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                       WHAT IS THE TRUE GOSPEL?


                             INTRODUCTION

.    What is the true Gospel?  There is no question that is of greater
importance facing the world today.  This is so because only the true
Gospel will provide the answer that can save us from spending eternity
under the wrath of God.  Therefore, as we seek to identify the true
Gospel, we will endeavor to discover answers to the following
questions: What is the authority that structures and determines the
true Gospel?  What is the message of the true Gospel?  What is the
mandate of the true Gospel?
.    We hear sermons of various kinds; we read the Bible here and
there; we generally hear a lot of good things about the Gospel.  We
hear about how we are to walk as Christians; we see rules in the Bible
that God has given to us for the good of mankind.  But, we begin to
wonder, what is the essential structure of the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ?  Can we strip away the peripherals and get right down to
the very substance, the inner core of the Gospel?

                              Chapter 1

.    In order to know what the Gospel actually is, we must first of
all determine the authority that structures and determines what it is.
This is necessary because the nature of the true Gospel is defined and
established by its divine authority.  In fact, the nature of every
religion, gospel, and ideological system is defined and established by
its recognized authority.
.    A Mohammedan, for example, may wish to know how to live as a good
Mohammedan.  So he carefully consults the Koran, a book in which
Mohammedans believe God has spoken.  The Koran, therefore, is the
written authority that establishes the Mohammedan gospel, that is, the
Mohammedan religion.  An orthodox Jew has a different authority.  It
includes what we call our Old Testament, along with the writing of the
church fathers that are considered to be divinely inspired.  That is
the authority that establishes the nature and character of the Jewish
religion.  On the other hand, a Mormon has as his divine authority the
Bible, plus the Book of Mormon, which is believed to be divinely
inspired.  Because the Book of Mormon came later than the Bible, it
has become a shadow that lies over the Bible.  That is, someone who
follows the Mormon gospel examines everything he reads in the Bible in
the light of what is found in the Book of Mormon.
.    Similarly, the Roman Catholics follow still another gospel.  The
authority that structures and determines their gospel begins with the
Bible.  But the Apocrypha books are also a part of that authority, as
are the visions of Joan of Arc, the visions of Fatima, and the
infallible utterances of the Pope.  All of these are looked upon as
divine, and together they make up the authority that establishes the
character of the Roman Catholic gospel.
.    Likewise, the charismatic gospel has its authority.  It believes
that the Bible is the Word of God, but it also believes in divine
revelation through visions, voices, or tongues, which expands their
authority beyond the Bible.  Therefore, it has as its authority the
Bible, plus the messages presumably received from God through dreams,
visions, and tongues.  This widened authority structures and
determines the character of the charismatic gospel.
.    Bear in mind that every time we have a different authority, we
also have a different kind of gospel.  In other words, every gospel is
structured and determined by its authority.  So when the authorities
differ, the gospels themselves differ.
.    But what is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, who alone can save
men and women from their sins?  What is the Divine Authority by which
it is structured and determined?  These are some of the most insistent
questions facing the church today, because we are living in a day when
gospels are proliferating.  Every place we turn we find different
kinds of gospels.  Indeed, we wonder, how can I really know I am
following the true Gospel?
.    One definition sometimes offered to describe the true Gospel is
set forth in I John 4:2.  There we read that if we confess that Christ
has come in the flesh, then we are of God.  Yet as we read in Luke
4:34, the demons also admit that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,
and they are still under God's wrath.  So that particular definition
standing alone may not be adequate in every case.  We have to know
more about what defines and establishes the Gospel.  We must,
therefore, discover the divine authority that structures and
determines the character and nature of the true Gospel.
.    The Bible indicates that it alone and in its entirety is the
authority that establishes the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Revelation 22:18-19 says it best.

"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy
of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city,
and from the things which are written in this book."

.    By that statement God established the parameters of the true
Gospel.  It is circumscribed by the Bible alone.
.    The Bible, therefore, is the true divine authority.  It is the
only complete authority that established the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ.  Because it is the divine authority, because it is from God,
it is to be entirely authoritative in our lives.  We must eagerly read
it; we must eagerly study it with a view to being obedient to it.  And
if we discover in our lives any kind of practice, or any kind of
doctrine that is contrary to the Word of God, then as children of God,
there will be within us an earnest desire to change that practice or
that doctrine so that we will become more faithful to the Word of God.
