The Gospel in 33 words

Study this drawing. It is full of detail sketches from Christ's life.

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Romans 5:12-19

TO CHEW ON: "Therefore, as through one man's offence judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life." Romans 5:18

I admire the writers of dictionaries for their abilities to state the meaning of words with precision and economy. Paul shows a similar talent in our reading today as he explains how all of humankind is implicated in Adam's sin and how Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection was/is effective to pay the penalty of that collective sin.

His communication powers reach their height in verse 18 where he sketches out the Gospel as it plays out through history in a mere 33 words.

Therefore as through one man's offense: refers to the event of Adam's sin and how he became separated from God. (Genesis 2:17 followed by Genesis 3:1-8)

judgment came to all men: all of mankind is implicated in Adam's sin. (Romans 5:12; Isaiah 64:6)

resulting in condemnation: mankind is headed for death—not only physical death but the death of eternal separation from God. (Romans 6:23)

even so, through one Man's righteous act: that "one Man" is Jesus, God's Son. His righteous act is that He came to earth, lived a sinless life, died in our stead to pay the punishment our sin deserved, then rose to defeat death. (John 3:16).

the free gift: Jesus died in my place. I can escape the penalty my sins deserve because I believe and accept that fact as applying to me personally. I can't earn or pay for this—it's free! (Ephesians 2:8)

came to all men: this gift is available to all men everywhere (Romans 10:12; 1 Timothy 2:4-6) and covers the sins of people past, present and future (John 10:16).

resulting in justification of life: all of the above results in God considering the person who puts his/her confidence in Jesus to be vindicated, declared blameless, absolved, excused from death and delivered to life. (1 John 5:11-12)

What a grand, mind-boggling, worship-inspiring plan. (And I'm so glad that God inspired brilliant thinkers like Paul to express it concisely.) I have accepted this free gift - have you?

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You that Your plan for humankind involves justification - and that it's free for anyone who will accept it. Please give me the wisdom and the right words to communicate this good news to those who have never heard or understood. Amen.

MORE: Hillsong sings "Mighty to Save"




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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Do your 8-12-year-olds have daily devotions? Point them to Bible Drive-Thru.

Don't slip back into legalism

Image: Pixabay.com

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Galatians 2:15-3:5

TO CHEW ON: "'For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.'" Galatians 2:18

It's easy for us to slip back into legalistic ways if we have been brought up under a legalistic system. Our reading today is Paul's reasoning against that.

In the first part, Paul repeats to the Galatians what he said to Peter and other apostles (Galatians 2:14-21). It is the argument he made in Jerusalem for justification (appearing pure before God—"just as if I had never sinned") by faith, not by keeping the law (Galatians 2:16).

Then he addresses the Galatians directly about their tendency to do the same thing: "O foolish Galatians! … Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" (Galatians 2:1,2).

I love how Leslyn Musch sums up this principle in the "Truth-In-Action Through Galatians" article in my Bible. Under the title "The Walk of Faith" she writes:

"Faith accepts God's testimony in a trusting, childlike manner and salvation as a free gift. The Law was given to lead us to Christ; thus any use of the Law as a means of earning our salvation is a distortion. By nature mankind presumes to seek salvation by works. It seems offensive to the flesh to believe we cannot. But God's word says it is an offense to Him to believe we can" - New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1641.

And so Paul would say to us, who feel in our heart of hearts that God loves us more and accepts us on the basis of what we do and how we live—No.

 "Tell me this one thing: did you receive God's Spirit by doing what the Law requires or by hearing the gospel and believing it? How can you be so foolish! You began by God's Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power? " - Galatians 3:2,3 (GNT).

Let's not rebuild for ourselves and others the legalistic structures of our time—church attendance, financial giving, time spent in fasting and prayer, amount of serving and ministry we do, etc.,—as ways to gauge how well we and they are living the Christian life and how much we're pleasing God and earning His love. For it's all a gift:

"Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing" - Ephesians 2:8-10 (MSG) emphasis added.  

