The Fifth Gospel?

"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."

They flocked to Him; from all about Palestine they came. They came to have Him do something for them. Whether it was healing a hand, opening the eyes of the blind, healing the lame, even raising the dead, it was Jesus whom they sought.

What would you have Jesus do for you today?

They came to Him from all around Judea. They brought their needs. They were not denied.

How willing is Jesus to heal you? He was willing to come from heaven to a revolted world, to walk the dusty streets, to have His beard-hairs plucked out by a bunch of scoundrels, and finally stapled wickedly to the cross. He came to die for a rabid pack of sinners. He came to die for beings that, but for His intervention, would descend to mere scum. The holy One came down into the pit where we were, that the way might be opened for us to go up to where He would have us be.

And if we can believe, all things are possible to we who will believe.

This suggests the question, "who can believe?"

Who can believe? On our own, apart from God, none of us, not one. Our nature rejects all divine pleadings and finds no return echo of God's principles. It has been bent to seek self, and is not self-correcting. It is definitely bent. If God took no interest in us, if He did not step in to transfuse spiritual life back into our faculties, we'd be goners. But the Bible says "that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). A changed people He makes an army of ambassadors for Him. Have you read 2 Corinthians 5:17 lately? Do you recall what it says?

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Old creatures cannot believe. They are unrenewed inside, unregenerate. All things are not passed away for them. Their world is veiled; they cannot see or rightly estimate the value of holiness, of righteousness, or purity or of selfless love. Their faith is dormant, inactive. It can produce no explosion; nothing good can come out of it. Such a one lives but a Nazareth life, the life of the walking and waking dead. He remains a spiritual wraith, walking about in circles, traveling nowhere, for he has nowhere to go but to sink back into the dust, to consume away in the fires at the last day.

But if any person be in Christ, he is a new creature. Things are changed all around. He has been recreated by the Recreator. The veil is removed and he can see--truly see--for the first time. God has opened the eyes. When Jesus lays His hands on your eyes, you never can be the same again. Now you can believe.

The life you used to live is now cast aside. We need to have a recognition that the past is the past; it is gone. We cannot change it; only Christ can redeem it; and if we are His then He has redeemed it! "Old things are passed away," but not only that--"all things are become new." All is a large number of things. See, everything about my life is split into two realms--the past and the future. The past, the time when the lights were turned off, is past. The past is dead. But that's OK. Because all things are become new.

The new things are everything in your life; all is transformed by the brilliance of Christ. Where before the actions of a spiritual sleep-walker had decorated your experience, now you see. There is a shift from the "clarity" you thought had when you were living life for yourself; now something else has entered in. The moral dimension has been awakened. You are new in all things. Now being new in all things doesn't mean you instantly attain to all knowledge, lose all habits, or that old junk you've filled yourself with for years is suddenly all deleted. We wish that were the case. And God could do that if that were best for us.

But its not.

One newly alive from above is an infant. He needs to grow. A life has a lot of scars on it, a lot of scabs. The wounds must be healed as far as they can be in this life. Some things may chase us all the way to the close of our experience. But if they chase us, they chase us into the time when "all things are new." They chase us into our period of new life, or revitalization. They may accompany us, but they do so at their own peril, for the Spirit of God will fight for us if we believe. He will stand in the gap. We may, as renewed people, make the choices of renewed people, and our Friend the Holy Spirit will provide the strength of His divinity. With this strength we may conquer and be faithful, even unto the end.

Which leads us to the question, is victory over deep sin-patterns really possible here and now?

Yes.

Remember, we are not alone in this. Jesus is with us in this thing. We must come to Jesus.

Some innocently have been led to think that Jesus is smiley and indulgent. They've been pitched a version of the Savior that was so far from them that the gap had to be bridged by some other mediator, like Mary or some other supposed super-saints. Or again, another solution has been to practically remove all offense from the gospel. This teaching says that God just takes us as we are and as long as we say the magic words and make the expected attempts to overcome, that suffices; it is thought to be enough. But may God help us to understand that it is not enough to attempt to overcome. Think about it. If that were the case then Jesus never would have had to come. Reconciliation between God and man would not be a big issue because sin between God and man would not be a big issue. If you misrepresent what Jesus is and what His mission is, you misrepresent the distance between God and man. You misrepresent what sin means to the universe and to Jesus.

If you take away the deadly razor darklingness from sin--if you just consent to even a slight graying of its evil, you do not understand it. What sin has cost Jesus, and what it has cost the Father, we may never know in full; but we can know that there is no way to excuse it or begin to excuse it or to suggest that there is any circumstance out there even minutely justifying it, without voting that Satan had some point in his favor against God and His law. We can't just keep on sinning. If we keep on sinning we are crucifying the Son of God afresh. We are saying that we disagree with God's evaluation of sin which says that it is so deadly that only the life of His own Son--only the life of God Himself--is sufficient to reconcile the unholy sinner with a holy God.

We do not know what holiness is anymore. The devil does, and he has worked diligently until nearly a whole generation has bought his counterfeit package; you know--the one that says you get to be a Christian and keep on sinning too. "Sin and live" is emblazoned on the pretty wrapping paper, but the Bible says, "the soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20). So who will you believe? In Eden God told Adam sin meant death. In Eden Satan told Eve, sin meant life. All across the ages the tear-stained trail of the human race fallen, traveling along its road of broken and very sharp glass, testifies in blood and tears that the wages of sin is death indeed, and that God intervened to save sinners indeed.