.    If we follow an authority that is narrower or wider than the
Bible alone and in its entirety, we are not following the Gospel of
the Bible.  Regardless of how holy it may appear to be, such a gospel
will not lead to salvation.

                              Chapter 2

.    But now that we know that the Bible is the authority that
establishes the true Gospel, we wonder what the central message of the
true Gospel is.  We could say that the Gospel is God's love letter to
mankind whereby we can become righteous, know the love of God, come
into the more abundant life, or learn to live to God's glory.  We can
think of a lot of verses in the Bible that describe and perhaps even
crystallize the essential nature of the Gospel.
.    Actually, however, I think we can find summed up in John 3:16 the
core meaning of the Gospel.  This verse strips away everything else
and gets right down to the essential message.  There we read: "For God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
.    Ordinarily theologians focus on the first part of the verse: "For
God so loved the world..."  And that is a glorious phrase that
introduces us to the amazing truth that God in His magnificent love
has provided salvation to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the love of God and the salvation He has so generously provided
cannot be fully understood unless we also understand the meaning of
the word "perish" found later on in the verse.  Only too seldom do we
hear a sermon on that statement, "...shall not perish..."  But the
phrase, "shall not perish," is also an integral part of the Gospel.
.    When we search the Scriptures, we find that the word "perish,"
as it is used in John 3:16, does not mean "annihilation."  In our
English language when we say, "I will perish," we think of dying, of
ceasing to exist.  But in the Bible the word "perish" has another
definition.  The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (cf.
Romans 6:23).  And the living death that God has in view is to exist
throughout eternity in hell.  That is the predicament of rebellious
mankind.  That is what it means to perish.
.    The terrible problem of mankind is that we are sinners.  Remember
Romans 3:10-11: "There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none
that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God."  The heart
of man by nature is desperately wicked, as we read in Jeremiah 17:9.
.    Because we sin - even a single sin - we will perish.  Because we
have been created in His image, God holds each one of us completely
accountable to Himself for the conduct of our lives.  God has
appointed a day at the end of the world when we are to be judged.  The
Bible says in Hebrews 9:27, "...it is appointed unto men once to die,
but after this the judgment..."  And because all of us are sinners
without the Gospel, we are all on our way to hell.
.    This terrible truth cannot be seen with our physical eyes because
we cannot look into the future.  But what we see with our physical
eyes is not the whole story.  In fact, it is a very shallow and
incidental part of the whole story.  For example, we may have had a
friend who died.  We have seen him as a man who lived out his life
well regarded by his fellow man.  But then he died.  He was eulogized
at his funeral as one of the greatest, and then we all went about our
business and forgot about Brother Jones.  But if Brother Jones died
without the Gospel, that is, without being saved, the next thing he
will be aware of is that he is standing before the Judgment Throne of
God, where he must answer for every sin he ever committed; and these
will be multitudinous.  Any one of these sins could condemn him to
eternal damnation.  For him there is no escape; there is no reprieve,
no parole.  There is no way out.
.    Every day approximately 200,000 people die all over this earth.
When we realize that most of these 200,000 people die unsaved and that
the next conscious thing they will know is that they are standing
before the Judgment Throne of God, subject to eternal damnation, then
we become aware of a horror story of magnificent proportions.
.    We sometimes hear about an earthquake in which 50,000 people are
killed.  We hear about wars in which 700,000 or 800,000 people are
killed.  We hear about man's inhumanity to man.  We hear about famines
that kill many thousands.  But none of these hold a candle to the most
dreadful tragedy of all, the dreadful, daily trauma that faces
mankind.
.    The horrors of man's inhumanity to man, the horrors of famine, of
war, or of whatever the trauma, result only in physical death.  But
physical death in itself is not the horror story.  The horror story is
that after death there is the judgment.  God's perfect justice demands
eternal damnation as payment for sins.
.    Unfortunately we do not hear this part of the Gospel preached too
frequently.  It is so reprehensible, so sorry, so serious.  It is so
terrible that we want to forget about it.  We would rather just talk
about the love of God.  We would rather talk about moral living.  We
would prefer to talk about all kinds of things rather than this very
important teaching of the Gospel.
.    Wonderfully, the truth that hell is waiting for the human race is
not the whole story.  If God had written the Bible simply to tell us
that we are going to hell, we could still praise God that at least He
warned us.  But that knowledge would not do us much good, because we
are all sinners.  Because of our sins, we would still end up in hell.
