A new life.

What Can We Expect From The Gospel?

If expectations for moral improvement among the unsaved populace through political means are futile, is there no other hope for transforming sinners? If a methodology of lobbying congress cannot arrest our nation’s downward spiral, is there no other way for believers to have a positive impact on our culture? 

If every society of fallen man is morally bankrupt, is there no other context where true love and godliness can flourish? Should we just give up? Absolutely not! Sinners can be transformed. Believers can have a positive impact on the society around them. There is a community where true love and godly living can flourish.

There is indeed no reason for hope if our faith is in the political process. But there is every reason for hope if our faith is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The sinful heart that legislation cannot change the gospel alone has the power to renew. It was not Christian Barnard who pioneered heart transplants, but the God of grace and mercy who promised his elect, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you" (Ezek. 36:26). Moral regeneration, therefore, is not a process of reformation. It involves a total transformation. 

The purpose of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection was not to remodel the old man but to create a "new man" where believing Jews and Gentiles would dwell together in righteousness and peace (Eph. 2:11-22). It was not to bring moral improvement to our nation (or any other geopolitical entity) but to create an entirely new nation – a "holy nation, a people belonging to God" (1 Pet. 2:9). The body of Christ – congregation – is the only community "created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Eph. 2:10).

What is the basis for the gospel’s "better hope" (Heb. 7:19)? It is because it includes something that politics cannot provide – a means of reconciliation through the atoning work of God’s Son on Calvary’s cross. 

They no longer stand before God clothed in the filthy rags of their own self-righteousness, but through faith "have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 7:14). They are "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6), not because they have adopted a moral code, but because the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to them; his holiness has been credited to their account. It is a perfect transformation that begins with a new vertical relationship with God and flows into a new horizontal relationship with others.

Merry Christmas