Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
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.
Hey, everybody, this is the unveiling, and all of us are back. Now. I. I turned my back for a minute and these guys are off recording episodes without me, but we're not going to let that stand them back. Here I am. Good try, guys. Although I will say great messages. The Paul. The prayer of Paul. And there you started doing something. I think we're going to want to try and keep up with a little bit here this week even, and maybe even in the future. And that is kind of the basics of the gospel. And yeah, it's a.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: It's.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: It's huge because if we don't understand the gospel, then we're bound and doomed to not have the benefits of the gospel, the new covenant of grace, of the new identity in Christ. So I think you guys were, you know, had done two episodes on that, and I'm going to let you see if there's a place you want to pick back up on as we move forward. Once again, everybody, Ajay, Mark, Tim, we're here for you. Have a great time listening. We hope this blesses you.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: All righty. Out of the gates we go. Tim, Ajay, and I just want you to know those other podcasts meant nothing to us. You're the one we love.
All right, so, everybody, it's so good to be back together with my brothers here in the glorious gospel of grace, Jesus Christ and him crucified. The most exciting, impactful, powerful, transforming, valuable thing to ever come across time and space. And we are just honored to be able to have your ear today to share that gospel.
And something troubled my spirit today, and it's been troubling me for a while. And we've talked about this in past episodes, but it's just been drilled home more and more. This world is starving for the one true gospel, and it's so hard to find nowadays because it's being perverted, and it's been perverted from the beginning. This is nothing new. If you're familiar with scripture, the Apostle Paul, who was the primary preacher of this gospel, he had to fight against this. He was constantly opposing people. So that he put it, the truth of the gospel might be preserved for us and throughout the ages through the early church, Augustine was really the first theologian of the church that fought for the fact that we are justified by Grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Not only are we required to, not only are we not required to add anything, we are absolutely unable to add anything. So it's a really, really good thing that God loves us so much that he gave his one and only Son and that whoever believes in him will have everlasting life.
And that doesn't mean just when we get to heaven, that means the moment we step through the door of faith, our eternal life starts. That moment we have Jesus now we don't have to wait for things to come.
And just to finish up before I throw it to Ajay is that after Augustine, then the church went into a thousand years, during the Middle Ages, some call the Dark Ages, when they started going off track again after Paul had had reset the church by opposing some of the false teachers and judaizers and people got an understanding of what that one true gospel was. Augustine had to reset it again around 250 years later. And then through that thousand year period started getting off track again. Mankind just loves to turn things into religion. And Jesus did not come just to give us one more religion and he came to give us himself and that's who we need.
And then obviously the great Reformation, someone's got to make a movie on that. It would be the greatest action movie of all time. That was nothing. Martin Luther, who was really the first father of that Reformation, said, I'm bringing nothing new. This is just a rediscovery of the one true gospel. And that leads us up to this day, where we're at, where we have veered again. And that's just the constant veering as a church, as a world, but as individuals, because it's always our default setting that we feel like we have to do. We have to measure up and we can't do that. So, Ajay, I'm going to hand it off to you because I think I've spoken enough and people are probably on the edge of their seats waiting for you.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah, Mark, like you said, Paul defined the gospel and then people went sideways. And then it took hundreds of years, I think, before Luther again came and told people what the true gospel is.
And then again people started going sideways. So there is a need to define the gospel over and over again.
So, you know, why don't we kick off with actually clearly defining what the gospel is?
Yeah. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 1 through.
We'll see. 8.
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand by, which also you are saved if you hold fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
For I deliver to you first of all that which I received.
That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.
And he was buried. And he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. And that he was seen by Cephas, then by the 12. After that he was seen over by 500 brethren at once, of whom the great part remains to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James, then by all apostles.
Then last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time.
So here, Paul clearly, clearly defined the gospel, right?
Does it have anything to do with you or me? Anything that we have to do?
The gospel is totally about our Lord Jesus Christ. That's it. Period. So if you want to simply define the gospel as the person of Lord Jesus Christ, who Lord Jesus is and what he has done for us, here it clearly says the death of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures and his burial. And he rose again and there was a real witness, like, you know, there were eyewitnesses who saw him.
The 12 disciples saw him. And then he was seen by 500 brethren.
