The Gospel of God

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Why spend time celebrating the Foundation of a church 150 years ago? Perhaps some are thinking that we should focus on current problems in the world and in the church. But going back 150 years will help us today.

We have much to learn from what happened in the middle of the 19th century in Newcastle upon Tyne. The first 50 years of the 19th century – when our Founders were growing up - were not unlike the past 50 years in Britain since the 1960s. Britain, in those days also, had a crisis of identity and cohesion. The Napoleonic Wars and the aftermath of the late 18th century French Revolution created national uncertainty. So did the migration of population to the cities with the industrial revolution. There was poverty and unemployment; alcohol abuse and sexual decadence; and inadequate education. As today, a number of churches were losing their way.

That is why our Founders planted the Jesmond Church (as it was to be called) as a memorial to Richard Clayton. They saw the need, I quote, for …

“… a central point for the maintenance and promulgation of sound, Scriptural and Evangelical truth in a large and populous town.”

They believed that the gospel – or good news of Jesus Christ – was so vital for the individual and society at large. But what is the gospel?

At St Thomas’s Haymarket our Founders, before they were morally forced to leave (after Clayton’s death in 1856), would have regularly heard the following words. They were in the old Prayer Book Communion Service:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Those words are John 3 verse 16. Luther said they are the “gospel in miniature”. And they suggest, in answer to the question “what is the gospel”, three essentials to be “maintained and promulgated”.


First, there is THE REALITY OF GOD

Currently there is massive publicity given to a handful of atheists who base their atheism, for the most part, on physics or biology.

Perhaps they are ignorant of the man in the street at night looking down at the pavement under a lamp-post? “What are you doing?” he was asked. “I’ve lost my key,” he replied. “Are you sure you’ve lost it under the lamp-post?” “No, but this is the only place where I can see!”

Why should the lamp of physics or biology be the only light for understanding human life? As the distinguished German physicist and philosopher, Carl von Weizäcker put it:

“Science cannot select the order in which it wants to treat its subjects according to their importance for human life. The motion of the planets is not relevant to human happiness or salvation. But it turned out to be a comparatively simple problem for mathematical treatment, and thus through the efforts of Copernicus, Kepler and Newton its theory became the keystone of modern science. Human nature is less simple.”

It is less simple because, as a responsible human being, you are a free agent. Although subject to environmental and hereditary factors, you can act creatively on you own. You are not a robot.

Not surprisingly the majority around the world disagree with the atheists. Reason suggests impersonal matter is not ultimate. John Micklethwait, the editor of the Economist and Adrian Wooldridge, its Washington bureau chief, show in their recent book, as a social fact, God is Back (their title, with how the global rise of faith is changing the world, their subtitle). But Western Europe is the exception, together with a global band of Western educated intelligentsia.

The vital question, therefore, for today is not “Is there a God?” but “What is God like?”

Not all faith is good as we know from today’s terrorism. In the Old Testament you read of religious people sacrificing children. In the New Testament you read of religious people planning Christ’s crucifixion. So you must distinguish the real and true from the unreal and false.

You then discover that the real God is a God of love. That is what John 3.16 teaches us - God so loves the world. Do you believe that? I know of someone who believed God is cruel and not loving because his mother died when he was young?

My mother died when I was young. However, I was persuaded that almighty God is in control, even when there is suffering and sadness. And he cares.

But does anyone think they are too bad for a loving God? You are wrong. Whatever your past, God still loves you and wants the best for you and to forgive you. Divine love is a good will even for what is unattractive. Yes, as righteous and holy, God hates all sin – sin being the defiance of his law. But he loves all sinners. He is, says the Bible, …

“… the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Ex 34.6-7).

Yes, as both the Old and New Testament teach: “the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in” (Proverbs 3.12 and Heb 12.6). Never think God the Father has irrational anger needing to be appeased by the death of God the Son. The Cross is not the cause of God’s love, as we shall see, but the consequence of his love.

It was because God so loved the world that he gave his Son. The first essential of the gospel, therefore, is the reality of God and his love – a love that means pity for a lost world, not careless indiscipline.


Secondly, is THE RELEVANCE OF JESUS CHRIST.

God’s love, also, is not a mere idea or a passive concern. It is an active and costly love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.

But for what purpose? Was it to teach a fallen world how to live as God intended? Yes and No!

The Bible reports

“people were amazed at [Jesus’] teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority” (Mk 1.22)

C.S.Lewis, apart from being a children’s writer, was a great 20th century literary critic and Christian. He wrote of “the depth, sincerity and, may I say, the shrewdness of [Jesus’] moral teaching.” However, Jesus also made amazing claims about himself. He did not only say, “that is the way”. He also said, “I am the way!”

