel,
the therapeutic gospel,
the moralist gospel,
the churchless gospel,
the activist gospel.
All the different ways
right now
the gospel is being twisted
and distorted
and forgotten about.
One that's a little more subtle
that gets into the bones
of the evangelical world
is the gospel message
that says,
if I prayed a prayer
at one time in my life,
I now am free
from the possibility of hell.
a mere get-out-of-hell-free gospel,
and that's a distortion
of the gospel too.
And Paul says,
I preached it to you,
you believed it,
you stood in it
like it was armor,
and you've let your heart,
you've let the gospel
just kind of seep away
and you've forgotten about it.
And what he says
to a very messy
Corinthian church
is not get your life together,
behave yourselves.
He says you need
to hear the gospel again.
You need to hear it,
you need to let it soak down
in your heart again.
At St. Columbus,
this is simple,
this is basic,
I know,
this is old hat
to many of you,
but at St. Columbus,
we want to be so committed
to never graduating
from the gospel
that people get tired
of how much we say
the word gospel.
And sometimes people
do talk about gospel,
gospel, gospel,
all you say is gospel,
all we say is gospel.
And yes,
we want to be gospel-centered
in every way,
but that's what Paul does,
you see?
He says it's not about
behavior modification,
it's that deep change
actually comes out
of the resources
of the gospel.
And so what is it?
That's the question,
point two.
What is the gospel?
You might be here today
and you think,
I genuinely don't know
what the gospel is.
You might be here today
and say,
I do have a pretty good grasp
on being able
to articulate the gospel,
or somewhere in between
and wherever you are,
from whatever background
you come,
Paul says you need
to be reminded,
no matter what condition
you're in,
of what the gospel is.
And so let's think about that.
What's the gospel?
Let me give you four elements
of the gospel
that Paul draws out
for us here.
And the first is
the word gospel.
He calls the message
of Christianity
the gospel.
So if you look down
at verse three,
you can see
what he says about it.
He says that,
when I was here
and I planted this church,
I delivered to you
what is of first importance.
So the word first there,
the most important,
the first thing,
is not a chronology word.
So there are multiple words
in Greek for first.
But this one is not chronology.
So it's not,
I gave you the first thing
on the path.
You learn the gospel first,
but then there's other things
you graduate to.
The word first there
is quality.
It's a quality word.
So the most important thing.
Quality.
The most important thing.
So what he's saying here is
I could say a lot more
about the gospel
than I'm about to say.
But what I want to do
is take the qualitatively
most important things
I must say about it,
the bullseye of the gospel,
the very dead center,
and communicate that to you.
So what we're about to get
is the bullseye,
you know,
the dead center
of what the gospel is.
The gospel has rings
and rings and rings.
It goes out.
It's so expansive.
But what he's saying here is
right now,
I just want to give you
the absolute center
of what the gospel
is all about.
So he uses this word gospel
and gospel
is not a Christian word
originally.
The word gospel
was borrowed
by Christians
from the Greco-Roman culture
that they lived in.
It was a word
that was used
all across the Roman Empire
for just good news.
So you know
this word gospel.
The Greek word gospel
is the word evangel.
And it's got two parts.
The back half
of the word gospel
is the word angel.
And angel
isn't just
a spiritual being
that lives in heaven.
The word angel
in Greek
also just means message.
And the front half
of the word gospel
has the little prefix
!
EV
or EU
and that just means good.
So when we say
the gospel is good news
or a good message,
it's just the literal
transliteration
of exactly
what those two
little words mean.
Evangel,
the good news.
That means
that when Paul
chooses this word,
he's communicating something.
He uses this word
about 70 times
across his letters.
And he's communicating
something really important
and it's this.
The Christian gospel
is more like
opening today's newspaper
and reading the headlines
than it is
going to talk to a pastor
about your circumstances
in life
to get advice.
The Christian gospel
is more like
reading the Wall Street Journal
or the Times
whatever your favorite
newspaper is.
It's more like
reading the newspaper
than it is
going to a therapist
for advice.
The gospel is news
not advice.
The gospel is a proclamation
of a history
not good advice
to get your life better.
The gospel is not a command.
The gospel is a pronouncement
of what has happened
in the middle of history.
