01.01. Section 1

Jesus said, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you...as it is written, This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me...teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’" (Mark 7:6-7)

Yet [God] has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach - if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister (Colossians 1:22-23). The Apostle Paul warns us about other gospels that may entice us away from the true gospel. Paul is very blunt about this in his letter to the Galatians:

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ (Galatians 1:6-7, emphasis added). Are you following the true gospel - the one Jesus preached? The one Paul and the other apostles preached? How do you know? What are the consequences if you are not following the right gospel? The word gospel means "good news." Even in Paul’s day, other preachers had different types of "good news" for their listeners. Some preached that salvation could be obtained through eating the right foods. Others said you had to join the Jewish religion or practice strict personal disciplines in order to be saved. There was the Gnostic gospel, which was a type of early mysticism, and the reformed Jewish gospel and all kinds of other gospels. There were even other so-called "messiahs" around at the time of Christ.

Things haven’t changed much, have they?

Most born-again Christians can see through heretical teachings. Some of those teachings are so far off the wall it’s hard to believe anyone could take them seriously. But other false teachings are much more subtle and difficult to spot - especially when they infiltrate the true gospel. The teachers of these other gospels try to convince us that things are not as black and white as Paul makes them out to be. They tell us that there is a little room to accommodate the flesh - to expect wealth and good health. Or that the way pointed out in the Bible is just an ideal - goals we’re meant to aim at but not expected to hit. All these ideas are designed to appeal to our flesh, and Satan uses them to lull us until we’re ineffective. But the gospel that Paul preached involved making tough choices and taking hard stands. It was about putting your life on the line. Paul himself lived through all these challenges. After his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he became a wanted man, hunted down by the same Pharisees who had been his friends and colleagues. Why? Because he spoke against their "gospels" - which were no gospels at all. They were just vain attempts to offer God religious practices He wasn’t really interested in. What God wants is all of us - heart, soul, mind and body.

So, Paul was imprisoned for his beliefs. He suffered torture and beatings. And from this vantage point he urged both Timothy and the Galatians to be wary of a gospel that’s more comfortable. A gospel that allows you to withhold your heart from God and offer him a few trinkets. Through the things he endured in his life, Paul showed that he had the credentials to speak and teach with authority about the true gospel.

What was the true gospel for which Paul gave up everything? Here’s what he told Timothy:

[God’s grace] has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you (2 Timothy 1:10-14).

I want to warn you about this: There are lot of "other gospels." Most of them appeal to our flesh. They avoid challenge and sacrifice. But they are not the true gospel that leads us to salvation. One mark of the true gospel is that it demands sacrifice from us. Sacrifice of having control of our lives, moment by moment. It challenges everything we do. But as we learn to embrace the gospel - and to realize that this world is not our final home - and when we live it out in our lives, God will use us to call the world to himself.

If anyone exemplified a changed life, it was Rees Howells, a famous preacher and a leader in the great Welsh Revival in the early 1900s. He went on to be used by God to bring revival to England, Ireland and Africa. Howells insisted that his effectiveness for Christ came from one incident when he was twenty-seven years old - he had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit. This is how Norman Grubb describes it in Howells’ biography: The meeting with the Holy Ghost was just as real to [Howells] as his [conversion to Christianity] three years before. "I saw Him as a person apart from flesh and blood and He said to me, As the Savior had a body, so I dwell in the cleansed temple of the believer. I am God and I come to ask you to give your body to Me, that I may work through you. I need a body for My temple. But it must belong to Me without reserve for two persons with different wills can never live in the same body. Will you give Me yours?

You must go out. I shall not mix Myself with yourself.’ I saw the honor He gave me in offering to indwell me but there were many things very dear to me and I knew He wouldn’t keep even one of them. The change He would make was very clear. It meant every bit of my fallen nature was to go to the cross and He would bring His own life and His own nature into me. It was unconditional surrender."[Norman Grubb, Rees Howells, Intercessor (Fort Washington, Penn.: Christian Literature Crusade, 1967) 38-40.] The story continues with God giving Howells an ultimatum: Would he obey or not? He had to give God his reply the following week. For the next few days Howells wept continually. He couldn’t eat or sleep and he lost seven pounds. This was the hardest decision he would ever have to make - to hand over his life like a blank check to God. Was he willing to let go of all his dreams, all his possessions, and let the Holy Spirit take full control? This is what happened when he reached his decision:

"Nothing was more real to me than the process I went through for that whole week... The Holy Spirit went on dealing with me exposing the root of my nature which was self and you can only get out of a thing what is in its root. Sin was canceled and it wasn’t sin He was dealing with; it was self - that thing which came from the Fall. He was not going to take any superficial surrender. He put His finger on each part of my self-life, and I have to decide in cold-blood. He could never take a thing away until I gave my consent."[Norman Grubb, Rees Howells, Intercessor (Fort Washington, Penn.: Christian Literature Crusade, 1967) 38-40.]

Like the Apostle Paul, Howells found God does not want us to play games. There comes a time when the Holy Spirit puts His finger on areas in our life and asks us to hand over control of them to Him. In order to receive the resurrection life and the power that goes along with it, we must be willing to let go of everything we hold close. Sometimes our flesh screams as we do this. Other times it devises subtle ways of getting us off-track. Instead of kicking and screaming, our flesh quietly tries to distract us with side issues - anything to keep us from giving everything to God. Suddenly, small matters of theology become major issues as we focus on anything but what the Holy Spirit wants to deal with. Have you ever noticed how easily small children can be distracted? Give children candy, and you can walk off with all their toys. For awhile, they’ll be so happy with the candy they won’t even notice.

Believers can be like that too. Paul continually reminded the Christians of his day to stay on-track. If they did not stay focused on Christ, the Way, other preachers would come along to lead them astray with their fleshly gospels. Some people focused on getting rich quick, like Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:9-25). Others sought to turn the gospel into a purely mystical experience. And still others wanted to bog down the whole message in Jewish laws and customs. After about two months, if these young Christians hadn’t received a letter from Paul, they would begin to listen to these other gospels. They wanted to see if other interpretations of the Christian life were easier to follow. Though they were hungry for spiritual truth, their flesh kept tempting them to believe many things that weren’t the gospel of the kingdom.