Down the centuries the discrepancy between the “rampant megalomania” (as it has been called) of his theological teaching and his moral teaching has often been noted. But without Jesus being God, this discrepancy remains.

Teaching, however, was not the central purpose of Jesus’ coming. Nor was it to do good. Yes, we are told:

“He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil” (Acts 10.38).

Supremely, however, he came as the Saviour and to die. The Cross was required for human salvation; and so the Cross is the measure of God’s love. It is also a measure of God’s holiness. The apostle Peter writes that:

“Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3.18).

The real problem behind so many other problems in the world is the universal disease of human sin. The desire for democracy is not because individual citizens are so good they should all have their say. No! It is because human-kind is so fallen that no-one can be trusted with uncontrolled power. Nor is sinfulness just seen in the sordid sins of greed, sex and violence. It includes the respectable sin of neglecting God and others. There once was a little tract that said this:

“I never was guilty of wrong actions. But on my account lives have been lost … and governments have failed. I never struck a blow nor spoke an unkind word, but because of me homes have been broken up … and fathers and mothers have gone broken-hearted to their graves. Who am I? I am neglect.”

This is the serious sin of omission, also needing forgiveness.

The true relevance, then, of Christ is this.

He came as Saviour from the guilt of sin by paying sin’s penalty for you on the Cross. He came as Saviour from the power of sin by his resurrection from the dead and by giving the Holy Spirit. And that was a real resurrection, with an empty tomb and appearances to his disciples, proving his claims.

So the second essential of the gospel to be maintained and promulgated is the relevance of Jesus Christ as Saviour.


Thirdly, as an essential, there is THE RESPONSE NEEDED

Jesus Christ sets before you two ways.

You are told in our verse that those who believe in Christ “shall not perish but have eternal life”. There is a widely held view that reality never presents us with an either/or.

Given patience all contradictions can be reconciled. Nothing is wrong, for all is right.

Common sense, the Bible and, especially, Jesus say, “absolutely not!” In his parables Jesus taught about the wide gate and broad road that lead to destruction and the small gate and narrow road that lead to life. He taught about a wise and a foolish builder and wise and foolish virgins.

And here, in John 3.16, there is a choice between perishing (now and for ever) and life (now and for ever).

In normal travel not any road will get you to your destination. You need a map and to follow it. God in his goodness has provided not only a map (and with warnings) for living in his written Word, the Bible. He, also, has given you, by the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ to escort you in this life and to your right destination - heaven.

In 1952 the worst ever train crash in England occurred, near where I lived, involving two express trains and one local train. People from my school were on the local train. So was my uncle. 112 people died that day. But underneath the station clock, on the platform overlooking the wreckage, was a poster. On it was a haunting text: “prepare to meet thy God.”

We all need to be “prepared to meet our God”. Are you prepared?

But, remember! Judgment is not just for the future. God so loves you that he wants the best for you now as well as for eternity. He wants to save you from hell on earth as well as hell in eternity.

So how actually do you experience God’s love and Christ’s salvation. The answer is “by faith”. That is the needed response. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes (or has faith) in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Biblical faith is not just intellectual belief. It is personal trust in Jesus, risen from the dead and Lord of all There are many metaphors used in the Bible for this “faith-relationship”. - coming to Christ, receiving Christ, looking to Christ and many more.

Nor is this a virtuous work meriting God’s grace. Rather, it is a person spiritually drowning who grabs the divine life-belt God has given, then, when safe, praises God for his greatness and goodness.

But while Christ is the only way to the Father, there is no one way to Christ. People are different.

C.S.Lewis tells of his conversion that started one night in his college in Oxford with a prayer and ended on a trip to, of all places, Whipsnade Zoo.

By contrast it was recently reported that the ruthless gangland boss, Reggie Kray, before he died was converted in prison. Jesus said earlier in John 3 and verse 8:

“The wind [or the Spirit] blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

Convertedness is what counts – not how you are converted.


So to conclude

It was said of Richard Clayton that he preached “the three great cardinal truths of the gospel “– a conversion to God, justification by faith, and sanctification. He knew that, because we are all by nature God-averse and self-centred, there needs to be conversion.

He knew that by faith in Christ as Lord, we are freely accepted by God and justified.

But – and important for today - he also knew that, if faith is real, there must be evidence in private and public life of Godly living, or “sanctification”.

So may we thank God for Richard Clayton and the Founders of JPC, but above all for the gospel of God’s love and his gift of Jesus Christ.

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