What is that pronouncement?
Christ died
Christ was buried
Christ was raised.
That's the history
that's the news.
The gospel is like
if you were there
on Easter Sunday
the Jerusalem Times
on the front page
would have said
Christ died
Christ was buried
Christ is risen
from the dead
and that is the gospel.
The gospel is a history.
So what is
the core message
of Islam?
What is Islamic salvation?
What's the core message?
The core message
to Islam is
surrender your will
to Allah
and seek
His righteousness
in your own behavior
through the five pillars.
So the core message
of Islam
is a command to you
pursue the righteousness
of Allah
and hope
that you will achieve it.
What is the core message
of Buddhism?
The core message
of Buddhism
is embrace
the fourfold
the four noble truths
and live your life
on the eightfold path
to enlightenment
to get beyond suffering.
So what's the core message
of Buddhism?
It's a command.
Behave
along the lines
of the eightfold path
and maybe
you can achieve enlightenment.
Christianity's
core message
is not a command
it's not advice
it is a pronouncement
that God
has done it all
for you.
It's different
than every other
world religion
every other philosophy
that's ever existed
in human history.
This week
the latest issue
of the New Yorker
came out
New Yorker magazine
and in it
there was an article
by a writer
named Adam Gopnik
and Adam Gopnik
wrote an article
by the title
We're Still Not Done
With Jesus
and it was about
the scholarly debates
going on right now
in the New Testament
academy
around the origins
of Christianity
and in this
he gives you
all the different
very predominant
perspectives right now.
So the spectrums
where did Christianity
come from?
How did we get
the stories of Jesus
that we have?
That's what he's
dealing with.
And he says
on the one hand
there's Catherine
Nixie's recent book
which she argues
that the gospel stories
1 Corinthians 15
the message of the gospel
arose out of a
Jewish interpretation
of Greek mythology.
So Catherine Nixie
suggests that
the gospel stories
are just
re-mythologizations
of Greek myths
based in Jewish culture
about some man
named Jesus.
In the middle
of this spectrum
there's a woman
named Elaine Pagels
who wrote a book
where she says
something more
traditional in the academy
she says
the stories of Jesus
are mixtures
of real history
about this man
Jesus
but also an evolution
of legendary fables.
on the extreme side
he quoted
Richard C. Miller
who wrote a book
in 2017
very rare
that anybody
would argue this today
but Richard C. Miller
still argues
that Jesus
never existed
he wasn't even
a historical figure.
Right?
So in this article
Adam Gopnik
takes the origins
of Christianity
and he puts it
on the spectrum
and he says
these are basically
the three views.
Now what's the one
thing missing?
The one thing missing
is the simplest
explanation
and that's the
simple explanation
that what the
gospels record
and what Paul says
here about the history
of Jesus
actually happened.
The one thing
that Gopnik
and the New Yorker
this week
would not allow
and what I want
to say about this
today is simply this
and we're going
to be talking
about the historicity
of the resurrection
the next couple
of weeks
but the one thing
you cannot do
is you cannot come
to Paul
and put him
on this spectrum.
Paul's view
was that Jesus
Christ really
did die
was really dead
and was really
raised from the dead
in real life history
that's the gospel
and so you can come
and look at that
and you can reject it
that's an option
but you can't treat it
as anything else
but a mere
historical claim.
Paul is saying
this happened
and that is the gospel.
Now secondly
of four
and I have to hurry
what does he say
from there?