But woven into the fabric of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, like
a golden thread running through the entire Bible, is the message of
hope.  It is the message that we can know the love of God by trusting
in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.  That is the other side of the
Gospel coin, the central part of the Gospel presentation: "For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
.    Now why is it that if we believe in Him we will not go to hell?
The Bible tells us that it is because Christ became sin for us!  We
read in II Corinthians 5:21: "For he hath made him to be sin for us,
who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in
him."  Or, as Isaiah 53:6 puts it, "the Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all"  (that is, all who will hang their lives on Him).
.    That is the central message of the Gospel.  There is no other
news that can compare to this.  It begins with the terrible truth that
mankind is sinful and heading for hell.  But additionally it is the
wonderful news that all of us who cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ for
mercy and hang our lives on Him can know freedom from hell because He
became sin for us.  Laden with our sins, as our substitute, He stood
before the Judgment Throne of God when He stood before Pontius Pilate.
He was found guilty for our sins, and God poured out His condemnation
upon Him to the degree that is was the equivalent of every one of us
who would believe on Him spending an eternity in Hell.  In this way He
paid for all of our sins.  He satisfied God's perfect justice that
demands eternal damnation as punishment for sin.  Since our sins have
been paid for, hell no longer threatens us.  We are no longer under
the law that decrees that we are to go to hell.  We are now under
grace.  By God's grace we have become children of God.  We have left
the dominion of Satan (which we were in before we were saved), and we
have become citizens of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
.    The pathetic fact, however, is that to a high degree, the church
of today is no longer aware of this message.  This has been true to
some degree throughout history, but it is particularly true today.
Obviously, there are exceptions.  Praise God for the exceptions!  But
to a high degree, the church has lost its sensitivity to the central
nature of the Gospel.  Too many preachers no longer talk about hell.
In fact, I once heard a theologian from a reputable seminary publicly
say the hell is "like being in an airplane and just going round and
round and round."  In other words, he was ridiculing hell.  He had
better read Deuteronomy 28 again.  He had better read Revelation 14
again, where it says "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever
and ever" (verse 11).  He had better read Matthew 13, Mark 9, and
Matthew 25 again where Jesus says things like, "there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:42), and "their worm dieth not"
(Mark 9:44), and where He speaks of eternal damnation (cf. Matthew
25:46).  The only reason that we do not often read those passages is
because they are so frightening.  But we had better be frightened if
we are not saved, because hell is real.
.    But you see, if someone does not want to face the central message
of the Bible because he does not want to talk about hell, then what is
he going to do with the Gospel?  Unfortunately, we find that
theologians begin to change the message of the Gospel to satisfy their
own desires.  They begin to make the Gospel political.  They say, for
example, "Christianity has to do with being free from political
oppression."  Or, they begin to teach an economic gospel by saying
that Christianity has to do with having enough food to eat and having
economic security.  Or, they make it a physical well-being gospel by
saying that the goal of the gospel is good health and happy lives here
on this earth.
.    These three aspirations - political freedom, economic security,
and good health - are sought by every man.  All mankind seeks for
these in one way or another.  We do not have to call ourselves
Christians to have these kinds of goals.  But the fact is that none of
these aspirations has any direct relationship to the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, that is, to the true, spiritual Gospel.  Let us see
why this is so.  In Luke 16 God gives us the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus.  Perhaps you are familiar with that parable.  The Bible
reveals that the rich man had all that money could buy.  Certainly we
would assume that, because he had all that money, he must have had a
lot of political freedom.  Also, he had at his command the finest
doctors and the finest nutritionists so that he could enjoy maximum
good health.  Without a doubt, he had economic security and everything
that goes along with it.  If anyone appeared to have no need for the
message of the Gospel, it was this rich man.  He apparently had
everything going for him.
.    On the other hand, God talks about Lazarus.  Lazarus had nothing;
he was a beggar.  He had no economic security.  He could not afford a
doctor, even though he greatly needed one.  Perhaps he slept out on
the streets and was getting insufficient food or the wrong kind of
food.  In any case, his body was laden with sores.  He had very poor
bodily health.  Certainly, as a beggar who would be kicked by everyone
who walked by, he had no political security.  He was considered to be
riffraff.  He was nothing.  If anyone had a need for an earthly
gospel, it would have been Lazarus.  As the story continues, we learn
that both Lazarus and the rich man died.
