Gospel Power

In His Name Devotionals
THE GOSPEL POWER

Many times we have either heard or read Paul’s wonderful statement: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation” (Rom. 1:16). The Greek word which is here translated “power” is “dunamis,” the word from which we get “dynamic,” “dynamo,” “dynamite,” etc. Therefore the Gospel is God’s dynamite, or God’s “Atomic bomb” unto salvation. The most powerful force in the world today, with the exception of Almighty God Himself, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are four “Powers” within the Gospel:

(1) The Power to introduce us to God.

Before Christ came, men had longed for and groped to find God through the study of nature. The Egyptians thought that they had found Him in the red ball of fire that circles the earth every twenty-four hours, so they worshiped the sun god. They were not fully satisfied, however, so they tried to find Him in the animals of their world. They worshiped the tiny beetle as well as the owl and the ox. In the trees, in the mountains, and in the animals that inhabit the earth, men have tried to find God. The Greeks sought God in philosophy. They invented many gods. The Romans longed to know God, too. God cannot be found in Nature, He can only be suggested. The God seen in Nature is only a partial God.

In the revelation of the Old Testament, God is more clearly seen. There we learn many things about His power and something about His wrath. We also learn something of His love for men, but at best it is only partial. Finally, the real, the true and complete conception of God came through Jesus Christ. One of the greatest truths of the Bible is the fact that Jesus exemplified on earth a real likeness of our heavenly Father. When He had lived some years on the earth and had shown a divine pattern of living, He uttered this great sentence, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). After all these centuries the finest thing I know to say about God is to tell of Christ—how He lived, what He did, what His motives were—then to say, “God is like Christ.” These facts are revealed only through the gospel of Christ, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

(2) The Power within the Gospel to change human nature.

We think of the force of gravitation as a tremendous force, and it is terrific! To think of the moon reaching across space to pull the seas and control the tides, but that is only a physical force. Think of the power of the Gospel of Christ, more real than physical force reaching into lives of men, correcting them, restoring them, lifting them to greater usefulness. This power is infinitely greater than a physical force.

The essence of Christianity is based upon the assumption that human nature can be changed. There is a power in the Gospel (Christ) that we cannot define but that we know is real because we have seen the results. Civilization has been changed. To me, the greatest chasm in the world is not Grand Canyon or others, but the greatest inconsistency in the world is the difference between what we are and what we should be! Our experience is like a window-pane through which the sunshine should come bright and clear, but instead the pane is dirtied, marred, even though not utterly blackened, and the light gets through but dimly and partially. We are not what we can be, might be, or ought to be. And we know it. The gospel as obeyed has power to bridge the huge gap between what we are and what we should be. As we worship God day after day, week after week, we are changed from what we are into an express image of the Son of God. As Nathaniel Hawthorne expressed it, even the youngsters will remember the story of Ernest and the Great Stone Face. When Earnest was a boy he heard the story that someday there would come into the community a great man who would resemble the profile of the Great Stone Face. Day after day and week after week Ernest looked at the profile of the great face on the mountainside. And every time he heard that a visitor was to make his appearance in the community, Ernest hoped that he would be the one to look like the Great Stone Face. But time after time Ernest was disappointed. Finally, when he was an old man he heard that a new visitor was coming into the community. All the people in the community were there. Somehow they seemed to feel that he might be the one who resembled the Face. But again, they were disappointed, until finally, someone in the crowd remarked that Ernest himself bore the resemblance of the Great Stone Face. Through years and years of looking into the face of Jesus Christ, worshiping Him devotedly, and thinking His thoughts, we become like Jesus. Paul expressed it to the Corinthians, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).

(3) There is Power within the Gospel to comfort.

What good is power if it does not bring peace? The idea so many people seem to have about the function of a gospel preacher is depressing. Sometimes he is regarded as a “gloom-merchant,” resembling the funeral figure so often portrayed in cartoons; sometimes he is thought to be a professional purveyor of good cheer, sunshine, niceness, and respectability; especially in recent years he has been thought to be a kind of modern magician giving those who hear him peace of mine, “positive thoughts,” emotional security, and the like. He is generally expected to perform these sleight of hand tricks without the Gospel of Christ.

