The simple gospel and profound teaching

The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household”. Acts 16:29-31

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished  -  he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26

I once read an article by a prominent New Testament scholar in which they wrote some really quite rude things about the apostle Paul. They accused him in effect of taking the beautifully simple and clear message of Jesus and turning it into “theology”, by which they meant something very theoretical and difficult to grasp.

I think I know what they meant. As a child I used to sing in Sunday School “Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear…” And who could argue with that? - Jesus healing the sick, or raising the dead, or setting free the woman taken in adultery, or calling nasty, greedy Zacchaeus down from the tree… lovely stuff! Don’t we all bask in stories like that? And then we turn to passages like Romans 3 and - let’s be honest - we find ourselves struggling even to just read, never mind fully understand, what Paul is saying.

But we are told that “all scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16), not just the easy bits, so we are committed to wrestling with these more demanding parts. Are we right in this? Yes, I’m sure we are. But I at least, for one, have a smidgeon of sympathy for that disrespectful scholar. I wrote last time about “keeping it simple”, but I can’t pretend I always find scripture straight-forward. I must admit that I was pleased when I first came across the words of the apostle Peter – the human head of the church, no less! – that “our dear brother Paul” wrote some things “which are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). I felt quite relieved!

I’ve put at the top two passages either about or by Paul. In Acts 16 we find him (with Silas) expressing himself in the simplest imaginable way – just like Jesus! And then in Romans 3 we find him giving us great helpings of “theology” – using technical terms like “law” and “righteousness”, “justification” and “faith”, “redemption” and  “atonement”. No wonder if we find ourselves rather at sea.

Of course, there are plenty of places where we find Jesus also saying hard-to-understand things – his ministry was by no means all simplicity and clarity. And Paul was by no means the only New Testament writer to pose challenges of understanding. But I’m sure you will get the point. If our salvation depends essentially on simple, childlike trust in Jesus, what need is there of all these heavy and challenging parts? Can’t we be saved without understanding them?

Yes, I’m sure we can. That’s why my mind went to the dying thief, to the Philippian jailer, to the woman taken in adultery as examples of people who knew literally nothing about “salvation” until that moment when they were brought face to face with Jesus.

Where is this leading us?

For one thing, I think it explains one of the main divisions within the Christian church today.

On the one hand there are those who stress the sheer simplicity of the gospel message: childlike faith is all you need! – and wonderful miracles will come tumbling down on your head! And then on the other hand there are those who stress the profound depth of God’s holy word, and emphasise teaching (followed  by teaching, followed by more teaching, followed by still more teaching…). Cynic that I am, I sometimes wonder if such churches require a written entrance exam before anyone can be admitted to membership: oh, you must be sure to get your doctrine right!

These two Christian “camps”, as we might call them, though they both honour Jesus as Saviour and Lord, can be suspicious of one another. The “happy-clappies”, simple believers, look down their noses at the over-fastidious “reformed” types; and they in turn are a bit contemptuous of these over-emotional “charismatic” types. (At least we can be thankful that today we don’t seek to resolve the issues as in by-gone centuries – by burning one another at the stake.)

Is there a middle way between the two types of Christianity? I think there is.

First, the “charismatic” types may well be open to the criticism of shallowness and of raising unrealistic expectations. I remember a blind lady who was on one occasion surrounded by a group of extremely zealous believers who insisted that if only she had enough faith then her sight would be restored. When that failed to happen she was left feeling guilty and troubled, for she felt she did indeed have true faith, however inadequate it might have been. She needed some wise and balanced words from a mature Christian to be reassured.

On the other hand the more “reformed” types are perhaps open to the criticism of turning faith in Jesus into simply an act of cold obedience – “Sorry, but if you don’t believe in Jesus you can’t be saved!”. (You can almost see a severely wagging finger there.) It comes across as if Christians are inventing a new “work of the law”, not much different from the scribes and Pharisees – faith is something you must devoutly do.

We need to remind ourselves that the word “gospel” means “good news”. The gospel is not a threat: “believe in Jesus or there’s no hope for you”. No, it’s a comforting offer: “you want to be saved? – just believe in Jesus!” There’s a world of difference between the tone of those two statements.

Putting it another way… we believe in justification by faith; we are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith.

Get the difference?

Father, I thank you for your holy word in scripture, even though I find parts of it hard to understand. Help me simply to rest in Jesus and his cross and resurrection – but also to persevere in seeking deeper understanding of the Bible as a whole. Amen.

Keep it simple!