.    Suddenly God strips away the curtain and gives the true picture
of these two men as they are to live throughout eternity.  What do we
find?  We find that Lazarus, who had none of the essential desires of
mankind, is resting forever in Abraham's bosom.  This figure of speech
indicates that he is in the place of the highest good, the highest
blessing.  It is a picture of being saved and being forever in the
Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
.    On the other hand, where do we find this rich man who on earth
had everything a man could want?  In this parable, we see him in hell,
piteously crying out to Father Abraham to "send Lazarus, that he may
dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am
tormented in this flame" (verse 24).  It is a picture of the utterly
terrible nature of hell, and this rich man is to be there forever.
.    Which of these two men really needed the Gospel?  Which of these
men was really in need?
.    If you had come to Lazarus with a political gospel or a social
gospel, trying to give him medicine and offering him economic
security, would that have changed his position in Heaven?  The answer
is no.  He had no need insofar as the true, eternal Gospel is
concerned.  Surely, as a human being, he could have stood a little
food.  As a human being, he could have stood a little compassion.  But
insofar as his relationship to God was concerned - that is the real
need of mankind - he himself had no need.
.    Identifying the Gospel message with political, economic, or
cultural aspirations has caused the "Christian Gospel" to be
especially reprehensible to the leaders of many nations.  When we send
a message forth, tailored after the desires of mankind, which has
nothing to do with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, we enter into
areas of activity that threaten political rulers.  I am sorry to say
that in the past (and it is still happening today), missionaries often
went to China and to many other countries spreading a gospel heavily
flavored by their Western culture.  Thus the gospel message they
brought became identified to a great extent with physical prosperity
or some kind of political freedom.  But that is not the Gospel of the
Bible.  These missionaries, unfortunately, were giving the wrong
signals altogether.  They had begun meddling in the affairs of the
nations to which they were sent, affairs in which they had no business
and which had nothing to do with the true Gospel message.
.    The fact is that the Gospel is unconcerned with the kind of
rulers that a nation has.  It is unconcerned with the political system
under which a people lives.  It does declare, however, that it is God
who puts up and puts down rulers.  It does warn that the citizens of
any country are expected to be obedient in all things to those who
rule over them.  But it does not indicate that one kind of government
is to be obeyed more than another.
.    The Bible is not concerned about the economic situation of those
who hear the Gospel.  In the day that Jesus ministered, and as the
disciples went out, did man's inhumanity to man exist?  Indeed, it
did.  There were slaves who were piteously beaten and mistreated.  Was
there economic uncertainty?  Indeed, there was.  It was a day when
there were no mercy ships.  Certainly there were people dying of
starvation.  Were there people who desperately needed a healing who
did not receive it?  Indeed, there were.
.    Some people misunderstood Jesus' mission when He healed the sick.
Christ did not come with a gospel that promises good health.  He
simply did those miracles of healing as proofs that He was God and in
order to give us historical parables through which we can see the
spiritual nature of the Gospel.  They were earthly stories with a
heavenly meaning.  Once Christ went to the cross and the apostles
died, we do not find any further statements in the Bible regarding
physical healing.  The Gospel is concerned with spiritual healing:
"...by whose stripes ye were healed.  For ye were as sheep going
astray..." (I Peter 2:24-25).  The Gospel has to do with the healing
of our sin-sick souls.
.    So the message of the Gospel is that mankind is on its way to
hell, but that anyone can know God's love by trusting in Christ.
.    When we become saved, we are transferred out of the dominion of
Satan, which encompasses all the unsaved people of the world, wherever
they are found, in whatever political system they are found.  We are
translated into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a
spiritual nation made up of those who are born-again believers,
regardless of political ideology, or cultural differences, or
whatever.  Salvation has nothing to do with political nations.
.    Many theologians fracture the truths of the Bible concerning the
nature of the Gospel when they attempt to understand the meaning of
Christian unity.  Ephesians 4:4-5 teaches us that: "There is one body,
and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One
Lord, one faith, one baptism..."  What kind of unity does God have in
view?  Well-meaning but misguided theologians, in attempting to
explain this unity, have tried to introduce concepts into the Gospel
that are foreign to it.  They effectively believe we are one in faith
and one baptism when we have equal political freedom, or equal
economic prosperity.
.    But the true Gospel has nothing to do with political activity.
It has nothing to do with economic desires or desires for good health.
