Do you study the gospel or have you been convinced the gospel is just for lost people? The simplicity of the message of Jesus Christ, dying as a substitute, a sacrifice for sinners and rising from the dead, does not mean a shallowness in doctrine. I’m convinced that we will spend eternity pondering and examining the “unsearchable riches of Christ” and will never come to the end of the glories of the gospel. When a person is born again, they are awakened to spiritual truths that are plainly laid out in Scripture. A new convert realizes the gospel is a simple to receive but unsearchable in the vast and rich beauty of how it was accomplished. It should be the desire of the Christian heart to know more about Jesus and our salvation. Doctrine shouldn’t be avoided, but it should be desired. The more we learn about our Saviour, the lovelier He is to us.
The only way we can know the details of the work of salvation is if God reveals His mind to us. I can tell you what happened when the Lord saved me from my perspective, but since I didn’t save myself, that is an awfully poor perspective to use as the foundation of my theology. When I was first saved, I didn’t know much more than I was a sinner deserving Hell, and Jesus saved me. I was a theologian after the mold of the blind man in John 9 “one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see”. I thought I knew other things about God and the Bible, but I soon discovered those early opinions were very wrong. I had a lot of assumptions about God, sin, and salvation based upon my preconceived notions, personal feelings, and tradition. But it is not the will of God for His people to remain in this state and to walk around with nothing but our experience to guide us in the details of salvation. Since I was saved by another, and by grace on top of that, I want to have the perspective of my Saviour about the salvation He provides. Jesus saved me, then gave a book that revealed His mind and His will about the matter of salvation. The question is whether we will receive the truth about salvation from the God who provides it, even if it is offensive to our natural thoughts about God.
The gospel of Christ turns the world upside down. It is a paradigm shifting, idol destroying, and world changing truth. Join me in the coming weeks in an examination of the topic of redemption. With an open mind and open Bible, seek to study what the Lord tells us about our salvation. Chesterton wrote “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” Truth loses nothing from examination, but the more you look and the more you see, the more beautiful it becomes.