Our civilization is like a painted face on a balloon. As the balloon swells, the face becomes more and more monstrous, and if we take it at its face value we will be terrified and paralyzed by it. But actually (and this makes it even worse), it is hollow within. One pinprick and it is destroyed. Man needs a handrail to establish him upon the ship of life. He travels through sorrows and experiences disappointments. Comfort is shallow and superficial if not founded upon the Gospel of Christ.

The twenty-third Psalm has been a source of comfort for the masses of mankind through the centuries. The world could spare many a large book better this sunny little psalm. It has dried millions of tears and supplied the mold into which many hearts have poured their peaceful faith. "It has charmed more grief to rest than all the philosophy of the world. It has removed to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows than there are sands on the seashore. It has given courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the hearts of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pining griefs, or orphans in their loneliness" (Henry Ward Beecher). What is here said of this exquisite psalm may be said of the Word of God as a whole.

In 1 Thess. 4:13-18 there are true words of comfort.

When we go over to the city of the dead we find solace and consolation in the message of comfort from the Holy Scriptures, such as "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day" (2 Tim. 1:12), or "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:1, 8). Paul also said, "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21 NKJV). To the Corinthian church he assured them that death was not a possessor, but was possessed by Christians (1 Cor. 3:21-23).

Consider Joseph Parker in London many years ago, standing in his pulpit during the period when the atheists were attacking the inspiration of the Scriptures. He read what Wilhousen and Huxley had said against the Bible, then reached down and took up the large pulpit Bible, walked over and dropped it into a pulpit chair. Turning back he brushed his hands as if to say, "Well, we are through with that pack of myths." Then he imagined a woman whose husband had just died and whose children were in need of food and clothing coming in. She asked for help. Parker said, "Wilhousen, what can you tell her, and Huxley, what can you tell her?" There was no answer, so he walked over, picked up the Bible, brought it back, opened it on the pulpit and read again those great passages that give confidence and undergirding to our lives (2 Tim. 4:6-8).

(4) The Gospel has the Power of God to salvation.

There have been many attempts to explain the sad religious condition of our day, but in the end they all come down to just one thing: modern religion is not aimed at the glory of God but rather at the comfort of man. What can religion do for me? That's the big question people are asking today. What can I get out of it? How will it help me to solve my problems? How can I use it to my advantage? Sheer religious opportunism—that's what it is. A kind of man-centered piety, and in most cases extremely selfish, too, with only a secondary concern for others.

And, unfortunately, that's the way it is often presented too, right from the pulpit. People are urged to go to church because it's good for them, not because God commands it. They are told to have faith because it will make them feel better, not because it is the only way for them to get back to God and thereby find salvation. They are called to spiritual service because it will help build a better community, with higher standards of morality, justice, and education, not because God wants them to serve Him for His sake, whatever the cost, even if there is no hope of such temporal benefits.

And that explains why this modern religion is so popular. This is what people like. They want the Church to help them. They want preachers to be their servants. They want God to exist for their benefit. In other words, they've got things all turned around in their religious thinking. Actually, they are not worshiping God at all, but they are worshiping themselves. And that's the most wicked form of idolatry.

This world needs something more than a spiritual aspirin tablet, because it is suffering from something much worse than a spiritual headache. It needs redemption, not just relief.

In James 1:21 we read, "There lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

The political and cultural world of Paul's day, the world symbolized by Rome, was proud of power. It knew a lot about power: power to build armies, power to crush enemies, power to over-run and annex territories, power to levy taxes, power to enslave peoples, power to lay highways and erect palaces. Yet the Roman Empire of that first century was sinking to death and doom. Why? With all its power, it knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the phrase, 'to salvation.' Its power could destroy; it could not save. It knew the power of man; it knew not the power of God. And now, by the same irony of fate that brought Rom to the dust, our self-glorifying civilization is so near the brink of collapse that fear, consciously or unconsciously, is the one nightmare that presides over our new millennium existence. Power! Of course we have power on a scale that makes ancient Rome look like a piker. Electric power, water power, motor power, industrial power, military power, atomic power! And just because it is in man's own purposes, it is doing for us precisely what it did for Rome—destroying us.

The lost phrase is still “to salvation.” It is still the missing key. It will continue to be until we, like Paul and the early Christians, get it through our hearts that man power can never save; it can only destroy. It takes God's power to save. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation.”