It looks far beyond all of this.  When we have the true Gospel,
whether we live in Russia, China, Germany, South America, the United
States, or any other country, there is one Lord, one faith, one
baptism.  It is spiritual unity.  It is a faith wherein we understand
that our sins are washed away.  Spiritually we have become right with
God.  Spiritually we know that we are not sentenced to hell and that
we have eternal life.  Spiritually we have become one body, even
though politically or economically or culturally we have no
relationship at all to each other.
.    We must not fall into the snare that many fall into.  In the Old
Testament they read about all the gold and the silver of Solomon, and
they read about the riches of Abraham, as well as many other
statements about great physical prosperity.  They conclude, "You see,
that is what happens when we become saved.  We are to have similar
physical expectations when we become saved."  But they fail to realize
that God has set up types and figures in the Bible.  Old Testament
Israel was part of an earthly story, an historical picture pointing to
the spiritual meaning of what the New Testament church was to be, that
is, what it means to be a child of God.  The physical prosperity of
Old Testament Israel was an earthly story pointing to the heavenly
meaning that believers in Christ become spiritually prosperous,
copiously feeding their souls on the Bread of Life, which is Jesus
Himself.  The wine vats that were filled to overflowing in the Old
Testament were a dramatic earthly story pointing to the plenteous
flowing of the blood of Christ, for the complete payment for all of
our sins.  Whatever historical freedoms ancient Israel had represented
the fact that in Christ we are free from the bondage to sin and Satan.
.    The problem is, however, that our sin-tainted minds prefer to go
to these historical antecedents (which are meant by God to be just
figures and types) and make them the very essence of the Gospel.  That
caters to our sensual nature.  That caters to what all men want:
political freedom, economic freedom, and good health.
.    But that is not the Gospel!  If we try to make the Gospel fit the
physical characteristics of the Old Testament figures, then we must
also offer the sacrifices that were to be offered by the Old Testament
believers.  In other words, we are effectively denying the fact that
Christ has come!  In the New Testament we do not find any references
teaching political freedom, economic security, or good health.  The
whole essence of the Gospel is spiritual freedom in Christ.  Freedom
from what?  It is freedom from the wrath of God!  It has nothing to do
with the politics of this world!  Simply stated, we have been
translated out of the dominion of Satan.  The law no longer can send
us to hell.  We are free in Christ.  We have eternal life.  That is
the nature of the Gospel.  That is the only message that we are to
proclaim.

                             Chapter 3

.    Now we have come to the third point that needs to be examined.
We have already looked at the authority that structures and determines
the Gospel, and we have looked at the message of the Gospel.  Now we
should examine the mandate of the Gospel.
.    In the most lucid fashion, God has decreed that we are mandated
to bring the Gospel message to all the world: "Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15).  Jesus
commanded this; it is not an option.  It is not something we can do if
it is convenient, or if we feel like it.  It is an imperative command
of the Bible that we are to go out into the world and preach the
Gospel.  We are Christ's ambassadors to this sin-sick world - Christ,
as it were, making His appeal through us.
.    Remember, Jesus said that He came to seek and to save that which
was lost (cf. Luke 19:10).  He has people in China whom He has come to
seek and to save.  He has people in America who He has come to seek
and to save.  He has people in Germany and in Russia and in every
nation of the world.  We do not know who they are, but we know from
the Bible that they are people who were already named in the Lamb's
Book of Life from the very foundation of the world.  So we know that
God has obligated Himself to save these people.
.    The true ambassadors for Christ are the born-again believers.
They are the only ones who understand the real nature of the Gospel.
They have come face-to-face with the reality of hell, because they
have learned to trust the Bible implicitly.  They are the ones who
have been given the marvelous task (which is a mandate as well as a
fantastic privilege) to send the Gospel into the world.  There are to
be no alibis.  We must do it by whatever means the Lord has made
available to us.
.    But let us be very certain that we are bringing the Gospel of the
Bible, and not the gospel of Europe or the gospel of the United States
or the gospel of Mexico or any other perverted gospel.  As long as we
focus on the basic fundamentals, the true Gospel is absolutely common
to every nation.  It makes no difference what nation we are in.  We
all have the exact same spiritual need for the exact same spiritual
antidote.  We need to be set free from sin through the blood of
Christ.  Once we are free from sin, knowing that Christ has endured
hell for us, then, even if we must live out the rest of our lives in a
concentration camp, dying of beatings and starvation, we still have
everything.  Whether we are to merely exist like Lazarus as a beggar
with only the dogs to lick our sores, or whether we live in a palace
with all the blessings of this world, it makes no difference.  If we
are saved, we know that we have the greatest good that we could ever
have.
