"The Gospel is no soft soap!"

This broadcast is called 'The Voice of the Church' and thus you may expect a Good Tiding, the Gospel. Those who have listened the previous weeks, may say, we didn't hear much Gospel! You spoke about the mandate the Creator has given to man; that man by rejecting that mandate, has become a candidate of hell, and more things like that. We want the Gospel! That's Okay, but what is the Gospel? Some kind of soft-soap talk by ever-smiling preachers, who are never taken completely serious anyway?

If God needed a big Book like the Bible to tell us about His plans with man and his world, we should not just pick out one line, and say "Jesus saves sinners, Hallelujah!" That is true, of course, but only within the frame, the context of the whole and complete revelation of God in His Word. The Gospel is not soft-soap for old women and little kids to keep them happy. The Gospel is masculine; it is sturdy and solid; it has backbone and is - as Paul has it - 'worthy of full acceptance." Namely "that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.'' But what does that mean exactly: to 'save' sinners?

We have been talking about man's destination. Only against that background we can understand what a sinner is, and also what it means to save a sinner. The Bible has several words for sin. The three most-important meanings are: acting against God's Law, stepping over the borderline, and missing the goal. The three are one, but the stress is on the last one: a sinner is someone who misses the goal, does not reach his eternal destination. Which, you will agree, is a terrible thing. To save such a misfit, you have to turn him around so that he is heading again in the right direction. The direction as God wanted it since the beginning.

In order to turn man around, you have to do a little bit more than telling him that he is on the wrong highway, and suggest to him to make a U-turn. Man needs for that a radical change of his heart and of his whole life. The Bible tells us that one, who is not radically changed, is still dead in sin. He has to be made alive, so that he becomes again a normal human being, that is, so that he lives again for the glory of God. The Gospel is not man-centered but God-centered. As Paul puts it in Romans 11, "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever, amen.

Any Gospel-preaching that does not put God in the centre, is no Gospel at all. Yes, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. But what else can that mean than that He came to put man on the right road again? In our Catechism, which we have quoted before, we put it this way, "Christ, having redeemed us by His blood, also [also!] renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for His benefits, and that He may be praised by us." [ans. 86].

There you have it again, "that He may be praised by us," in this life and forever. That is man's eternal destination.

The Eternal Son of God took upon Himself the nature of man, for a two-fold purpose; first to bear for us the wrath of God against our sins, but also second, to re-create, to restore man to his original height of being king of creation under God. Jesus, the Son, "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature" [Hebrews. 1:3]. He is the perfect Image of God: "he who has seen Me, has seen the Father." He fulfilled God's purpose, namely [and I quote Paul again, Ephesians 1] "that we should be holy and blameless before Him. He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace. And the end will be [still quoting] according to His purpose which He has set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth."

If you don't know much of the Bible, your brain may reel. But we can't help it: this is the Gospel, and there is no other: man restored to his original position and propelled in the direction of his eternal destination. That's why Paul, in this same letter to the Ephesians, writes [chapter.4:22f], "Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts [do you get it? All those lusts, for money, for power, for satisfying our sinful desires, lead us by the nose...] and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." These words remind us of Genesis 1. Thus man was created; thus man has to become again. That's what the Bible means by being born again: a new start that only God can give, and wants to give to everyone who asks for it. Such a person - to quote Paul once more, this time from Colossians 3:10 - gets a new nature, "which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator."

Please permit me, ladies and gentlemen, to elaborate a bit on two expressions that Paul uses here.

First, he says that we must be renewed in knowledge. That's remarkable, isn't it? For many people faith seems to be a matter of emotions, feelings. It isn't important what you believe, but you must 'feel' something. We call that soft-soap. We as Churches confess, in the Heidelberg Catechism, that faith is "a sure knowledge of all that God has revealed in His Word," - and on the basis of that knowledge "a firm confidence which the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the preaching of the Gospel that salvation is freely given to me for the sake of Christ's merits." Thus: knowledge is needed. Mind you, not just intellectual, even intellectualistic knowledge, something in your brain, but knowledge with your whole being, your heart included. Thus we simply must call you to study God's Word diligently, and to be faithful, on the Lord's Day, to go to the Church, not of your choice but of God's choice [and that is where the Word is preached faithfully, without taking anything away from it, nor adding anything to it.] Faith is not feeling in the first place, but clear and solid knowledge of what the Bible is all about. Without that you will never make it. Make what? Reach your destination!

Then, Paul said [and am I ever happy that he said it], that new nature is being renewed. "Being"... it is going on all right, but it isn't finished by a far shot. We even confess [and we better do it before others say it] that even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of the new obedience" [Cat. answer. 114]. Christians do not have much reason to be proud of themselves. I dare even say, only a real Christian knows how sinful he still is. But he has good hope! And would we ever like to share that good hope with everyone! This hope that, once God has started His work of redemption with me (I would never have started it...) I am sure that He will complete it. Already for that reason only I am sure of a life after this life; an everlasting life. We sing it sometimes in Church:

Yet, though it be a small beginning, it starts here. It starts in marriage-life, in the home, on the job, in my studies, in my behaviour towards other people, most of all in my attitude to my God. Yes, I may do it again, through Jesus Christ: I praise and glorify Him, and I expect to do that for ever and ever, in perfection, without sin which, as long as I live here, spoils so much. But thanks to God who will give us the victory!

G. VanDooren

October 16, 1977

This message was broadcast by "The Voice of the Church" at the above date.