Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hi and welcome to the unveiling. I'm Tim, one of the hosts, along with Ajay and Mark. We are three guys discussing the one true gospel. We hope you're encouraged by this episode. Let's dive right in.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Unveiling Jesus. We're so glad you're here with us today. And as we embark on this new podcast, sharing what we love more than anything, and that's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. I am Mark, one of your hosts, and I want to introduce you. Here's my co host, Ajay. Say hi to the people, Ajay.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Hello, everybody. This is Ajay. Hey, Mark. It's so good to see you.
And I'm really excited to talk about our Lord Jesus Christ today.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought hopefully the people can hear that in our words, in our heart. And we're just praying that the spirit of God will help us to communicate it clearly and work in your heart as you listen to it. So we're going to start out today on our new podcast, Adventure. Ajay and I decided it might be a good way to start to talk about the essential foundation of the gospel. These are the non negotiables. There's a lot of side issues that Christians debate back and forth. In fact, Ajay and I are debating all the time back and forth. But one thing we don't debate are the essentials are what we know about the gospel itself and what scripture and the spirit of God has revealed to us about who Christ is and what he's done for us. So we want to start off with talking about the essentials of that gospel. And we'll leave other podcasts for debating some of the side issues if we feel so led or okay with that, Ajay?
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Sounds good, Mark. Go ahead.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: So one of the things we want to acknowledge before we start preaching the gospel here on this episode is that throughout the ages, many have preached this gospel.
And in our humble opinions, some have done a great job. And some have perverted it by adding works or by beating people up with sin and the law.
Now, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though, because it's important for us all to acknowledge that we are not keeping God's law perfectly, that we all make mistakes, we all fail. In fact, we don't even uphold the standards we ourselves set for ourselves. We make mistakes. And I think most of us, it'd be the first to acknowledge we're not perfect.
Well, but the problem with that is God's law is perfect. And that makes every human being.
I'll use this old fashioned word because the Bible uses it. We are sinners. We have sin, which is just another word for failing to uphold the standard of God's law.
And that's the reason Scripture tells us that the law was given. Romans 7:13 says that in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
So the rules, you know, do not murder, do not steal, do not lie, do not commit adultery. Those are given. I think we probably would already all had an idea that those were good things. But it's showing us that these are really bad things, that this is sin.
You want to add something to that,
[00:03:53] Speaker C: R.J.
yeah, Mark, you know, I'm reminded of the verse when you were talking about the problem of humanity.
Romans 3:23 says, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
So one of the things I wanted to point out is some of us think that we become sinners because we sin, but it is other way. Like you said, we all are sinners. We have the sin problem, and we sin because we are sinners. So our sins only show that there's something wrong with us. There's something internally wrong with us. That is a sin problem.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: In that same chapter, Romans 3:11 says, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin.
So the law was given to make us all conscious of our sin. And why did God do that? Because he wanted us to feel guilty. Because he wanted us to feel bad and shamed. No, he did that because his plan from before the beginning of creation, before the beginning of time was Jesus Christ was for us to be in union with him through his Son, Jesus Christ.
So that is an essential. It's really, it's not a part of the gospel, but it's the context, if you will. It's the good news, bad news. That's the bad news. The bad news is we all have a sin problem and are in desperate need of a Savior.
And now the good news. I'm going to hand it over to Ajay for that.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Mark, you know, before going to good, going to the good news, I think in terms of our problem, there is one More bad news.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Oh, great.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
So the Bible says that, you know, we are all sinners, right? We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
And the Bible also talks about not only we have a sin problem, we have another problem called death.
If you look at Romans, chapter 5, verse 12, it says, Therefore justice through one man's sin entered the world. And death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned, so sin produced death. You know, the sin was committed by our first. The first man, Adam, right, Our forefather.
Through his sin, death was brought upon us and death spread to all men.
And in Romans 5:17, it says, for if by one man's offense, death reigned through the one. So what it is saying is that because of Adam's sin, death came upon us. Not only death came upon us, death reigned upon all of us, right? If by one man's offense, death reigned through the one.
So all of us, you know, we can feel that, you know, it's we within us. You can feel that, right? Like all these symptoms that we have, like all the things that we go through, like depression, anxiety and guilt and shame and the inability to love. In fact, you know, we can summarize this death in one sentence.
The sum total of the law is, love your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
And we know none of us can do that. You know, some people brag about, hey, yeah, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do this, I don't do that.
But no one honestly can say that I love God with all my heart.
And no one can say that I love my neighbor as myself.
So inability to love, you know, that is a symptom of our death. And that is a symptom that something is wrong with us.
And that is also a symptom that we are sinners. So the sum total of the law is love the Lord, right? So that means the ultimate breaking of the law is the inability to love.
And that's where, you know, we all are found guilty. Even, you know, you might say that, hey, you know, I'm nicer than you.
