9 minute read
The Berean Box
relationship with Christ shared her conversion story with everyone on the bus. By the time she finished, I was weeping. I knew I didn’t know Jesus in the deep, personal, and satisfying way Nancy described. I had turned my back on His love.
As Nancy put an arm around me, I confessed my sins for two hours. I felt cleansed, forgiven, and completely new. I already sensed God’s transformational work in my life.
When my father got up the next morning, he cracked open my bedroom door and was shocked to find me reading the Bible. I was reading from Psalm 32: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (v. 1).
LIVING FOR CHRIST
After that, my life changed dramatically. Feeling convicted by God’s Spirit, I wrote a letter to the owner of the store where I had shoplifted the sweater, confessing my dishonesty and sending him four times the price of my theft. Amazingly, he wrote back. He had shared my letter with his church youth group and told me a number of students related to my testimony and made decisions to trust Christ.
As I continued to grow spiritually, I decided to become a missionary in my large, public high school. With other Christian teens, I started a daily Bible study that grew exponentially. Over the next two years, God gave me the amazing privilege of leading more than 100 students to Christ.
I went to college and also to the Word of Life Bible Institute, where I met my husband, Mike. We both felt called to work with youth for the rest of our lives. We ministered for 43 years in a plethora of positions and places with Word of Life, seeing thousands of young people come to Christ. Today Mike leads The Summit Church ministerial training ministry in Durham, North Carolina. His website is mikecalhoun.org.
Over the years, life has thrown us major curveballs, but we continue to rest in the God who redeemed me when I was 7 years old, brought me back to Himself when I strayed, and saved me from what could have been a disastrous life. He continues to transform me day by day, as He does all His children, by His grace and for His glory.
Betsi Calhoun
lives in North Carolina and loves writing, teaching, singing, and discipling gals.
WHAT DOES ‘CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST’ MEAN?
Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
To correctly interpret this verse, it’s important to examine the context. There were people in the early church called Judaizers (v. 14) who taught it was not enough for Gentiles to believe in Jesus for salvation; they had to keep the Mosaic Law, especially circumcision (Acts 15:1; Gal. 2:14; 5:2; 6:12–13). The Judaizers taught a salvation by works, not by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul strongly denounced their teaching and practices (Gal. 4:17) and taught salvation by faith in Christ alone (Gal. 2:16, 21; Eph. 2:8–9).
The Old Testament Law was powerless to impart spiritual life and left people guilty in sin and condemned to eternal death. Paul said he died to the Law so he could live for God. That is, Christ’s death provided conclusive evidence to Paul that salvation does not come by keeping the Law. It comes only through faith in Jesus the Messiah.
In Galatians 2:20, Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ.” The Greek verb for “crucified” is in the perfect tense, emphasizing both the past, completed act of Christ’s physical crucifixion and its continuing effects on the lives of all who put faith in Him. Jesus, who was sinless, died for our sins, satisfying God’s divine wrath against sin. In other words, Jesus Christ paid in full the redemptive price God required, making it possible for God to declare righteous everyone who puts his or her faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross. This is something neither the Mosaic Law nor the Levitical system was designed to accomplish. (See Hebrews 10:4.)
Therefore, through Christ’s death and resurrection, all believers in Christ have been freed from the demands of the Mosaic Law because those demands were fulfilled in Christ.
Like Paul, all true believers can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Paul not only was released from the Mosaic Law, but also from his sinful self. Although believers are still alive in the flesh and prone to sin while on Earth, we are new creations in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). We live by faith through the indwelling Holy Spirit, who guides and leads us through this pilgrim life.
The true Christian life involves Christ living through us as we yield to the Holy Spirit. Thus, all believers in Christ are forever united with Him in resurrection life, possessing all the eternal benefits salvation provides. Hallelujah, what a Savior!
by David M. Levy
WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?
