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Colin Smith: How does the gospel actually function in the life of a Christian believer? How does it work? What difference does it actually make? How do you get the gospel from something out there that I believe to something that's making a difference in here, touching every area of my life?

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and Colin, some big questions that were asked right there. So let's go back and address that. How do we get the gospel from something that is out there to something that is now in us, touching every area of our lives?

Colin Smith: Yeah, well that is the work of the Holy Spirit and to be a Christian is so much more than believing in Christ, it's having the presence of Christ in me by the power of the Holy Spirit. Steve, someone just last week said put it like this to me, I've always had Jesus Christ in my life, but now he's in me. Now there's a big difference between these two things. You know, here was a person who was around the church and had been in Sunday school and but it was all external. Jesus Christ is in my life, but now he's in me.

What had happened was this person had been born again to use the Bible's phrase. The Holy Spirit had come. Christ was present in that person's life and that's at the very heart of being a Christian and the difference is quite remarkable.

Steve Hiller: So you've probably heard people say something to like this to you before and I know I've heard it a number of times. You begin to talk about Jesus Christ with them and they say, oh yeah, I believe in God.

Colin Smith: Yeah.

Steve Hiller: So what is your response to someone who says that?

Colin Smith: Well, you always want to be gentle with someone. You know, you don't hit a person because they don't see a thing. So what you want to do is to describe from the Bible what a Christian actually is. A Christian loves Christ. Though we have not seen him, we love him, Peter says and we're filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. So it'd be reasonable to say, do you know anything of that? What do you know about an inexpressible glorious joy that you have over Jesus Christ? And a person who's merely saying, well, I believe in God, will fairly quickly say, I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, now we're at a place of being able to say, well, now we can talk about what a real Christian is and maybe there's more in this than you have yet discovered.

Steve Hiller: Yeah. Well, and there's more in the gospel than what many have discovered so far. I hope you open your Bible and join us in the book of Second Corinthians chapter eight as we begin a message, a generous God. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now I want to begin today with really the big picture. This is largely introductory so that we will understand the teaching of these chapters. But I I want you to think back over this year and really everything that we've been learning. And as I look back on what we've been learning from the scriptures, what the Lord's been teaching me and what I've been trying to learn in my own life, I think that there's one theme that stands out more than any other. In many different ways, we keep circling back to this great theme of what it means to apply the gospel to every area of our lives.

Um what difference does knowing Christ really make to a person's everyday life? Back in September, Pastor Mike Bulmore, who pastors up in Kenosha, a number of you may know him and his ministry. He came here to our church uh for a special training session with our pastors and with our lay leaders. And he gave us some marvelous help in a presentation which he called the functional centrality of the gospel. The functional centrality of the gospel. What he meant by that is simply this, how does the gospel actually function in the life of a Christian believer?

How does it work? What difference does it actually make? My way of putting that is how does the gospel apply to every sphere of life? How do you get the gospel from something out there that I believe to something that's making a difference in here, touching every area of my life? Now I want you to see that actually the New Testament is really one massive project in applying the gospel to all of life. The New Testament fundamentally does two things. First, it tells us what the gospel is, who Jesus is, why he came into the world, what it is that he has done for us.

But then it also tells us secondly how the gospel works, what it means to be in Jesus Christ, how knowing Jesus Christ actually makes a difference to every sphere of your life. Now I want to give you some examples so that you get the idea because once your eyes are opened to how again and again the New Testament keeps applying the gospel to all of life, you will find you start spotting it all over the place. So I hope you have your Bible ready. I'm going to give you one or two examples of how new the New Testament applies the gospel to life.

Let's start for example with the application to marriage, to take one very practical subject. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter five and verse 25. Ephesians chapter five and verse 25. Now suppose that you're sitting down with a husband who's not doing a very good job of loving his wife. And uh you're trying to help this person. Try and picture that situation. How might you help him? Now there seem to me to be three basic ways in which we can try to motivate people to change their behavior. There's a guilt way, there's a pride way and there's a gospel way and it's very important to understand the difference.