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, thank You for paying the complete price for my salvation. Help that my motivation for living in ways You condone arises from my love for You and the realization that Your ways are designed for my best present and future. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition). Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.


Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Why the resurrection is important

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Corinthians 15:12-28


TO CHEW ON: "And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty .... and if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." 1 Corinthians 15:14,17

Every Easter we celebrate Christ's resurrection. The New Testament testimony that it was an event that actually happened is overwhelming. As Wayne Grudem summarizes:

"The Gospels contain abundant testimony to the resurrection of Christ ... the book of Acts is the story of the apostles' proclamation of the resurrection of Christ and of continued prayer to Christ ... The Epistles depend entirely on the assumption that Jesus is a living, reigning Savior .... The book of Revelation repeatedly shows the risen Christ reigning in heaven and predicts his return ..." - Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 608.

In our reading today, Paul underlines why it is important that Jesus' resurrection did actually happen. If it didn't, he says, his preaching is empty, believers' faith is empty / futile, and we are still in our sins.

What did/does Christ's resurrection actually accomplish? Grudem names three things Jesus' resurrection ensures for the believer:

1. Regeneration - 1 Peter 1:3

"When Jesus rose from the dead he had a new quality of life, a resurrection life ... perfectly suited for fellowship and obedience to God forever. In his resurrection Jesus earned for us a new life ... We do not receive all of that resurrection life when we become Christians for our bodies remain as they were ... But in our spirits we are made alive with new resurrection power..."

2. Justification - Romans 4:25

"When Christ was raised from the dead, it was God's declaration of approval of Christ's work of redemption .... There was no penalty left to pay for sin, no more wrath of God to bear, no more guilt or liability to punishment—all had been completely paid for, and no guilt remained. In the resurrection, God was saying to Christ, 'I approve of what you have done, and you find favor in my sight.'"

3. We will receive resurrection bodies - 1 Corinthians 15:20,51,52

"In calling Christ the 'first fruits' (1 Corinthians 15:20), Paul uses a metaphor from agriculture to indicate that we will be like Christ. Just as the 'first fruits' or the first taste of the ripening crop show what the rest of the harvest will be like for that crop, so Christ as the 'first fruits' shows what our resurrection bodies will be like when in God's final 'harvest,' he raises us from the dead and brings us into his presence" - quotes from Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pages 614-616.

What riches! We are right with God (#2). We become His friends and have a new spirit of obedience (#1). And the best is yet to come (#3).


PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for Your amazing plan which included the resurrection of Jesus. Help me to begin to comprehend what this means to me practically. Amen

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Why the resurrection is important

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Corinthians 15:1-19


TO CHEW ON: "And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty .... and if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." 1 Corinthians 15:14,17

We have just celebrated Christ's resurrection. The New Testament testimony that it was an event that actually happened is overwhelming. As Wayne Grudem summarizes:

"The Gospels contain abundant testimony to the resurrection of Christ ... the book of Acts is the story of the apostles' proclamation of the resurrection of Christ and of continued prayer to Christ ... The Epistles depend entirely on the assumption that Jesus is a living, reigning Savior .... The book of Revelation repeatedly shows the risen Christ reigning in heaven and predicts his return ..." - Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 608.

In our reading today, Paul underlines why it is important that Jesus' resurrection did actually happen. If it didn't, he says, his preaching is empty, believers' faith is empty / futile, and we are still in our sins.

What did/does Christ's resurrection actually accomplish? Grudem names three things Jesus' resurrection ensures for the believer:

1. Regeneration - 1 Peter 1:3

"When Jesus rose from the dead he had a new quality of life, a resurrection life ... perfectly suited for fellowship and obedience to God forever. In his resurrection Jesus earned for us a new life ... We do not receive all of that resurrection life when we become Christians for our bodies remain as they were ... But in our spirits we are made alive with new resurrection power..."