And he was seen by James. And lastly he was seen by Paul. So the gospel is that his death for our sins, his burial and his resurrection.
That is the Gospel. And who Lord Jesus Christ is. Some people do not believe in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. They try to add to his work.
And some people do not believe in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even today, some Christians have doubt that whether Lord Jesus Christ is God. But Bible is clear.
So God became man. You know, God was manifested in the flesh. God became man in the Lord Jesus Christ. He had to become a human being to die for our sins. Because God cannot die.
And he came to us. He became one of us and he died for our sins. And he rose again.
And how do we believe or how do we become born again children of God? By simply believing, right? Lord Jesus Christ, he is a God who became man. He is, we call it the Son of God. The scripture calls the Son of God, but son of God means God himself.
So God became man and he died and rose again. When you believe that you become born again, you become a child of God. All your sins are forgiven and you become righteous in his sight.
And you become a new creature. That is the Gospel. Anything adding to this is perverting the gospel.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: So to me, I was going to ask you, Tim and Ajay kind of filled. In the end we have this wonderful gift that God himself came down and sacrificed himself to pay for our sin and give us his righteousness. But the most important part of that is, well, how do I get this?
How do I get this gift? And Ajay started to touch on the end of it. Tim, I'm going to ask you, what good works do I have to do to get it? How much money do I have to give? 10% every week? Do I need to be a part of a small group, be in Church on 50 of 52 Sundays? Do I have to get rid of all partying in my life? Do I have to get rid of all sin?
What do I have to do? What is the key to that?
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm coming over on Super Bowl Sunday to both of your houses to check. There better not be any beer in the fridge. That's all I'm saying.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: Well, there might be some dancing, although the bears didn't make it, so there won't be much dancing.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: No, I like to throw up the example of the thief on the cross.
All he did was say, you don't belong here like we do, you know, And God says, well, for your faith, you're going to be with me today in paradise. He didn't have to go through a ten step program on becoming a member of the cross culture. He didn't have to do, you know, tithing. He didn't have to go on a, you know, 12 step marriage. I'm telling you, this stuff, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it except how it's presented. It's presented as, this is how you be a Christian. No, you know, how you be a Christian and be in grace. You love God, you love the Holy Spirit that's within you and you listen to him and you follow his advice. That's how you get through it. I go to church because, you know, I mean, who's it, where is it that says do not, do not forsake the coming together of the believers? Well, I love my, you know, friends and stuff in the church. I do.
I terribly. I just moved up here a couple of times months ago and it's been too much snow and stuff for me to get to church. But I missed my church down there where I had friends and family.
They helped us through some really tough times and we helped other people there through tough times. Why? Because the Spirit speaks to all of us and puts us all on the same track to help one another.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: That reminds me one of my favorite scriptures. I love that I Always love that picture of the thief on the cross next to Christ.
He just believed in who Jesus was. Jesus said, I tell you the truth today you will be with me in paradise. And Paul in Romans one goes on to say, he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone.
And then he says, for in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith. Faith from first to last.
And whenever I read that line out, I always have to ask whoever I'm talking to, how much room does that leave for you to add anything? If it's by faith from first to last, nothing. You rest in Christ. You're in union with him now. You've been joined to him and it's just a glorious life. And you know so many Christians and I was this way, I know from being friends with you guys for so long. We were all Christians for many years and one of the last words we would have used to describe ourselves was free or freedom. We lived with guilt and shame, a lot of it self imposed, but also imposed by some well meaning family members, other Christians, pastors that didn't understand the freedom we have in Christ. It's not freedom to sin, it's freedom to love. It's freedom to be in close contact with God and have his strength, power and presence in our lives.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Ajay, if I can interject before you go again, because I want to say this, a lot of churches understand the fact that grace covers salvation, right? They'll acquiesce to that all day long. Yep. Need grace to be saved because otherwise we're poor, wretched sinners, blah blah, blah. But after you're saved.
And I'm thinking to myself nowadays, I think to myself, but I couldn't save myself. How can I keep myself saved? I don't have the ability to do that within me. I need God in my life, running my life, showing me what to do, where to go, how to be at all times.