Let's take the guilt way first, okay? I 'm sitting down with a guy who's not doing a very good job of loving his wife. Here's what it sounds like if I try and motivate him the guilt way. It goes like this. Now look Joe or Jimmy or whatever your name is, you made a vow. You promised to love this woman for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and whether you're happy right now or not, you have to live up to what you said in that promise. Now what am I doing?

I am appealing to this man's conscience. I am saying to him, you did this. You you said you would do this. Now it's time for you to step up to the plate and for you to deliver on your promise. That's a very reasonable way to motivate this guy to change his behavior, but it is a way that is based fundamentally on touching conscience and therefore it works on a person's sense of guilt. Here's another way you could do it. I could try the pride way. It goes like this. Hey Joe, you're a great guy and uh you don't want to mess up your marriage and I've looked at your life and you can succeed in just about anything you turn your hand to.

So why not this? You can do it. So why don't you just turn your marriage around? Now that's not an unreasonable way for me to try and encourage him to change his behavior. But here's the problem. Working on the guilt way increases guilt. Working on the pride way increases pride. So I want you to see that in fact the New Testament works in an entirely different way to motivate change of behavior. I'm just giving a first example here from the sphere of marriage, but I want us to understand how this works. Look at Ephesians chapter five and verse 25 and you'll see that the gospel approach is completely different from guilt and from pride.

Husbands, love your wives not as you promised, not as only you can do because you're a great guy, but as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. In other words, the gospel way of encouraging a Christian man to grow in his love towards his wife is to say, now look at Jesus Christ. He was ready to sacrifice anything, everything for his bride, the church so that his bride would flourish and be radiant and full of joy. Now this Christ lives in you. The Holy Spirit has been given to you so that the life of this Jesus Christ may be reproduced in you.

Now here's what that means in your marriage. Can you imagine anything more beautiful than a marriage that is gospel shaped? In other words, that is a reproduction of the kind of love that Jesus Christ has for his church because that love has been imparted into the heart of a husband. Now I want you to see then that the Christian life in the New Testament as it's laid out to us, I've just given one example. But the Christian life is not based on guilt. It is not based on pride. It is based on you being in Christ and on Jesus Christ being in you.

Now let me give you a second example so that we get the feel of this. Turn over if you would to Colossians in chapter two and verses eight and nine. Colossians chapter two and verses eight and nine. Here's a very different example. Let's apply the gospel now to the sphere of freedom, getting free from the control of other people. Notice how Paul says in Colossians and uh chapter two and verse eight. See to it that no one takes you captive. Very important statement. He's writing to Christian believers and he's saying, don't let other people trap you.

Don't let other people bind your conscience. Don't get into the position what other people are all the time telling you what to do and what not to do. Don't let other people control your life. Don't let other people lay burdens on you that God never intended you to carry. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated by the advertising of this world. Don't let the culture squeeze you into its own mold. Very important statement. But the question arises then, how how how am I to enter into all the dimensions of Christian freedom to be my own person in Jesus Christ?

And the answer in verse nine is for in Christ, here's how all the fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form. In other words, you will enter increasingly into the joy of Christian freedom as you realize that everything that you need for life and godliness is yours in Jesus Christ and you are under the control therefore of no one because you belong to the hands of your sovereign redeemer.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called a generous God. Now we're going to pause right here, but we'll get back to this message from Second Corinthians eight in just a moment. Well, Open the Bible is a listener supported ministry and that's exactly what it sounds like. It's your generosity that keeps Pastor Colin's teaching available each day and as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Tim Keller's book called What is Wrong with the World? And Colin, who is this book for?

Colin Smith: Well, I'll give a very broad answer to that question, Steve. I mean first, in the broadest category, I think this is a book for any thinking Christian. I mean any thinking person actually needs to grapple with some fundamental questions and what is wrong with the world is clearly one of them. The Bible addresses this very clearly and very directly and this book by Tim Keller really gives us I think wonderful light not only on what is wrong with the world, but in God's mercy, how things can actually be put right. Then I think if you can uh drill it down, I'd say anyone who wants to understand themselves better because you know, sin actually indwells our hearts and if you want to understand why you keep going on repeating things that you regret having done the last time, you know, there's an answer to that.