2. Justification - Romans 4:25

"When Christ was raised from the dead, it was God's declaration of approval of Christ's work of redemption .... There was no penalty left to pay for sin, no more wrath of God to bear, no more guilt or liability to punishment—all had been completely paid for, and no guilt remained.'"

3. We will receive resurrection bodies - 1 Corinthans 15

"In calling Christ the 'first fruits' (1 Corinthians 15:20), Paul uses a metaphor from agriculture to indicate that we will be like Christ. Just as the 'first fruits' or the first taste of the ripening crop show what the rest of the harvest will be like for that crop, so Christ as the 'first fruits' shows what our resurrection bodies will be like when in God's final 'harvest,' he raises us from the dead and brings us into his presence" - quotes from Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pages 614-616.

What riches! We are right with God (#2). We become His friends and have a new spirit of obedience (#1). And the best is yet to come (#3).


PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for Your amazing plan which included the resurrection of Jesus. Help me to begin to comprehend what this means to me practically. Amen

MORE: Resurrection under attack
About a year ago, the review of a book of children's Bible stories I posted on a secular review website came under attack in the comments section. Not surprisingly the resurrection was soon singled out and mocked.

Such mocking should not surprise us, seeing as how the resurrection is at the core of the gospel. Some books that may be useful to you in establishing the historicity of the resurrection are:

• Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morrison

• The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus by William Lane Craig.

• Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell (pages 179-263 of the 1979 edition).  

• Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace (a former police detective) shows readers how to use crime investigation tools to establish the truth or error of the Bible. 

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The Holy Bible, New King James Version Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. - Used with permission.

"I did the best I could"

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Romans 3:1-20

TO CHEW ON: "Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Romans 3:20

Many people, if asked why God should let them into heaven when they die, respond with some version of: "I did the best I could." Even amongst us who claim to trust Jesus alone as our means to heaven, there is sometimes a sense of earning our way by being good enough.

In our focus verse from Romans, Paul squelches any possibility of that. There's a lot to explore in this one short verse.

1. It implies the need of humans to justify* themselves before God.
Way back in His unfolding revelation, God showed at least two things about Himself:
- He is personal: note His personal appearances to Abraham, Jacob, Moses and many others.
- He is demanding: shown by the giving of the ten commandments and the Mosaic law with penalties for failing to comply.

Theologian H. C. Thiessen says, in his Lectures in Systematic Theology: "The specifications of the divine commands with the announced penalty which would follow failures to obey served to arouse a conviction of guilt and fear of the consequences of sin" - p. 276.

2. It tells us that we can't be justified by keeping the law.
Though we do still take the Ten Commandments as our standard of morality, "They are repeated for our instruction as to what the will of the Lord is, but not as precepts that we are to endeavour to keep in order to become righteous. 'That would be useless,' Paul says,'by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified'" - Thiessen, p. 242.


3. It implies there is a way to be justified.
It is through Jesus. He paid the death penalty for our sin. We trust in Him alone.

"Paul declares that by the works of the law no flesh is justified in His sight. The law merely serves to reveal sin and to impel the convicted soul to flee to Christ. Jesus taught that the 'work of God' is to 'believe on Him whom He hath sent (John 6:29).


Men are not saved by 'doing the best they can' as the statement is commonly understood; but they are saved by 'doing the best they can' if thereby they mean that they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:12)." - Thiessen p. 365.

No matter how "good" we are, it's not enough to save us. We are all, from the most heinous murderer to the most saintly Mother Teresa, on level ground before God and in need of Jesus' death to be justified (i.e. reconciled with God).


PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for sending Jesus who kept the law, and then died in my stead because I can't keep it. Help me to hold my dependence on You and Your justification through Jesus always in mind. Amen.


MORE: "Welcome to the place of level ground" by Brian Doerksen



"Welcome to the place of level ground" lyrics and cord chart.

*Justify: 
1] To show to be just, right or reasonable; vindicate.
2] To declare or prove guiltless or blameless, absolve, excuse.
3] To cause to be free of grievous sin, and be reconciled with God.