I never did any of the things that you did.
But we all have this inability to love.
And that is a symptom that something is wrong with us. And Bible calls it as death.
We don't have the life of God that could love others like ourselves.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Thanks, Ajay. That's a great point. It's not just that the law made us sinners. It's that sinners.
Being a sinner separates us from God. And Jesus Christ is life, he is our life. If we are separated from him by our sin, we have death. In fact, separation from from God is what hell is, whether it's in the life after or here on earth. So that's a great, great point, Ajay. Are you ready for the good news now, Ajay?
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Or do you have more bad news?
[00:09:15] Speaker C: Well, the bad news is, you know, we are dead and we are sinful and you just touched upon it. Mark that I was going to talk about separation from God, right? Is hell. So the consequence of sin and death is basically we are separated from God and we are destined to a life of eternal misery. It's not that God threw us away, but because of our sin, because of our death, we were destined to a life of hell and eternal separation from God.
That was our destiny of everybody who was born into this world.
But the good news is now we are coming to good news, right? So God did not leave us in that condition.
The most famous verse, John 3:16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
See, here is a good news, right? Here is a gospel in a nutshell. I'm sure we will go into various aspects of the gospel, but here it says three things. First, like we said, we all sinned and we all died and we all were on our way to hell, which is eternal separation from God. But God did not want that for us. He loved us so much that he gave us only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So we just talked about, right? So the reason why God wants us to have everlasting life is because we didn't have life.
And without life we cannot have that communion and experience with God. So the purpose that God gave his Son is whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. You know, that is a salvation in a nutshell.
Mark. I'm sure we'll go into more details on this, but I would like to know if you have any comments on this verse.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: No, I think that is one of the great, great verses that share what the gospel is for us.
Obviously there's many because the entire Bible is really everything in the Bible from page one to the End is meant to bring us to Christ at all points, points to Jesus.
It's all about Him. The APostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 2 told the Corinthians, and it's one of my favorite scriptures. He said that when I first came to you, I vowed to forget everything else but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
That is the pinnacle, that's the fulcrum point of all history.
There's never been anything as powerful, as valuable, as important as Jesus Christ and him crucified. He's the very reason God wanted to make us sons and daughters. And that's the way he chose to do it, through his own Son, to make Him a brother of sorts to us and God our Father and us sons and daughters. And that's what it's all about. He didn't call us to because he wanted to get rid of sin in our lives so we'd live better lives. He didn't call us because he wanted us to do things. He didn't want us. He didn't call us to feed the poor or to go to war to stamp out other religions. He called us to be his sons and daughters. And the way he did it was through his own Son becoming like us, becoming flesh, becoming one of us, so that we could see that he can empathize with who we are. He knows who we are. He accepts us. And he died to make a way for us to have his perfect righteousness. That's one thing a lot of people don't focus on. Some don't even know is that when Christ went to the cross, there was an exchange there. He took our sin upon Him. The word that is used is our sin was imputed to him, but his perfect righteousness was imputed to us.
The Gospel is so much more than just eternal life. It's becoming sons and daughters and heirs. It's protection and provision.
It's union with Christ.
You can spend the rest of your life really searching out all the treasures of the Gospel.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great segue into the next scripture. I was going to read Mark. So it is again from a book that John wrote. It's 1 John 4.
It is an explanation, a further explanation of John 3:16.
In John 3:16 he mentions that God gave His Son. But here it talks about what did the son do in 1 John 4:9.
In this, the love of God was manifested towards us.
That God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him again. You know, we see this right, the purpose that God gave his son is so that we might have life. And why do we need life? Because we were dead.
And verse 10 says, in this is love.
Not that we loved God, but he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.
Like Mark, he was saying, the purpose why Lord Jesus Christ came was to be a propitiation for our sins.
A propitiation means that, you know, a complete satisfaction. So he died in our place. He shed his precious blood to completely remove our sins to God's satisfaction so none of our sins remain anymore.
He knew no sin, like you said, became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
So because of our Lord Jesus Christ did a perfect work, a perfectly satisfactory work in removing our sins, God is able to give his life to us.
So he died in our place, and then God raised him from the dead. That's what is the good news.
And he removed our sins perfectly.
And because of that, God is able to give life to everyone who believes in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: That's awesome, Ajay. Thanks for pointing that out. You know, Jesus did not come to heal.
He didn't not come. He did not even come to preach the gospel. He didn't come to feed people.
He didn't come to be the greatest moral teacher of all time. In fact, my favorite place that tells us why Christ came and who he was is when John the Baptist saw him coming from afar and he exclaimed, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
That's the shortest definition of who Christ is. John could have went into a bunch of theological treatises and talked about prophecies and everything he would do, but he was a lamb. He was a sacrifice for our sin that took it all away. And that just moves me in my heart when I think about this, that.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: Amen. Amen.