What's wrong with you? Well, sin is actually in us and this book really gets to the heart of the truth that sin is not simply bad things that we do. It's actually a power that's at work within us that explains the bad things that we do. And then one more thing, if you have experienced real evil in your life, you are not going to be impressed with being told that the source of evil is some kind of sociological deprivation or some economic explanation. What you're going to need to deal with what has happened to you is the Bible's explanation of the reality of evil and sin in this world and the wonderful hope that there is healing and grace in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I think that many people are going to benefit from this and that's one of the reasons that we've chosen this book to make available this month.

Steve Hiller: Again, it is called What is Wrong with the World? And it's our thank you for your financial support this month. You can give when you call one eight seven seven open three six five or at our website openthebible.org. Again, the phone number is one eight seven seven six seven three six three six five and our website is openthebible.org. Let's get back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now once you see this pattern, you see that that the whole of the New Testament is really applying all the desires in Jesus Christ to every sphere of life, marriage, freedom, you begin seeing it all over the place. I'm going to give you another couple of examples before we come back to Corinthians. Let's apply the gospel to forgiveness. Back to Ephesians chapter four and verse 32. Ephesians 4:32. Here's Paul teaching Christian believers. He says, be kind, be compassionate to each other, forgiving each other. Now how in all the world are we to forgive each other?

Well, notice what he says, Ephesians 4:32, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. See, there is a sort of way of forgiving out of guilt, isn't there? Huh. I guess I'm a Christian so I suppose I've got to forgive. I've heard people talk like that. You ever felt like that? That's forgiveness out of guilt. There's a kind of forgiveness that comes out of pride. I'm bigger than the hurt you did for me so uh I'm going to show that I'm actually bigger than you. It's a kind of forgiveness that comes out of pride.

But what Paul is calling us to in the New Testament isn't either of these. He 's calling us to a gospel forgiveness which says I am forgiven by Jesus Christ and I live in the good of that everyday of my life right now. My only standing before God is in the forgiveness that is mine in Jesus Christ. And this Christ lives within me by his Holy Spirit, reproducing his likeness, making it possible for me to reflect something received into the life of another person. All the difference in the world. Fourth example. Philippians in chapter two.

Philippians in chapter two. This is perhaps one of the most surprising. Let's look at Philippians two in verse four where you find perhaps the most ordinary of verses followed by the most amazing of passages. Philippians 2:4. Each of you should look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. Armstrong Now can you imagine a more ordinary verse in the Bible? Look out for the interests of others the same as you look out for your own interests. That's about the most ordinary verse in all of the Bible. Now Paul wants to tell us why.

He says, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus and then he launches into one of the most amazing passages in the New Testament. The Lord Jesus who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Now you see what's happening here? Paul launches into a massive statement of the humiliation and the exaltation of the son of God simply to tell us that we ought to look out for the interests of other people. I read a commentator who said, the apostle is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

You know, that's exactly what the New Testament does. It brings the most massive truth about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and it applies it to the most ordinary situations of your everyday life and mine so that we learn to live not from guilt or from pride, but from the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now I want to emphasize this as we come to the end of the year because the truth is that in many churches many Christians live much of their life on guilt or they live much of their life, their Christian life on pride.

And I want to say to you, but that is not the New Testament way. That is not why Jesus Christ came into the world. More than anything else, I want for us as Christian believers to learn increasingly what it is to live on the gospel and on the freedom and joy that flows from it into every area of life. Now are you seeing the pattern, how Paul takes the massive truths of the Christian faith and applies them to every area of life? Are you getting the pattern? You're not certain? Are you getting the pattern? We're getting it.