He says
that means
the gospel
is not about you
it's about Jesus
it's about his history
but the gospel
is for you
that's the next thing
he tells us
and so if you look down
again
at verse 3
he says
I delivered you
the most important thing
the gospel
that Christ died
real life history
then there's the preposition
for our sins
the gospel is not about you
but it is for you
and that little word
for there
is such an important
preposition
in the Greek New Testament
the Greek language
that this Bible
was written in
there are only
18 prepositions
in English
we have 150
so the 18 prepositions
in Greek
do a lot of work
they carry a lot
of weight
and meaning
and you have to discern
really carefully
what they mean
the scholarly consensus
on this preposition
for
is really
really clear
what does it mean
this little preposition
for our sins
translate it like this
he died
on behalf of
our sin
so
this preposition
for is saying
Jesus Christ died
in your place
as your substitute
taking on
your sin
in himself
that's what the
for there
on behalf of
in our stead
in our place
now
what this is telling us
is something so important
so important
it's asking you
do you know
what the gospel
really came to do
really came to fix
what is the greatest
problem we face
and Paul says
the greatest problem
we face
is our sin
our sin
our choice
to trespass
against
who God
made us to be
and to merit
guilt before God
that's what sin does
that's what sin is
he's saying
what is the greatest
problem you face today
that you
you have merited
guilt
before the living God
and you are not
in a state
of communion
with him
apart from the gospel
Paul says
that is the greatest issue
so he comes
and tells us
something so important
Philip Reif
is a 20th century
sociologist
that wrote
a couple of books
about the transition
from pre-modern people
to modern people
and in it
he talks about
the distinction
between what he calls
pre-modern man
quote unquote
as religious man
man by the way
there means
men and women
that's just the old way
of using that word
he says
there's religious man
the pre-modern man
and then he calls
modern people
psychological man
what does he mean by that
he says
the pre-modern person
across all cultures
all times
saw themselves
as people
in a state of guilt
searching for the hope
of salvation
and then he says
but modern man
is psychological man
and he says
we have transitioned
we don't see ourselves
as people
in the state of guilt
seeking salvation
and said
we think of ourselves
in what state
the state of pain
seeking pleasure
he says
modern man
thinks of himself
as the state of
in the state of boredom
seeking entertainment
constantly needing
that dopamine hit
you know
and if you read
a book like
Neil Postman's book
Amusing Ourselves to Death
he says
the key issue
in that transition
from thinking about
ourselves as guilty
in need of salvation
to bored
in need of entertainment
to pain
bearing
in need of pain
freedom
he says
Neil Postman says
the biggest transition
is the screen
so he argues
in Amusing Ourselves to Death
that the reason
we think like that
is because the screen
turned everything
into pleasure
seeking entertainment
he says
even when TVs
came out
and the news
would be put up
on the television
the news became
entertainment
politics became
entertainment
everything became
entertainment
and that created
an entire culture
where we're
entertaining ourselves
to death
now
friend
your greatest
problem
is not
that you have
pain
and need pleasure
not
that you're bored
and you need
to be entertained
our greatest problem
is that we have guilt
we bear guilt
we've accrued guilt
and I think
as a pastor
in my time
as a pastor
I've gotten to talk
to enough people
from all sorts
of different backgrounds
that they know
subconsciously
they know
deep down within
that over
the course
of a life
oh boy
think about it
year on year
day on day
week on week
how many things
we have said
and left unsaid
how many things
we have done
against others
and not done
for others
how many things
we have thought
how many things
we have acted
and enacted
against God
we know
deep down
in ourselves
we have accrued
a great debt
of guilt
before the Lord
before God
that is our
greatest problem
that is what
the gospel
came to deal with
and what we're
being told here
of something
so important
how is a human
being saved
from this great
sin problem
this great guilt
problem
Jesus Christ
died
in your place
on behalf
of your sins
taking your guilt
into himself
and paying the punishment
that you deserved
that's what we're told
now that means
you can come today
and say
the gospel
does not first
bullseye
does not first
come to deal
with our sadness
the gospel
does not first
come to deal
with our mental health
the gospel
does not come
first to be therapy
for us
the gospel
does not come
first
to deal with
our circumstantial
problems
the first
and boy
it will
it will deal
with all that
but the first
thing the gospel
does is it comes
to deal
with the fact
that we owe
that we have
merited guilt
before God the Father
that's the first
thing it comes
to do
that means
you are not
saved
by the power
of your faith
today
if you're a Christian
you're not saved
by the beauty
of your trust
today
you're not saved
by anything
that you do
in your mind
or your heart
to latch on
to the gospel
you're not actually
saved by that
what are you saved
by?