The incomparable message of God’s restorative love
by Tom Simcox
Many years ago, my wife and I were invited to dinner at the home of a prominent older woman. She knew governors and senators and had been friends with Albert Einstein. Along with our hostess, we dined with a doctoral candidate at Harvard and an elegant couple originally from Vienna, Austria.
After some introductions and small talk, the Viennese couple shared how they had met—not in Vienna, but here in the United States where he was a scientist and professor at Princeton University.
“So, how did you and Lorna meet?” they asked. I explained we were introduced at the international headquarters of the organization we both worked for, which then prompted them to ask the organization’s name.
“We work for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry,” I replied. Their next question will forever be engraved in my mind. “Gospel? Gospel? What is gospel?”
“It means ‘good news,’” I said. “It’s the Good News of the Messiah of Israel.” The answer generated an entirely different conversation that lasted for hours and caused me to reflect on the power and universality of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
GOD’S DYNAMITE
The word gospel appears throughout the New Testament. In the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel Jesus preached differed from the gospel message we declare today. Though both clearly qualify as “good news,” Jesus’ gospel of the coming Messianic Kingdom was meant specifically for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the Jewish people.
Only after the religious hierarchy officially rejected Jesus did His message change recipients and focus on His expectant death and resurrection. It is His death and resurrection that comprise the message the apostle Paul declared: “For I am not ashamed of the
JOHN NEWTON
gospel [good news] of Christ [Messiah], for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek [Gentile]” (Rom. 1:16). The gospel message is extremely powerful. The Greek word translated “power” is dunamis, the basis for Alfred Nobel’s naming his explosive dynamite. 1 The gospel is the dynamite of God for salvation. “The gospel proclaims and produces salvation in everyone who believes it.”2 The gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is a powerful, strong, life-altering message. It has transformed the lives of untold millions for more than 2,000 years and altered the destinies of countless people for eternity. John Newton (1725–1807), who wrote the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace,” so clearly understood the gospel’s transforming power that he declared at the age of 82, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner—and that Christ is a great Savior!”
The power of this marvelous message is also its source: Jesus. Paul conveyed this fact to the believers at the church in Corinth: “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1, 3–4). This is the Good News. Jesus died for our sins! “For He [the Father] made Him [the Son] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
The reality is that everyone sins. We are born with a sin nature that is completely contrary to the holiness of God. The first time we do anything a holy God would not do, we sin and fall short of His righteousness (Rom. 3:23). Hence, we must educate our children in how to behave because they don’t come by it naturally. The Bible explains, “The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who . . . seek God. They have all turned aside, . . . there is none who does good, no, not one” (Ps. 14:2–3).
The heart of the gospel message is love. God loves sinners but cannot tolerate sin.
Years ago, I met a man who genuinely did not believe he was a sinner. I asked him if he allowed all who knocked on his door entrance into his home, to which he emphatically replied, “No way! It’s my house, and I decide who can enter.”
I agreed. Then I explained that heaven is God’s home, and not everyone who wants to go there will be admitted. “Would you like to know how you can enter heaven, God’s house?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied.
“You have to be as good as God.”
“Wow! Not too many are going then,” he said with a laugh.
“That’s why Jesus came,” I told him. “He came to deal with our sin and allow us to enter heaven if we put our faith in Him.”
Jesus was completely innocent of wrongdoing. He was perfect because He was God in the flesh. Yet He was put to death for us. The prophet Isaiah wrote, “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7). For that purpose He came to Earth then rose victorious over death.
Death is the result of humanity’s sin, our rebellion against God’s authority. Sin separates us from God, and the message of the gospel is one of restorative love. Jesus said, “‘If I am lifted up from the earth, [I] will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (Jn.12:32–33).
LIFE-TRANSFORMING AND UNIVERSAL
The gospel of salvation is also completely life-transforming. I knew a man many years ago who was extremely prejudiced toward anyone who was not like him. He cursed so often I wondered if he could speak a single sentence without profanity.
Despite his gruff behavior, we became great friends; and I spent many hours with him over the course of many years. Eventually, he asked Jesus to be his Savior, and everything