So I want to. I don't know, Mark, if you are going to read First Corinthians, chapter 15 if you are going to. I'm going to take that.
Okay. All right, cool. Yeah. So the gospel, the same gospel is explained in many ways in the scripture, but it comes down to the work that our Lord Jesus Christ did for us.
Because we were sinners, because we died.
Our Lord Jesus Christ came to die in our place and then pay himself as a sacrifice, right? Shed his blood, perfect blood and precious blood to redeem us from the sin and from our curse.
And then because of the finished work of Lord Jesus Christ, God is able to raise him from the Death.
So that is a gospel. And Paul summarizes this succinctly, right, in First Corinthians, chapter 15.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand.
By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain.
For what I received, I passed onto you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
And he appeared to see first and then the 12 after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
So here the Gospel is a historical fact. Right? So the way Paul explained gospel is not just some kind of a belief these people called Christians have, or it's not some kind of a illogical thing that Christians believe, but he's simply stating historical facts. He's saying that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Right. The Scriptures are the written record of God that prophesied about the Lord Jesus Christ.
There were hundreds of prophecies about Lord Jesus Christ. And according to those prophecies, our Lord Jesus Christ died and he was buried. That was a fact.
And he was raised from the dead. That was a fact. And it was testified by because he appeared to more than 500 people and some of them were alive when Paul was writing this.
So the point here is the death, burial and resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ is a historical fact.
And that is a gospel. That is a good news.
And he is saying that we are saved by believing that good news. As simple as that.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I love the fact that Paul says that. And last of all, he saw the risen Christ. I mean, Paul was, you know, one of the greatest enemies of the gospel of the Christian church.
He was there holding the coats of the people that stoned Stephen, one of the first believers to death. He was there going to different. He was even. He was going to the Sanhedrin to get letters so that he could go to other cities where Christians were hiding and throw them in jail, take all their property and even execute them.
And on his way to Damascus to do that very thing, he came face to face with the risen Christ and it changed his life. And one of the things I always love, because Paul is the predominant preacher of the gospel in all of scripture.
He has more of it, he understands it more and preaches it more powerfully. Than any of the other apostles that even walked with Jesus during his life, in my opinion.
And one thing he always was careful to say was, this gospel I'm preaching to you, it's not something that I learned. I didn't go to church and heard it preach from a pastor, didn't teach it to me. I didn't even go to the other apostles and learn it from them. The Lord Jesus Christ himself directly gave me this gospel and by His Spirit continues to give me revelation into this gospel.
So I just love that. How, you know, we just had Easter two days ago and the resurrection just explodes.
What an unbelievably awesome climax to everything he did through his death.
You know, just that death could not hold him. That even though he took on the entire sin of the world and died this hideous, torturous death for us, you know, the trumpets blasted and the final victory was his and ours because. Because when we put our faith in Him, God sees it as us dying with Christ. And so when we die with Christ, we are also raised with Him.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Amen. Amen. In fact, he rose from the dead so that he can give his resurrection life to us. That's the offer of the gospel. I love it that we may live through him.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: And I think I can't remember the exact address, but in one of the Corinthians books, Paul talks about the new resurrection body that we will have when our lives here ends. And he talks about the mortal being swallowed up by the immortal and the perishable becoming imperishable, the weak becoming strong. And then at the end, to summarize it, he says, and we will be swallowed up by life. I love that. Yeah, I just love that. And I'm always reminded I'm showing my age here, but there used to be this old iced tea commercial where you see this guy on the edge of the pool. The sun's just beaten down, it's got to be a hundred degrees. He's just sweating and in misery. And he tilts this ice cold glass back and drinks the ice iced tea and falls into this pool of refreshment.
For some reason, I'm reminded when I think of being swallowed up by life. All the miseries, the hardship, the sorrows, health issues, sickness, everything that's all the suffering in this life is going to be swallowed up in joy, swallowed up in life, swallowing up, swallowed up in glory. We're going to come face to face with the One who loved us so much that he gave it all for us.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: In fact, in the same chapter, it says you know, O death, where is thy victory? Right? Where is I sting? So the sting of death is completely removed at the cross. Yep.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: It says that the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.
Christ died to take us out from under the law which removes the sting of death and takes the teeth out of death to where Paul could say himself that to live was Christ, to die is actually gain. And that when we die it's going to be more like life, more like being swallowed up by life.
Just love that we're going to end this episode now. Ajay and I are going to keep going because we're excited, but we'll have a part two to this next week. So we hope you your spirits have been uplifted by the glory and the truth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the message of his grace. So we will see you next week.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Thanks for listening today. We hope you were encouraged and uplifted. If so, we encourage you to subscribe and share our podcast with your friends and family.
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Well, that's it for us today. As always, God bless and we will talk to you the next time.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Lord, I will delight in you days of my life.
You I will delight you. I will.