That's what we call, we refer to that often as the mixed gospel. And the real gospel is saved by faith and sanctified by faith. That's just a word that says we
[00:13:26] Speaker C: become more Christlike anytime someone's preaching the gospel to you, like you just quoted Tim and they say, but the gospel has no ands, no ifs, no buts. Anything good that comes out of our life is a because of it's a since it's an in view of it's Christ in us, it's all fruit coming out and I've told this analogy many times that an apple tree does not try hard to grow fruit. He doesn't go into a small group with five other apple trees.
He doesn't go to a big building with hundreds of apple trees and an expert apple tree at the front.
He doesn't do anything other than sink his roots in the good soil, drink in the living water, turn his leaves to the sun, and beautiful fruit effortlessly grows. And that's the Christian life.
And we're not. And you know, this was leveled against Luther, it was leveled against Paul, anybody throughout the ages that preaches the gospel, we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone. The first thing the critics say then is, oh, you're trying to make little of good works. You're saying it's okay just to go and seek sin. And we're saying, that's crazy. That's not what we're saying. And that's not the effect of trusting in Christ. The effect is the opposite. Good just flows out of us. His good, not our own, because we don't have any.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. As you're speaking, you know, I'm pulling up scriptures to back up what we are saying, right? So, Tim, you said, you know, like, you give an example of, you know, I do this because the Spirit is leading us, right? You know, now that you're a Christian, you know Christ, right? You know, good works.
And whatever we are saying here, like how we are saved and what is the result of salvation, you know, Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 8 and 9, it clearly summarizes what we are saying, right?
For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves.
It is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
And then it goes on to say, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
So when we say, you know, we are not saved by works and we are saved by grace alone, you know, people immediately jump into, oh, yeah, then what do you mean? Then, you know, I can just live like a devil. What do you mean? So they directly jump into thinking that, you know, when we say we are saved by faith alone, you know, we can live whatever life we want you. Or in fact, you know, if the Holy Spirit is living in us, he's not going to lead into living whatever kind of life we want. But the Bible is clear here, right? We are saved, and then we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.
How clear it can be, right? You know, we don't need to argue this, but the point is people who are overzealous for works are corrupting the gospel by adding works. So mark to your point. You know, Bible says, Romans says it's from faith to faith, from beginning to end. But at the same time, some people include works in faith. Oh, faith without works is dead. Faith without works is dead.
And then they actually try to add works to saving faith. But that is not true at all. In fact, if you go To Romans chapter 4, Bible is clear about, you know, what kind of faith we need in order to be saved.
And I think it's very, very important to understand this because most people hear the false gospel of, hey, you need to have both faith and works in order to be saved. And they can never perform enough works to be saved. So that will keep them in darkness and forever. Right. You know, that will deprive them of the opportunity to be saved. So Romans chapter four, it clearly says, again, right. You know, what shall we say then? I'm starting from verse one. What shall we say that Abraham, our father has found according to the flesh.
For if Abraham were justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say?
Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Now, to him who works, the wages are counted not as grace, but as debt.
But unto him who does not work but believe on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. So I wanted to like zero in on this verse, Romans 4, 5.
Here Paul clearly defines the saving faith unto him who does not work. That's a condition.
People think, you know, you should work and believe, but it says, you should not work but believe on him who justifies the ungodly. Again, it means you have to come to God as not as godly, but as ungodly. Because God is here to justify not the godly, but ungodly. He did not come to save the righteous, but the unrighteous. So the first thing required is you need to realize that you're ungodly and then go to him without your works and then believe on God as a God who justifies the ungodly.
When you do that, that faith, that faith that does not include works, but believes on God who justifies the ungodly, that faith is counted for righteousness. The moment you believe on God as a God who justifies the ungodly, that faith becomes your righteousness.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: I don't know if James got misquoted, mistranslated, or has had poor vocabulary choices. But the whole faith without works has been a stumbling block for so many people. I wish that it's somewhere along the line it had come out. Is faith without evidence maybe might have worked better, because that means it's coming from your faith, not defining your faith.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: And we cannot define the gospel by one scripture because the whole import of the Bible, page one to the end, is grace. It's the grace of God. So you're gonna find from time to time. And you know what? Throughout my Christian life, there have been scriptures that I didn't understand for the first 10 years. And then one day, boom, the light goes on. So I wanted to bring up one of our old allergies analogies, and that's that you're out on the cruise ship, you don't know how to swim, and you fall over into the ocean.