Marriage, the interests of others, forgiveness, freedom. Let's do one more. Second Corinthians in chapter eight and chapter nine. Money. I want us to see how the apostle Paul takes the gospel and applies it to the whole area of our money and of our giving. I want you to notice as we get into this then, the particular circumstances in which the Holy Spirit moves the apostle Paul to write perhaps the most significant passage in the New Testament applying the gospel to the subject of money. The reason that these verses were written was that Paul was actually raising money.

He was raising funds to bring relief to Christian believers in Jerusalem who had come on particularly hard times. And if you look at Second Corinthians chapter eight in verse 10, you'll see that the folks in Corinth had responded to this appeal for funds to help poor believers in Jerusalem. They responded with initial enthusiasm. Corinth was a bustling commercial center. It was really in many ways just like Chicago. And when these folks found out about the needs of Christians who had become through particular circumstances, no doubt including persecution, very poor, they were eager to help. So verse 10 of chapter eight last year, you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so.

So Paul knows these are wonderful folks. Their instinct was, hey, if there's a need, we want to help. And so Corinth had really become a sort of flagship church known among other churches for its generosity and for its enthusiasm. In fact, if you look at chapter nine and verse two, you'll see that Paul says, I I know your eagerness to help and he makes it clear that he's actually talked to other churches about the Corinthians and their enthusiasm and he says, your enthusiasm has stirred other churches to want to respond generously as well. So when the need became obvious, there was initial enthusiasm.

But putting together the pieces here, it becomes evident that after a time there was a growing reluctance. The Corinthians had promised to give generously, but they had been slow to follow through on their promise. How does Paul tackle the problem? That's the key thing. Let me suggest to you following the pattern that we've already seen that there are actually three ways to give money or three ways to raise money. They all have different effects and the one that you follow will have a distinct shape upon your character and that's true not only for individuals, but it's true for us as a church.

You'll know what I'm going with this if you've been following so far. There's a guilt way of raising money and of giving money. This one basically focuses on the need. There's a second way of course and you know where I'm going here. There's a pride way of either raising money or giving money. This one focuses on the opportunity. You lay out a great project and you say to people, now look what we can accomplish. So there is a kind of giving that is out of guilt and there is a kind of giving that is out of pride.

I want you to see as we've seen is the pattern of the New Testament that Paul doesn't go to either of these places. He wants to introduce us to a gospel kind of giving which is focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Steve Hiller: Well, we do have to pause the message right there, but we'll continue next time here on Open the Bible. Our message is called a generous God. It's the first in our series a generous life. And today we've been looking at how we can apply the gospel to all of life, how we apply the gospel to marriage, to freedom, to forgiveness and to caring for others. I hope you'll be with us next time as we continue to see how we also apply the gospel to money and to guilt and we'll take a look at the distinguishing marks of a generous life.

If you ever miss a broadcast in our series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen on the go if you have the Open the Bible app which you'll find for free at your app store. Well Colin, it's Friday and the weekend's coming.

Colin Smith: Yeah, and I want to encourage you to get to church on Sunday. You know, across the country, people who love Jesus will be gathering to praise him and if you love Jesus, that's something you'll want to be part of. So find a church where the Bible is opened and if you live in the Chicago area and you don't have a church home, I'd love for you to join us at the Orchard. There are six locations in the northwest suburbs. For more information, go to the orchard.church. That's the orchard.church.

Steve Hiller: Well, thank you Colin and thanks for listening. I'm Steve Hiller and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: Everyone has questions about heaven, but the question that matters most is how do you get there? Many people have the idea that if a person was to get into heaven, they'd get there by living a good enough life. Well, the thief on the cross hadn't lived a good enough life and he wasn't in a position to start living a good life. But Jesus said to him, today you will be with me in paradise. Well, if the thief could get into heaven, so can you. Heaven how I got here is a compelling 60-minute film in which Steven Baldwin portrays the thief on the cross in a one-person play.

Many have found that this story opens their eyes to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and to the hope of heaven. You can watch the Heaven How I Got Here film for free on the Open the Bible website. For more information, visit openthebible.org/heaven. That's openthebible.org/heaven.