The Gospel Is Really Very Counter Intuitive

The Gospel is really very counter intuitive.  We are wired as Pharisees.  We have a hard time understanding the nature of grace.    Even though we confess that we believe God saves us by grace, we tend to operate in the arena of works.  We are basically performance driven.  We live on a treadmill of performance in how we conceive of God dealing with us.  We are treated by others this way and we treat others this way.   But God does not treat his born again and justified children in this way. It is God’s grace relied upon and even to some degree felt that motivates his children to live in in loving obedience to him rather than in a quid pro quo performance oriented existence. In Christ we don’t obey to secure God’s favor and love but rather in Him we are greatly favored and loved and this is the power and motivation to obey. It is this reality that empowers change and this is what makes the Gospel so counter intuitive.

Now it is important to understand two realities about being a Christian and living as a Christian. 

First, a Christian is a new creation.  This means that God’s grace has worked and continues to work in the heart or inner life of every true disciple of Jesus Christ.  Paul emphasizes this inward work of grace in many verses in his letters.  It is summarized clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:17.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come.”  Paul is saying that those who are really in Christ have become new creatures.  Here he is speaking of our being, by the Holy Spirit, united to Christ.  We are in relationship with Christ by the Holy Spirit and we have become new people.  It is also clear from the rest of the New Testament that while the old has passed away, it has not done so completely and while the new has come, it likewise has not come completely.   Yet, because as a believer you are joined to Christ you are new and God’s grace is at work within you.   In part this means that the Holy Spirit is working in you, giving you new affections, desires and will-power to live obediently even though it is still a struggle.   It means that you have a whole new disposition toward sin. Though you sin you cannot live with it. You are not at peace with your sin and with the Spirit’s help you will make it your aim to put it to death by not allowing it to come to expression in you. 

Second, a Christian is one for whom Christ offered his life upon the cross to atone for sin, so that those who trust in him might be accounted righteous in Christ.   Again, we find this in many, many places in the Bible.   In 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21 we read. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”   What a wonderful verse this is!   If you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are included in the phrase “For our sake.”   Packed into this phrase is the infinite love and grace of God the Father for the ungodly.    What did the Father do for our sake?  The one who knew no sin, the one who had lived an obedient life, the one who loved God with all his heart, soul and mind and the one who loved his neighbor as himself, the Father made him sin.  This does not mean that the Father made him to be a sinner or made him to be inherently sinful.   What this verse does is not only get at the nature of Christ objective historic atoning work but also the nature of the believing sinner’s justification before God.  Rather here is an image or a figure of speech that basically says that the Father accounted this sinless one with our sin and this is why he died upon the cross.  There are echoes of Isaiah 53 here. 

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isa 53:4-5 ESV)

Here we see the willingness of the suffering servant to do what he did for our sakes.  He bore our sins, yet it was God who struck him and smote him and afflicted him.  It was God who wounded him for our transgressions, who crushed him for our iniquities, who placed the chastisement upon him that brought us peace and whose stripes at the Father’s hand is our healing.

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--everyone--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isa 53:6 ESV)

Like stupid yet unruly sheep we have stayed from our creator by turning from his rightful and good way to our own idolatrous self-serving paths.   Yet it was Yahweh who laid upon him our iniquity.  Here is what Paul means when he says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for our sakes.  On the cross God was imputing to Christ the sin of all who would believe upon him, the sin of his people, the sin of the ungodly.   Jesus did not become sinful, he became a sin offering by substituting himself for our sakes in taking the punishment due us for our sins and making full payment thus satisfying the just wrath of God. 

Now the benefit of what Christ did by becoming sin for us becomes ours by faith.  This is captured in the next clause, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”   This does not mean that we become personally righteous in the same way that Jesus did not become personally sinful.  Here is a figurative expression that captures the grace of justification.  This righteousness of God is conveyed to us in the Gospel and it is the gift-righteousness of God.    

Jesus suffered greatly yet he also triumphed.  Part of his victory was his seeing the benefits of his suffering.  He was satisfied by this.  It was worth it all.   The particular benefit that Isaiah describes is how by his knowledge (that is his personal experience of suffering and particularly his obedience proving that he was the righteous one) he makes many to be accounted righteous.  

If you are in Christ – joined to him by faith (really a Christian and not a pretend one) then you are both a new creation and a justified child of God.   This is the Gospel and this is what you are to rehearse or preach to yourself every day.  Here is what is true about you.  You are joined to Jesus Christ on your good days and your bad days.   What this means is that by being united or joined to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit you have His life working in you and his righteousness working for you.   It is this that gives you grace to live obediently before Father and it is this reality that gives you comfort and assurance when you sin and repent.   You are joined to Christ as a new, justified and dearly loved child of the Heavenly Father!

 Rev. William Still provides some encouraging insights into how the Gospel is about your being in Christ.

 “I had been ‘going at it’ one Sunday evening about living your whole life in Christ and for Christ, and one chap, because he thought that I must live my life on my knees, came to me, wringing his hands, because he was not being as holy as he thought he ought to be.  I said to him, ‘You foolish boy, do you think this means winding yourself up into a kind of robot existence, forever clicking your heels before a ruthless sergeant-major Christ?  You have got it all wrong.  Christ is a world of being, not a set of rules.  You live your life in him, you are naughty in him, alas, as well as good in him.  You have fun there as well as seriousness.  You must learn that Christ is no mere censor, but a Savior who saves us by gaining our trust and confidence more and more, and letting us live our total life in him.  He is much more concerned about where we are going than about how far on we have got.'”  

This means that even when you sin you have not lost God’s love if indeed you are in Christ.  If you persist in your sin God in love will chastise and correct you.  What good father would not?  Yet your sin as a believer does not mean that you lose God’s favor, or the Holy Spirit who works within you, or your status of being credited with Christ’s righteousness.  This very fact itself when rehearsed daily will give you the motivation and power not to sin!   Milton Vincent puts it well in his Gospel Poem from his book "A Gospel Primer for Christians." 

So now God relates to me only with grace

The former wrath banished without any trace

And each day I’m made a bit more as I should

His grace using all things to render me good.

Yes, even in trials God’s grace abounds too

And does me the good He assigns it to do

And when I am sinning God’s grace does abound

Ensuring my justified status is sound

No wrath is awakened in God at my sin,

Because Christ appeased it (to say it again).

God’s heart pulses only with passionate grace,

Which jealously wants me back in His embrace.

God does not require even that I confess

Before He desires His forgiveness to press

Forgiveness has been in His heart all along:

And when I approach Him to make right my wrong,

He runs up to greet me and draws to me near,

Embracing and kissing and ready to clear.

God does see my sins and He grieves at them so,

For when I am sinning, His love I don’t know.

He even will send me some heart-rending pain,

So I’ll learn new ways and His holiness gain.

His disciplines always are with love imbued,

A love that seeks ever my ultimate good. 

It is by grace and the knowledge of God’s grace to us in Christ that we find the true motivation to live obediently lives. It is not a matter of performance but a matter of knowing how deeply we are loved by the Father. It is the grace and love of God in Christ that transforms us. It is not a list of rules or requirements but a relationship! So let us get of the pharisaical treadmill of performance and live freely before God and in our relationships with one another as the blood bought sons and daughters of the Living God! The Gospel is indeed counter intuitive.