Someone throws you a life preserver or a life. One of those rings to save you, but you. And it lands 20ft from you. You don't know how to swim. You're unable to swim, you're dead.
And that's how it is with our good works. Paul says in Romans, chapter one, no one is righteous. Not one. For our best works are as filthy rags or as Aja always likes to point out, filthy diapers.
And if you're unable to swim, that life preserver does you no good.
There's only one way to get that preserver, and that's to cling to it. And the way we cling to what Christ did is by our faith. Trust, just believe.
And that's even a gift from him too.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. It is so important to understand this mark because many people hear the false gospel. You know, for us, we have been.
We have known this for so long, and it seems like, oh, it's very simple, right? All you have to do is believe.
But devil put so many thoughts, so many lies in honest struggling people, right? You know, they know that they are sinners. There's no.
They cannot save themselves. But, you know, they also do not hear the right gospel, right? That they do not need to do anything. Many a time they hear the gospel, clean up, right? Clean up your life. You know, stop doing this, stop smoking, stop drinking, stop this and repent. Turn from your sins. You know, they put at least one condition. Nobody even now, right? You know, if you go to many cruisers, you don't hear that. All you need to do is believe right unto him. That does not work, but believe on him. His faith is counted for righteousness. We seldom hear this Gospel. And it's extremely important because I myself, in my own personal life for many, many years, I thought, you know, I have to do. I have to believe plus do something.
And that do something has become the stumbling block, right? You know, today. And that do something never ends. Devil shows something for us to do something, okay, I have to stop doing this. And then tomorrow it shows something else.
And day after tomorrow something else. Like the list goes on and on and on. Even when you do all of that, you don't have the confidence. How do you know that you did everything that's required.
So the only thing required is again, you know, turning our eyes back to our Lord Jesus Christ. His death, his burial and his resurrection.
It's all done for me. All I need to do is like, believe right unto him. Does not work, but believe on him. Believe on what? On what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us.
In fact, you know, I'll just say this verse and then I'll hand it to you guys. But in the same verse, right? So in the same chapter, in Romans, chapter four, he goes on talking about Abraham, how he was justified. And towards the end, in verse 23, it says, you know, now this is not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also, it will be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised up Jesus the Lord from the dead, who was delivered because of our offences and was raised because of our justification. So Lord Jesus Christ was delivered because of our sins and he was raised from the dead because of our justification.
When we believe on God who raised Jesus from the dead, we are justified, we are made righteous and we become sons of God. That's it. Nothing more to that.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: I have another question for Tim.
This whole works thing, what rodent analogy does that remind you of?
[00:24:08] Speaker A: I knew I was going to get to have to tell this story again. You mean my Russian cantor friend?
[00:24:12] Speaker C: No, no, Rodent. I said what? Rodent? Exercise device.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the hamster wheel.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: That's right.
That's what works are the hardies.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: We run and run and run and run and don't get nowhere.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: You know, it is a beautiful thing, though.
The whole thing about the gospel is people are going to judge us by our works because that's what they're going to see right outside of us, people, outside of us. Not God, not the Holy Spirit, none of that.
But we're not going to be worried about that because God's going to be using us for so many brilliant and wonderful things.
It's just going to exude from us. Let them judge, let them go. You know, I don't have to. I don't have to come in and let you tell me, okay, Tim, you've been a bad husband this week. I already know when I've been a bad husband. I know when I need to change things because I'm grumpy or whatnot, you know, I mean, let me tell you, the first couple of weeks after my lake thing, I was not a pleasant person.
And I realized it after a little while, I was like, okay, I gotta change this. And even I. I couldn't even do that. I couldn't even change my attitude. I had to let God change my attitude.
You know, I could try all day and still it would be nothing but a mask. And inside I'd still be all like, you know, so that's why God is why we need to let these things happen from God. Don't worry about what people think. That's not, that's not on us. That's on them. That's between them and God. We're going to do what God says.
He'll keep us right.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: You know, there's something.
While the gospel is called many times in scripture, it's a mystery.
And when we're talking about not us doing it, but letting God do it through us, that's a very mysterious, really supernatural thing when you think about it. And throughout the ages, pastors and people that knew that salvation was by the cross alone, faith in the cross, they've tried every kind of way of couching it to where they could add works to it without stepping on the first part.