Christ alone
his substitutionary
work on the cross
that's it
imagine
imagine that
you're in the
highlands of Scotland
as I was
a couple weeks ago
and you're
walking
you're hill walking
and you fall
terrible thing to imagine
you fall off a cliff
and you're
barreling down
a ravine
you know
20 meters
30 meters
40 meters
50 meters
my illustration
probably breaks down
because you're going
too fast
to do anything
at this point
but
you're falling
and there's a branch
one branch
that you can latch
onto
and do you sit
there and say
you know
I don't know
how much faith
I have in this
branch right now
you know
and do you evaluate
and think
syllogistically
through reason
can I really
trust
that this branch
is meaningful
and will give me
the identity
that I seek in life
no
what do you do
if you're following
50 flights
you reach out
and you grab
hold of the branch
and you don't know
a lot
there's a lot
you don't know
but you just rest
on it
and you hope
that it's going
to save you
the branch
of Jesse
Jesus Christ
he saves
your falling
on that branch
does not save you
no
falling on the branch
is just how
you receive
his salvation
your faith
is falling
upon that branch
your trust
is falling
upon that branch
it's not your faith
that saves you
boy
you've got
83% faith
right now
while you're
sitting in the pew
on a Sunday
but tomorrow
it's going to go
down to 43
right
and it's going
to go up
and down
all the time
it's not the power
of your faith
that saves you
it's the object
he is for you
he is on your behalf
now thirdly
how does this work
exactly
I wish I had more time
but we'll work
on this the next
couple of weeks
how does this work
let me say this
as brief as I can
because sometimes
we miss
the mechanics
of the gospel
how does the gospel
actually work
let me put it
like this
how can
a first century
man
a carpenter
born of
a backwater town
like Nazareth
a Bethlehem
in Nazareth
matter for you
in 2025
so the Christian
gospel says it
does
but how
how could a man
in 33 AD
mean anything
for me
salvation
for me
in 2025
and here's how
it works
I can say it
very briefly
number one
Paul says
Christ died
for your sins
because Jesus Christ
is a human
he could stand
in your place
for a human
because Jesus Christ
is God
he could die
in your place
and merit
infinite value
to pay the debt
of many
that spans
across every century
backward and forward
because he's human
he can stand
in your place
because he's God
his value
can span
every century
as one who has
paid the debt
for all sin
number two
he says
he was buried
Paul says
how does the gospel
work
Jesus Christ
when he was buried
he
it's saying
that he really
did die
so Paul's
trying to get you
to see the
preposterousness
of this
how in the world
could we imagine
that God
the creator
would now be
buried in a tomb
but what is he saying
he's saying
he really was dead
so much so
that the debt
of your sin
really was paid
if Christ
almost died
then the debt
wasn't paid
but he really
was dead
and so the debt
was paid
thirdly he says
he was raised
from the dead
and appeared alive
to more than 500
people
this is where
now this
if you don't listen
to anything else
just try to
come with me
on this
and grasp hold
of this
because this is
where the mechanics
how the gospel
works
is so important
and sometimes
this piece
is missed
in Romans 425
Paul explains it
in one little line
he says
he was delivered
to death
for our sins
we've talked
about that
he was delivered
to death
on my behalf
paying the price
for my sin
my guilt
but then he says
he was raised
to life
for our justification
and that's the completion
of the gospel
if Jesus Christ
was still dead
there is no forgiveness
of sins
but he says
he was raised
to life
for our justification
what does that mean
it means this
to be justified
is to be pronounced
guilt free
your greatest problem
your guilt before the Lord
to be justified
is when God the Father
says
you're guilt free
you're cleansed
you're forgiven
there is no guilt
hanging over you
any longer forever
how does this work
the resurrection
of Jesus
was the justification
of Jesus Christ himself
okay
the resurrection of Jesus
was the justification
of Jesus
what does that mean
when Jesus rose
from the dead
God pronounced
Jesus guilt free
why
because Jesus
carried all of our sin
in his death
but when he was resurrected
God is saying
he's vindicated
he really did
completely pay
for every single sin
that has ever been
accrued in this world
he paid for it
the debt has been paid
it's over
you know
when a person
when a prisoner
pays their sentence
that they give their time
for the crime
they've committed
what happens next
they're released
you see
in the resurrection
it's saying
Jesus Christ
really did pay
for everything
so he deserves
to be raised
he deserves
to be released
he deserves
to be vindicated
and so Paul says
here's the gospel