Oh no. Jesus is compassionate and disciplined, but not smiley and indulgent. He is love but not cheap love. His love has been expressed to us at a very great price, and no plasticy-purfume smell accompanies it.

We speak here of the authentic. Salvation is salvation, not carbonation. Jesus doesn't add fizzy-fuzzy little bubbles, but He causes all things to become new. He reconciles. He takes away the old and invests us with the new. The control that our lower passions have had over us, that have reigned during that time of the "old things," is changed. Now, the effects of divine intervention are felt in the life. We are faced now with the reality that through heaven's strength, now we can overcome and do overcome.

If we believe.

So what of this question then, about can we overcome completely here and now? Think man; think. What did you read in the four gospels?

Every physical malady that Jesus healed much more was symbolic of His capacity and desire to heal our sins. And healing from sin is not just white-washing over it. It is not just some distant legal declaration or an entry into some heavenly sin-accountant's book. Healing from sin is both forgiveness and cleansing; it is both transference of the guilt from the sinner to his substitute, Jesus, and application of cleansing by Jesus to the repentant. He doesn't cover it over, He takes it away. In its place He leaves not merely vacuum, but the positive presence and graces of the Holy Spirit.

We've been hearing the "fifth gospel" version; you know. The one that says "sin and live." It is that gospel which Paul called, "another gospel, which is not another" (Galatians 1:6-7). If we believe it, we are accursed.

Accursed because we will die in sin. And Jesus came to save us from our sin. Accursed because we would be outside of the gospel. Sin is outside of the gospel--continuing sin in the life of the Christian. Oh yes, we struggle and fight and slip in the mud. But don't give up! Yes, we fall and we sin. But we can't stop there. If we stop there, that is the fifth gospel; the one that isn't one; that isn't good news except to Satan.

What did Jesus say? "All things are possible to him that believeth." You can overcome. I can overcome. Indeed, since "nothing unclean shall enter in," (2 Chronicles 23:19 cf. Revelation 21:7, 8, 27).

Sin and you will die. Overcome and you shall live. We sin with Satan's help and but own deadly consent. But we overcome with Christ's help and our own consent. But our consent is only there because God intervened first to give us true sight of the spiritual. He brings you to where you can see and where you can choose. But still you must do the seeing and the choosing. The choice is still yours. But you wouldn't even have the choice if it weren't for our Savior Jesus. For it is only through Jesus that "all things are possible to him that believes."

If you believe in Jesus, you will not instantly blossom to perfection. But new life will be there. You will if you thus consent know the inward presence of the Holy Spirit. You'll respond to the convictions of sin and of righteousness and of judgment that He gifts you with. You'll want to do the right thing. And through His strength you will. You will overcome because you choose to let Him empower you. Your life will be a vote for God rather than a vote for Satan.

What would you have Jesus do for you today?

Doubtless there are some here who need victory over some besetting sin. Doubtless there are some here who inexplicably have backslidden. You've walked away from some reform once made. And you've been troubled by that. You want to be closer to God. You want to be very close to your Savior, with nothing, not even a hint of anything, separating yourself from Him. So pastor, what do you say?

I say what Jesus said: "All things are possible to him that believeth." You can deal with this today. You can put it behind you.

Now I don't know what your case in specific might be. But Jesus does. He longs to be your personal Savior. He desires to save you from yourself and from that "fifth gospel" that's been pitched for so many years that we have almost come to believe it.

So what will you do. Today.

Let's pause for a few moments in the silence of our thoughts. Talk with God. Then we'll close together with prayer.

[A period of silence and reflection.]

Dear Father: here we are. We long to be close to You and to Jesus. But we've been tempted Lord, and many of us, perhaps all of us, have fallen along the way; we've been cut by the glass. We've been bleeding Lord.

But then, You know all about that. Somehow we often feel that we must be on some probation, that we have to prove to You that we are reformed before we claim Your blessing. But you love to have us come to You just as helpless as we are, with all our weakness. But we are here today Lord to take You at Your word. It is Your glory and certainly not ours, to encircle us in Your arms and bind up our wounds, and to cleanse us from all impurity. Oh Father, we take You at Your word. Pardon us personally, individually. As we comply with Your conditions, provide Your strength and grace. Strip us of our garments of sin and place upon us the white robes of Your righteousness that we may live and not die. Thank You loving Father. We prefer the four gospels of the Scripture and victory over sin. And this we receive of Thee, in Jesus' name. Amen.

A quotation from Ellen G. White's Steps to Christ, pp. 52-53:

Some seem to feel that they must be on probation, and must prove to the Lord that they are reformed, before they can claim His blessing. But they may claim the blessing of God even now. They must have His grace, the Spirit of Christ, to help their infirmities, or they cannot resist evil. Jesus loves to have us come to Him just as we are, sinful, helpless, dependent. We may come with all our weakness, our folly, our sinfulness, and fall at His feet in penitence. It is His glory to encircle us in the arms of His love and to bind up our wounds, to cleanse us from all impurity.

Here is where thousands fail; they do not believe that Jesus pardons them personally, individually. They do not take God at His word. It is the privilege of all who comply with the conditions to know for themselves that pardon is freely extended for every sin. Put away the suspicion that God's promises are not meant for you. They are for every repentant transgressor. Strength and grace have been provided through Christ to be brought by ministering angels to every believing soul. None are so sinful that they cannot find strength, purity, and righteousness in Jesus, who died for them. He is waiting to strip them of their garments stained and polluted with sin, and to put upon them the white robes of righteousness; He bids them live and not die.

Last Modified 19 January 2001 Contact us at larry@greatcontroversy.org