.    The Bible also says that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves
(Luke 10:27).  But what does it mean to love our neighbor as
ourselves?  In John 13:34 Jesus said, "A new commandment I give unto
you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another."  That establishes the nature of the love we are to have
for others.  We are to love our fellow man as Christ has loved us.
.    What was the nature of Christ's love for you and me?  Did He come
to bring us economic security or political freedom or good health?
Did He do any of those things for Lazarus (cf. Luke 16)?  The answer
is no.  Absolutely no.  In His love for us, He laid down His life.  He
endured the wrath of God, the equivalent of spending an eternity in
hell, in order that we might have eternal life and not go to hell
ourselves.
.    Jesus exhorted, "...love one another; as I have loved you..."
(John 13:34).  If Christ has desired eternal life for me to the extent
that He went to the cross and endured the wrath of God that I might be
saved, if that desire was the focal point of His love, then that
desire must be the focal point of my love for others as well.
.    As we look at the world, the one thing we should see, the one
terrible specter that should grip our souls, is hell grasping out for
the lives of the unsaved of the world.  Because most people die
unsaved, at a rate of almost 200,000 a day, hell is getting its due.
That is the truth that we should see.  That is the truth that Christ
saw when He went to the cross.  In our love for our fellow man, we
want to warn them: "Don't you see it?  Because of your sins, hell is
coming and hell is real.  But there is a wonderful way of escape
through the Lord Jesus Christ.  In my love for you, I want the very
best for you.  Sure, I could spend some money to help you in many
ways.  But if you die unsaved, even though your life may have been
extended because you were given some antibiotics, or whatever, what
difference does it make?  You are still going to die, and after death
comes the judgment.  Can't you see it?  If you will only become a
believer in Christ, then your physical situation, your political
situation, your health situation, is altogether unimportant.  You are
like Lazarus.  You can still have the very highest good.  You, too,
can have salvation."  To desire this for others is true love.
.    Notice that Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  But
how do I love myself?  What is the highest good that I could possibly
desire for myself?  Is it that I might have more physical prosperity?
Is that the highest good for me?  Not in any sense at all.  In fact,
it may even tempt me away from serving the Lord the way I ought.  Well
then, is it to be famous?  Is it to have a name?  Is it any of the
things to which the world aspires?  The answer is no.  None of those
things are the highest good.  The highest good for me is what I should
desire for others.  So what is it?  the one thing I need to be sure of
is that I have been saved.  That is, I must be sure that my sins have
been paid for, so there is no possibility of going to hell when I die.
.    Can anyone living on the face of the earth possibly think that
they are going to escape death?  This world has been around for 13,000
years and, with only two exceptions (Enoch and Elijah), every human
being that has ever walked the face of the earth has died - everyone.
No one has escaped.  This is in accordance with the Biblical rule that
it is appointed unto men once to die and then comes the judgment
(Hebrews 9:27).  So this means that that is going to happen to me -
unless, of course, the Lord comes first.  Therefore, if I truly love
myself, I am not going to aspire for more of this world's goods.  I am
not going to aspire to have a little better place in this world.
Because, in the measure that I desire those things, I am going away
from the path that is the very best for me.  My first and all-
important concern must be that I am absolutely certain that I am a
child of God, that I am saved.  Only then will I realize that all
these other things are unimportant.  It really does not make any
difference how many clothes I have, what kind of car I drive, whether
I even own a car, or what kind of situation I live in.  These things
really do not have any kind of lasting value at all.
.    As a matter of fact, God declares in Romans 12:l, "I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your
reasonable service."  In the Old Testament the Israelites were
commanded to tithe, that is, give 10 percent of all their income.
That is the way the priestly offices were supported.  But in the New
Testament God wants everything.  The Old Testament tithe was just an
example to us pointing to the fact that God wants everything.  God is
simply saying, "I want all of you, all of your possessions, all of
your money, all of your energy, in order that your task as ambassadors
of Christ may be done."  That task is to present this precious Gospel
of salvation to a world that is headed for hell.