² At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. ³ The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group ⁴ and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷ When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

⁹ At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰ Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

¹¹ “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8:2-11

It’s striking how sometimes you read a Bible passage which you have read many times before - and it strikes you as if for the first time. This happened to me recently when our pastor preached from this passage:  “the woman taken in adultery”. I’m sure you know the story…

The religious leaders have made a decision that Jesus, to them a dangerous trouble-maker, must be got rid of. They wait for a moment when he is surrounded by a crowd of people in the temple courtyard in Jerusalem, and then seek to catch him out with a trick question. They have got hold of this woman and they drag her before him. Can you picture it? – I wonder if she put up a fight?

Quoting the Old Testament law (presumably Deuteronomy 22:13-30), they put Jesus on the spot by asking for his reaction to the requirement that she should be stoned to death. Their aim is simple: they expect him to pronounce forgiveness over her, thus in effect condoning sin and showing himself to be in opposition to God’s word. At first it seems he tries to ignore them - he bends down and writes in the sand with his finger. But “they kept on questioning him”, so he decides that he must answer them.

I think the answer he comes out with is simply wonderful: “Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”.

In other words, he doesn’t try to defend her. He could have done just that, of course – he could have pointed out that their use of the Deuteronomy passage was selective, to say the least; and, even more, he could have politely inquired where was the man in the case (adultery, after all, is not a sin a person commits on their own). But no; he keeps it simple, as if to say “All right, no doubt you are quite right in what you say. Go ahead and stone her by all means – oh, but before you start, you will make sure that the first stone-thrower is sinless, won’t you?...”

And what happens? – the questions stop coming, the fingers stop pointing, and one by one his opponents shuffle off, no doubt with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground…

I suspect that while this dramatic scene was playing out, Jesus, outwardly calm and polite, was inwardly seething with fury. The hypocrisy of these people!

And it makes you wonder if in our day there are times God looks down on us – all spiritual correctness and respectability, of course – and is grieved that in principle we are no better.

A truly challenging thought. But what particularly struck me in a new way as I listened to that sermon was something rather different: the marvellous simplicity of the good news we call “the gospel”.

Jesus didn’t condone that woman’s sin. He simply took it as a fact, but then he gently made it clear that he had no interest in condemning her. Yes, she must clean up her life, no question about that – “Go now and leave your life of sin” – but he lifted her burden from her. How much she understood of the law and the character of an all-holy God, whether she did indeed embark that day on a new, pure life, we have no way of knowing; but I’m pretty sure that if she walked away with tears rolling down her face they will have been tears of joy more than sorrow.

And I found myself thinking, how complicated we Christians tend to make the gospel! We have divided ourselves into camps, often with labels, and look down on other Christians who identify themselves with other labels, or emphasise different aspects of the truth. We pronounce on which camps may be “sound” and which “unsound”. We invent various rules, perhaps unconsciously – and perhaps even condemn ourselves when we ourselves fail to measure up.

I remember an evangelistic outreach event where one of the “counsellors” (people on hand to advise new converts) was adamant that a conversion wasn’t complete until the person in question had manifested certain specific spiritual gifts. For him it seemed as if simple, humble faith in Jesus wasn’t enough. And then I think of this woman, or of the thief dying on the cross, to whom Jesus said “Today you will be with me in paradise”. So uncomplicated!

I think of the word of Paul to the Philippian jailer who was scared at what might happen to him as his prison crumbled about his ears: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. So uncomplicated! I find myself wondering cynically if there are churches which require would-be members to take a written entrance exam in order to qualify. O Lord, forgive our folly!

Thinking like this does, of course, raise real questions. If it’s all so wonderfully simple, why then has God given us in his word such demanding passages as we find in Paul’s letters or in Hebrews or Revelation or Jude, not to mention large swathes of the Old Testament? Is there no place for the study of detailed “doctrine” or for getting stuck into all those obscure biblical names and events which seem to have no relevance to us?

No! To say that would be wrong. God has given us his word as it is, perhaps particularly to get us to understand the deep Jewish roots of our faith, or for some other reason that we will only grasp after serious and possibly difficult study.

Certainly, the Bible contains a whole lot more than beautiful stories of God’s overflowing mercy and love towards sinners: but the point that hit me that Sunday morning with new freshness as I saw that woman walking away with her head held high was… let us never lose sight of that wonderful, infinitely comforting, simplicity.

Father, your truth is profound and often beyond our understanding. Help us, especially as we wrestle with your word in scripture, to call on the Holy Spirit to give us light. But help us also never to forget the sheer simplicity which is at the heart of the gospel. Amen.