The Way Up is the Way Down: Evangelism (Part 3C)
Series: Evangelism (Part 3C)
Author: Dr. Steven L. Childers
Title: The Way Up is the Way Down
Message about Sin
Notice each one of these sections begins with a quote from J.I. Packer. Here he says,
“The Gospel is a message about sin. It tells us how we have fallen short of God's standard, how we have become guilty, filthy and helpless in sin and now stand under the wrath of God. It tells us that the reason why we sin continually is that we are sinners by nature and that nothing we do or try to do for ourselves can put us right or bring us back into God's favor. It shows us ourselves as God sees us and teaches us to think of ourselves as God thinks of us. Thus, it leads us to self-despair. And this also is a necessary step. Not till we have learned our need to get right with God and our inability to do so by any effort of our own can we come to know the Christ who saves from sin.”
The degree to which you understand the nature of the fall will be the degree to which you understand the fullness of the nature of the Gospel as well.
What I want to do is talk to you about the threefold ramifications of the fall. This is a biblical theology of the impact of the fall on humanity and on creation.
The Problem of Guilt
Notice the problem of guilt, number one or we'll call that, Jack Miller used to call that, a problem of a bad record. I just need forgiveness of sin. I need the righteousness of another. Martin Luther again called this alien righteousness, an utter foreign righteousness. The righteousness, the law keeping record of the Son of God. His good record is the only antidote to my bad record.
The Problem of Corrupt Heart
The second one, the problem of corruption, heart. I not only have a bad record forensically and legally, but actually I have a corrupt, I have a bad heart and I need a new heart. And you can see where this is going with the Gospel. The fulfillment of the new covenant that was promised by the Old Testament prophets was not only I will forgive your sin, but I will take the heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you. Notice the promise of the new covenant is not just dealing with the problem of guilt. I will forgive you. I will forgive your sin and I will take the heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you.
Now revisit the courtroom with me. There the man is or to make it more personal, there you are, standing before the judge. You don't just have a forensic legal problem with guilt. You don't just stand before the judge with a bad record needing the record of another imputed to you through faith in Christ, that's in Romans one through five, chapters one through five. But you have another problem. You're standing there before the judge, not just with the problem of guilt, but you have a problem of corruption. You're not just standing in the courtroom before the judge having broken the law, like committing a heinous crime. As you stand before that judge, you have terminal cancer.
It's a completely different problem. One is external in the heavenly courts, one is forensic, one is legal. That's the problem of guilt. But you have another problem that's just as serious and that is the problem of spiritual disease. You are, and I am as a result of sin, morally corrupt. You don't just need a merciful judge. You need a merciful and gracious physician. There is a criminal that comes to the bar and is arranged for high treason. The same criminal has a mortal disease that he may die of, though there was no judge on the bench to pass sentence of death upon him for his crime.
If your understanding of the problem is merely guilt, then your understanding of the solution or the good news will merely be good news. You can be forgiven and you can have the record of another. I need to be delivered, not just from my guilty standing before God. I need to be delivered from my corrupt heart.
The Problem of a Corrupt World
Now, let's look at the last one, a corrupt world. And this is another one of those mysteries I don't understand, and we never will fully. But because of sin, man became guilty and corrupt, and for some reason God not only cursed man, humanity, but God also cursed the earth. And so not only is man corrupt because of the fall, but all of the cosmos is corrupt. We live in a broken and fallen world.
It is very common for people to lose, especially in this generation, the depth of the message we're bringing. We are not just simply bringing good news. You're under God's wrath and you can be forgiven. It's very truncated. We're also bringing the message, good news. You are, whether you realize it or not, worshiping something because you've been created in the image of God and so therefore you are intrinsically and inherently a worshiper. So everyone is always worshiping something, sometime. And in evangelism, we're not asking people to go from not worshiping anything to worshiping God through Christ because all people are image bearers, therefore all people are worshipers 24/7.
And when we're proclaiming the Gospel, what we are doing is we are calling people to repent, and that is, to turn their heart affections away from worshiping idols. And these are not graven images and primitive lands. These are the concepts of control and approval and pleasure and comfort. And we're calling them to turn from these idols who are making them false covenants, lies that they cannot fulfill, turn from that idolatry. And those affections are to be turned in repentance and in faith placed on the Living God through Christ.
So you do not fully understand conversion unless you understand it in the context of idolatry and worship because you're calling people to stop worshiping what they're worshiping and to begin to worship God alone through Christ. The greatest battle, the battle of all battles, the battle of the universe, is the battle for the affections of the human heart.