Don't Be Ashamed of Jesus # 2

Don't Be Ashamed of Jesus # 2

So that on the great day of our Lord's reappearing you cannot say, "You preached, but you never showed me the way to life," let me tell you just what His Gospel is! It took six weeks for the bad news of the Solomon Islands naval encounters to reach our people, but in less than six seconds this glorious message can be heard around the world. It is the "good news" (that is the original meaning of "Gospel"), the best news anyone can ever receive, the assurance that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Almighty and the Son of the Virgin, moved by unmeasurable love, came into this sin-saturated world, lived His life among sin-bound men and died on the sin-cursed Cross, all to remove your transgressions and grant you pardon, eternal salvation, and heaven itself! Though blinded, willful enemies of the faith try to change or alter, add or detract, question or quibble, this is how the Scripture explains the Gospel: "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life!"

Never since Paul's day had the Gospel been proclaimed with the clarity and conviction shown by that mighty spiritual leader whose work millions commemorate this Sunday Martin Luther, reformer of the Church and restorer of New Testament Christianity. Just four and one quarter centuries ago yesterday he started the titanic task of restoring the Gospel. While time restrictions prevent us from broadcasting his immortal Ninety-five Theses, or religious truths, by which that earth-shaking Reformation began, we can present nine and five theses reemphasizing the glorious truths which Luther rediscovered and courageously restated. Here they are: First, the nine theses, or facts, which explain our redemption:

1. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" that is, lost the holiness with which the Lord created them. This is Bible truth.

2. Unforgiven sin is punished by eternal death in hell, Scripture, which has never made a mistake and never will, warns, "The wages of sin is death."

3. No man can remove his own transgressions, make himself pure and spotless in Heaven's sight. "Can...the leopard" change "his spots?" Holy Writ demands, to show how utterly impossible it is for us to cleanse our stained souls.

4. Nor can even saints or angels take away our transgressions. Revealed truth assures us that no man can "redeem his brother nor give to God a ransom for him."

5. Only the Almighty can remove sin's curse. If there is to be hope for men and women burdened with many and terrifying transgressions, they must find it in the God who cries out to a world of anguish and evil, "In Me is thine help!"

6. God not only can save us; He has saved us. He sent His Son to fulfill the Law we had broken, to assume the punishment of our iniquity, as our Substitute to pay the death penalty of all our guilt, so that, behold the Cross, we know, He "was delivered for our offenses."

7. Through faith in the Crucified and through faith alone we know that our sins are removed forever. The Bible promises, "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."

8. By accepting the Saviour we who were "children of wrath" have become "children of God" who live under divine love, guidance, and protection.

9. By believing this glorious Gospel heaven is ours, for if we remain faithful to the end, God has promised us the "crown of life" eternal amid the indescribable radiance of our celestial homeland.

These are nine facts of the Gospel. As I repeat them I am sure some of my Modernist friends are shaking their heads either in protest or in condescending wonder. I can hear them call these Gospel truths "old-fashioned," "out of date," "narrow", "bigoted." Yet the only message which can turn souls from hell to heaven is this old but ever new Gospel, of which proud, self-sufficient men are ashamed, but for which the contrite can never thank God sufficiently.

There is more to Christ's Gospel, however. Here are five additional theses, divine truths, showing its glorious grace:

1. The blood-bought, cross-gained salvation is for you, each one of you individually. Our text offers its blessing "to everyone that believeth." You may be on the lowest rungs of human society, cut off from your fellow men because of your misdeeds. (I am now thinking of the triple murderess in the Ohio penitentiary at St. Mary's who every Sunday urges the women convicts to hear our radio message. I have in mind a young man in the Jefferson City, Missouri penitentiary, serving his second sentence, who recently wrote me that he had altogether forgotten Jesus until he heard our broadcast, when he pledged himself never to reject his Saviour again.) You may be soldiers or civilians, rich or poor, white or black, yellow or red; yet each of you can say, "This is my Gospel, my Christ, my Saviour!"

~Walter A. Maier~

(continued with # 3)