.    Can we begin to see the truth more clearly?  The golden thread
that runs through the Bible is the message of salvation.  Any time we
get off that thread, or focus, we can be sure we no longer have the
Gospel of the Bible.  We will have a gospel that has been designed in
the minds of men, and we are going to get into trouble as we try to
bring it to other nations of the world.  A gospel that wrongly talks
about economics or politics is going to be resisted, particularly by
political authorities who rightly feel their rule is being threatened
by political or social gospels.
.    Obviously, the true Gospel will also be resisted.  It is
reprehensible to man.  Mankind does not like to be told that he is
going to hell.  No one wants to hear that.  It is reprehensible to the
mind of natural man to hear that there is nothing he can do to save
himself.  Such resistance can only be changed in the heart of those
who become saved by crying out to God: "O God, have mercy on me, a
sinner!"  It involves having a child-like trust in Jesus Christ, who
walked the face of the earth a couple of thousand years ago.  It means
my ego must be shattered.  It shatters my self-respect.  It shatters
everything that I am.
.    But that is the only reason the Gospel should be reprehensible.
May it never be that the gospel we present is resisted by the
political authorities because we are preaching the culture and
politics of a political nation.  Such a gospel cannot be the Gospel of
the Bible.
.    When we have become children of God, we have come to know that
the highest good in our lives is that we are saved from the wrath of
God; hell can no longer clutch at us.  We are never going to have to
stand before the Judgment Throne of God and answer for our sins.
Christ has paid it all.  We are covered by Him.  We read in John 5:24
that those who believe on Him do not come into judgment, but have
passed from death into life.  And, in our love for others, that is the
good we should earnestly desire for them.  That is the message God has
mandated us to faithfully bring to the whole world.
.    As we live out our lives as believers, faithfully obeying the
command to bring the Gospel to the world, the Bible insists that we
are to walk very humbly.  Our example is the Lord Jesus Christ; we
read of Him that He was meek and lowly.  So it is that nobody should
be ready to be reviled without reviling back again, be ready to take
whatever is brought against us patiently, and be ready to give credit
to anybody who wants it.  Let someone else have the worldly honor.
The child of God, who has become a citizen of Christ's Kingdom, is to
walk humbly.
.    But why?  Why are we to walk so humbly?  First of all, because
God has so commanded.  Jesus, who came not only as our example, but
also as our King, was meek and lowly.  He emptied Himself of all His
heavenly glory and took on the form of man, sinful, rebellious man.
then He became laden with our sins.  Nobody has ever humiliated
himself like the Lord Jesus Christ, as He established His Kingdom by
going to the cross.  We, who believe in Him, are in His Kingdom, and
He is our King, ruling over us and commanding us to walk honestly and
humbly.  We also are to be ready to be humiliated.  We are to be ready
to walk as the most humble people on earth.
.    Besides that, we walk very humbly because we cannot take any
credit for our own salvation.  It is nothing we can boast about.  We
cannot say, "Well, you know, the real story is that God saw me and saw
that I was a little bit better than somebody else, and therefore, He
decided to save me."  No way!  As Ephesians 2:1-3 indicates, we were
dead in our sins.  We were followers after Satan and after the lusts
of the flesh like the rest of mankind.  It is only God's mercy, it is
only by God's grace that He saved us.  So we live out our Christian
life saying, "O my, how is it possible that I can be a child of God,
that I can have eternal life, so that I fear no man?  No matter what
happens to me, I know that the moment I die, I am going into the
heavenly palaces, into glory with the Lord Jesus Christ, and I have
got everything going for me.  All I want to do is live out my life in
service to Him.  I really want to sacrifice my life, to lay it down on
the altar of sacrifice.  I am consumed with passion that others might
hear the Gospel so that they, too, can know the wonderful salvation
which God has so richly provided."
.    Don't we have a wonderful Savior?  Don't we have a wonderful
Gospel, when we really see what the Gospel is?  We can just stand
amazed before the glory of God as He glorifies Himself through this
kind of Gospel.  So let's be sure that we keep this Gospel message in
the forefront of our thinking and in our hearts.  If we find that at
any time the gospel we bring begins to differ from the true Gospel,
let us cry out to God, "O God, forgive me that I might have had
something else in my head when I was trying to bring the Gospel, that
I was trying to tailor it to my own lustful desires."  The true Gospel
is this: I want this wonderful salvation for everybody else, and
because I know I have become saved, there is nothing else in this
world I need for myself.

For more information:

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