One of the words that just bugs me is when they say, well, we don't work, but we have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.
You know what the definition of cooperate is? Work alongside the moment you do anything to warrant, to gain, to earn, to merit your salvation, greater best blessing or greater sanctification. Now you have something to boast about. And Paul says, I have nothing to boast about except for the the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm right in the middle of writing invita. I'm a church worship leader, as you guys know, have been for 35 years. I'm writing an invitation rights song right now for people that are unbelievers, that invite them to Christ. And the course, which is what I have so far says, come, just come.
The only thing you need need to fix is your eyes on him.
Come, just come. The only thing you need to leave is it up to him.
And it's just falling into his arms and trusting him to take care of everything. And one of the sayings that we've come up with on the show is all Jesus, all the time, all roads lead to the cross.
No matter what is in your life going on, it all goes back to Jesus. And that's the effortless Christian life just living in Him. He said, abide in me, I'll abide in you. Remain in me, I'll remain in you. That's the focus. Excuse me?
That's the focus. The minute we start to try to do, to add the law or works, our eyes go off of Christ to ourself. And when we're doing that, that's when we're worried about what everybody else is looking and thinking about us, because our eyes on ourself. Oh, I've got it. And the apostle Paul said that when we preach the law, we're preaching ourselves.
However we preach Christ and ourselves as your servants for his sake.
So it's just a different turning of your focus.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: I think a lot of the reason we run into those issues from the pulpits these days is these pastors need a couple of things. One of them is a way to control the people that are under them, trying to behavior modify them, make them do things the way they think it should be done. And then of course, I've heard this from a couple of grace teachers and that is it's hard to preach grace sometimes because it's so simple, you know, it's just so bloody simple. I don't know what to say every week.
So I need other things to say. I need a 12 part series on your prayer life or this, that or the other, just so I have something to say.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: I don't think it's always that they're trying to control though, although that probably is with some. I think some of it's a lack of knowledge. And we had a whole. Our Last episode, episode 80 was the how they've got the how wrong. I think most pastors have good intentions. They want to see their congregations having great marriages, raising and loving their kids, being honest and hard workers in their jobs, and really shining the light of Christ in their lives. It's the how that trips them up.
And the how is by faith alone in what Christ has done, relying on his goodness, his mercy, his love for us to change us.
We usually like to end with just a final statement of summary.
You want to go first, Ajay, since you were just talking, or you want Tim to go and you can gather your Thoughts.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: I believe completely that our message is simple. It is Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Everything that we do beyond that point is reliant on those five words.
And we can't do it ourselves. We need Jesus, and he's not a taskmaster. He's not sitting there with a checklist going up. You did that today. Oh, you didn't do that. Oh, you didn't do that. Because I'd be telling you what, I'd have an awful long list every day of what I didn't do. Right. So I praise God that I don't have to go through that judgment all the time.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I just want to repeat the same thing I said because I think we need to hear this multiple times.
Unto him that does not work, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly.
His faith is counted for righteousness. That's how we become righteous.
Simple. Nothing to add, nothing to subtract.
[00:31:10] Speaker C: And that message is the message that just needs to ring out through this nation and this world at a time when so few understand that, much less could communicate it. And I've always said you could go up to do one of your man on the street interviews and say, can you explain to me the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?
And I think you can almost predict the answers. And it's most of the stuff we've been talking about here today. I want to give you one example to close.
We always steer very far from politics, so this is not political. But if you've been following politics, there are many people that profess to be Christians that are constantly.
You can just tell. They don't have the slightest clue what the gospel is. There's a man running for Congress right now who made this statement. He said, I know many atheists who are more Christ like than a lot of the Christians I know that in 10 cents doesn't get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It's not a contest for who's the most Christlike.
Christ is the most Christlike. And he was a lamb that was sacrificed for us because of God's grace, the undeserved, unearned, unmerited favor and love of God that rests on us when we put our faith in Christ.
Want to take us out, Tim?
[00:32:34] Speaker A: I just want to say it's great to be back, all three of us again.
Hope you guys won't try and duck out on me in the future anymore, but it is good to see you guys again. Thank you, everybody, and we'll talk to you again the next time.
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