God
who stands
outside of space
and time
can say
of you today
in any century
whether it's
5th century BC
21st century AD
51st century
so long from now
any person
across space and time
that because
Jesus Christ
is God
and human
and has stood
in the place
of all the sins
of the world
God can say
by his justification
I gift you
justification
I can take
what he earned
and I can apply
it to your account
no matter what
century you live in
and that's how
the gospel works
God today
can take
what he earned
and apply it to you
right now
in the middle
of history
J.I. Packer
in his book
one of his books
he talks about
the gospel
and this idea
that Christ
sacrificed himself
for us
in our place
so that in his resurrection
we might be vindicated
we might be justified
and he deals
with a problem
that a lot of us
in the modern world
have with this
we look at that
and we say
is this not just
the same thing
as pagan
ritual sacrifice
is this not just
the same thing
as what many
have called
in the modern world
cosmic child abuse
God the Father
sacrificing a son
is this not just
a big account
of cosmic child abuse
and he goes through
and he shows
yeah
think about it
in every world religion
throughout history
the pagans
no matter what world religion
people come to the temple
and they give sacrifices
to the gods
trying to mollify
trying to pacify
trying to deal
with the guilt problem
they have with the gods
that's everywhere
why
every human
every society
recognizes
that that's our problem
so all religions
tend to manifest that
in some way
we need to pacify the gods
mollify the gods
propitiate
turn the wrath
of the gods
away from us
and J.I. Packer
writes this
what is different
in Christianity
there is something
similar there
a recognition
of guilt
but what is different
in Christianity
in all the world religions
in all of paganism
man
humans
try to propitiate
or satisfy
their guilt
themselves
man tries to propitiate
his God
Packer says
in Christianity
God
propitiates
God
satisfies
the wrath
of God
God
turns away
the wrath
the guilt
that we owe
the judgment
that we deserve
God does it
to God
and this is
the heart of
God's radical love
that for
that on behalf of
God did it
to God
God died
unto God
so that we might
be made alive
it's different
than every other message
all of other world religions
and so let me close
with this word
the very last thing
that happens in this passage
verse 8 to 11
Paul
just simply
very simple
Paul just simply
tells his story
and at the very end
of this passage
he says
I was on my way
to murder Christians
and Jesus showed up
in my life
and God showed me
that Christ
at the cross
was for me
and all he does
in verse 8 to 11
is write his testimony
and he says
now I know
that I'm the least
of all the apostles
I'm not worthy
to be called
one of God's children
but by grace
today I stand here
and I am what I am
remember
Paul was a murderous
hate filled
racist
that was going
to murder
anybody he could
that followed Jesus
who hated the Gentiles
Paul
by his religion
said
I am better
than all of these
people around me
and he said
when I encountered
the truth about Jesus
I realized
what do people want
in the modern world
they want equality
boy
Paul found
real equality
he said
in the gospel
I learned
that everybody
is equally a sinner
in need
of God's grace
he realized
he said
you know
I thought
I was better
than everybody else
around me
but then when I found
the gospel
I realized
that I'm the least
I'm the worst
the gospel
is so humanizing
it's so impartial
it brings such
radical equality
to all people
because it says
to every one of us
you're a sinner
in need of grace
all of us equal
all of us
in the same position
you know
if you make your God
a political agenda
if you make
your God
the self-salvation
seeking of your career
and your successes
if you make your God
a football team
yeah
if you make your God
nationalism
a country
saying I just want
everybody to know
that my country
is better than
the next country
if you make your God
any of these things
you will always
look out and say
I am positioning myself
as better than
the next person
somehow someway
I must be
my goal in life
is to have a better
career
a better nation
a better football team
a better this
a better that
and Paul said
that's who I was
but then I realized
I'm just a sinner
in need of grace
that's all of us
do you have a testimony
that can say
I'm just a sinner
in need of God's
precious grace
you can have a testimony
let us pray
Father
give us a testimony today
of the power
of the gospel
in our lives
that Christ
Christ died
on our behalf
thank you Lord Jesus
we want grateful hearts
this morning
teach us
the power of the gospel
remind us today
of the gospel
help us to never forget
the gospel
so Lord
send us today
into our city
living out of the resources
of the gospel
we pray
in Jesus name
Amen