The Gospel Simplified

Note:  Unlike the previous two posts, this is NOT from my eventual book “What Does The Gospel Say About Sports?”

This week I’ve been teaching a group of 30 Chinese exchange students a contextualized English language. Basically, what I mean is that I’ve been trying to teach them English in a way they can actually use it. So instead of giving them a textbook on English, we’ve tried talking the language. We’ve discussed some American history. We’ve practiced how to greet people and carry on a conversation, as well as ask questions. These are all things a native English speaker takes for granted.

Doing this has been loads of fun, while utterly unpredictable. Yesterday I spent five hours teaching, whereas I was originally scheduled for two. I wouldn’t even be bringing this up if not for the effect it had on the rest of my day. I originally had a discipleship meeting scheduled for 12:30 in the afternoon with two poor/homeless guys. Thankfully, a friend was able to relay the message to them that I would eventually arrive–about three hours late.

When I finally arrived at the park to pick them up, they were waiting patiently sitting in the shade enjoying their day. Yet they were so happy to see me, and couldn’t wait to get some Chinese food (how fitting for me). After taking one of the men to turn in some recycling  we headed over to the bank and then to Subway since there was no Chinese place near the bank. We ordered footlongs and the two of them ordered sodas, which they could pay for with the money they earned from recycling. When we sat down to eat we prayed and thanked God for the food and for providing the time and place to meet together.

About 15 minutes later, we had finished our sandwiches, and one of the men named Juan asked me if I could read from the book. I of course was delighted to do so. But before I did that, he asked me a question using a pen and a napkin. Earlier in the day he had been speaking with a man in the park who claimed there are three heavens; first the moon, then the sun, and finally the heaven where God is. According to this man, we fly to the moon and past, but nobody makes it to heaven because they are burned by the light of the sun. I proceeded to clarify that there is one heaven (Genesis 1:8) but that the Bible does speak of the heavens (Genesis 1:1) which is speaking of the stars, sky, moon, sun, etc.

At this point I’m thinking to myself, “wow we are so off topic, I wanted to talk about Saturday’s sermon, and now I’m using a napkin and pen to show there is only one true heaven. What in the world kind of discipleship meeting is this?”

But the Holy Spirit was very much alive in that tiny little Subway restaurant. We got to talking about hell and how there is also only one hell. And then we cleared up that there is no in-between; a person either goes to heaven or hell. And then Juan told a story of how he had a friend who didn’t believe in Jesus until one day before he died.

This was the opportunity I had been hoping for the whole time. I was able to explain that God controls death and he controls who gets into heaven. I went on to say that God was so amazing that he placed faith in Juan’s friend the day before he died because that man was among the elect and had to come to faith before he died.

We continued on this subject and explored Luke 23:32-43 which is when Jesus is hanging on the cross next to two criminals. Right before their conversations with Jesus are recorded we see Jesus pray to his father to forgive them for they know not what they do. It seems to me as I read this no coincidence that this precedes the conversations with the criminals (of course Jesus’ prayer is also for the soldiers, guards, and crowd that observed the crucifixion).

The first criminal mocks Jesus by shouting “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” It is clear just from the man’s tone that he does not believe. We can tell however that the man on the opposite side had come to believe as he rebuked the other man, admits that he deserved death while Jesus didn’t, and then begged Jesus to save him. It at this point that Jesus utters the famous words, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise (v 43).”

Both of the men I was speaking with asked the question, “Why did one believe while the other did not?” At this point I knew we were getting somewhere. It’s a question we all must ask. Why does one person believe when another does not, despite having the same evidence?

1. At least in this story we can rule out the case of evidence. Clearly both men could see the exact same man beside them dying on that cross.

2. We can rule out that one of the men was more apt to believe or was naturally a better person. The story says both were criminals.

3. It seems pretty clear to me that the option of choice is not presented in this story. The two men beside Jesus were complete equals in every way. There was no difference between them, and yet one believed while the other did not.  I suppose it’s possible the one who believed chose to do so, but what do we do then with the one who did not?

The fact these men were equals means if one chose, the other should have chosen the same or made the same decision. But the text is very clear that he did not.

Additionally, the one who believed in Jesus already started acting as a Christian prior to his asking Jesus to save him, when he rebuked the other.

This is crazy because we assume in our evangelical culture that you are not a Christian until you’ve asked Jesus to save you. But this passage looks that ideal straight in the eye and calls it a liar. This passage says you are a Christian when God starts making you act like one. Part of acting like one is asking Jesus to save you.

That is why belief is a continual call to repentance. Repentance is not something we do once and get saved. Rather, repentance is a repeated and practiced attribute of a true believer.

This discipleship meeting started with food, then with some writing on a napkin, continued with me drawing stick figures to show them the doctrine of sovereign grace, or how God decides randomly to choose one person out of a larger group who are all headed for hell. And somehow I did this by drawing stick figures and crossing out those who did not believe and drawing arrows for those who did on a napkin and a receipt. And it made sense to them and we praised Jesus together on the way back to the park.

Now that’s grace!

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