It's in the message itself.
Why does salvation come through believing Good News rather than doing good works?
It's not because of God's arbitrary decision. Good works can't change any human heart.
And it's not some obscure theological mystery. Simple common sense explains it: after you get through doing everything good you can think of, you find that your original selfishness is still intact. It may be disguised so you can hardly recognize it, but history is replete with "religious" people wearing themselves out with good works who do it all for self-centered reasons. However disguised, their real motivation was racking up points for a reward. Genuine love never had a chance to get in. "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3, NIV).
Phony good news would tell us that some selfishness is okay because there's no use hoping for a genuine change of heart; it's impossible. Just adjust your thinking. Other people are that way; why not you?
Such counterfeit good news also declares that God Himself will be content for us to go on like we are, so long as we say we "accept" Jesus. He will whitewash us in the final judgment.
Bible Good News Is Better.
The clearest chapter about it is the one where Jesus describes being "born again." A member of the highest ruling council, Nicodemus knew that he needed help. His hypocrisy worried him. Coming well after working hours, Nicodemus sought out Jesus "by night" for an interview. He rather awkwardly began the conversation with some faint praise:
"'We know you are a teacher who has come from God ... ' In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.'
"'How can a man be born when he is old?' Nicodemus asked. 'Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!'
"Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit'" (John 3:2-6, NIV).
Some things Christ said that night were like time bombs sown in Nicodemus's mind. They released their powerful energies as time went on. A better metaphor is that these truths were like flower seeds planted in a desert, seeds that appear to be dead until spring rains and sunshine awaken them to exuberant life.
The point is that these truths have inherent power.
The Savior did not tell Nicodemus that he must produce his own new birth. The "you-must-be-born-again" was not a do-it-yourself enterprise. Jesus went on to explain the Good News that this miracle is what the Lord does, not man. It's discouraging for a person to be told over and over that he "must be born again" when he thinks the job is up to him to perform. No human being has ever "born" himself (excuse me; we need a new verb); he simply had to let his parents do it for him. So, says Jesus, Nicodemus let the Holy Spirit, superseding his parents, perform the new birth within him:
"You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit" (verses 7, 8, NIV).
The Divine Obstetrician.
Surprising as it may seem, the Good News is very good: (1) the Holy Spirit does the new-birth work, and (2) He will do it if you don't frustrate Him. (People who love Bad News won't like this.)
That "wind" is forever blowing seeds of heavenly truth into minds and hearts. No one is wise enough to tell where they come from, for the grace of Cod has been working on human hearts in multitudinous ways ever since time began. What parents have said, friends, songs of praise, Bible messages heard or read, sermons, expressions of true love— all can be ways that the Holy Spirit uses to plant "Good News" ideas in the heart.
These "seeds" may lie there deep, unrecognized for years, but they are certain to germinate because each one has within itself the mysterious principle of eternal life. Each "seed" of Good News truth "is the power of God to salvation" (Romans 1:16).
Here is another illustration of how the divine word of truth accomplishes its purpose:
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower
and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
—Isaiah 55:10, 11, NIV
Christ's illustration of the wind blowing "wherever it pleases" is a picture of God's compassionate concern for every person. As surely as you have felt the wind blowing on your cheek, so surely is the Holy Spirit trying to convert you. "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34, NIV).
It's exciting, for at times you can almost feel those seeds of truth germinating within your soul like a pregnant woman can feel the baby growing within her. She is thrilled with new life forming. What greater joy to experience something even more wonderful—"I'm being born again!"
But If the New Birth Is So Easy, Why Isn't Everybody Born Again?
The answer is clear: many, perhaps the majority, practice a form of new-birth-abortion. They are endlessly snuffing out the new life that the Spirit of God imparts.
This is disclosed in Stephen's words to the Jewish leaders of his day. They were only doing what comes naturally to unconverted human nature: "You stiff-necked people ...! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!" (Acts 7:51, NIV).
It's active alienation or enmity against God. It doesn't make sense to do that, but let's face reality—that's what we do. It's like starving people diligently uprooting every little food-bearing plant that comes up out of the ground. It's crazy!
The Embryonic New Life Is Snuffed Out Before It Can Grow.
Jesus told a parable to illustrate the fate that most of His seeds of truth meet.
"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed,
[1 ] Some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.
[2] Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.
[3] Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants" (Matthew 13:3-7, NIV).
He went on to explain His story. The farmer represents Himself, sowing His seeds of "Good News" truth in all human hearts everywhere through the work of the Holy Spirit, the "wind." But, He says, "this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes" (verse 15, NIV). It's no use sowing seed in earth packed beneath the tread of multitudes in the path. Even if plenty of seeds fall on hard hearts, they cannot take root.
What Jesus Explains Is So Simple a Child Can Easily Grasp It.
[1] "When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
[2] "The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.
[3] "The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful" (verses 19-22, NIV). So far, it's Bad News.
But wait, there is some Good News left in this story:
[4] Some "seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." This is "the man who hears the word and understands it," Jesus explained (Matthew 13:8, 23, NIV). He is the one who believes the Good News, who receives it, welcomes it, cherishes it.
He lets it get into his heart instead of inviting the birds by the wayside to snatch it up, or letting the thorns choke it out, or leaving hidden "rocks" of cherished lust to dwarf its roots. He simply does not perform an abortion of unbelief to kill it. This is a Good News view of Jesus' parable.
No one has yet seen what is the dynamic factor that produces the new birth, because love can never be seen. Jesus told Nicodemus in advance the story of His cross, which of course he couldn't understand that night. But what he heard stayed deep in his mind until he saw what happened; then it all came together, and he stepped out of his closet to identify openly with Christ.
No New Birth Would Be Possible Without Seeing and Appreciating What Happened on the Cross.
Jesus explained further:
"No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:13-15, NIV).
He alludes to something that happened during Israel's wilderness wanderings. The people were journeying through the desert to their Promised Land (yes, there were hardships). But true to form for all of us human beings, they had to make their difficulties worse by believing Bad News: "The people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, 'Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert?'" (Numbers 21:4, 5, NIV). They were not about to die, for God was leading them; this was a specter of doom that they themselves invoked, without reason (see Psalm 105:37). Their doubt became pure unbelief, borrowing troubles that were only figments of their faithless imagination. But to do so was sin.
Then the Poisonous Snakes Struck.
The people's sinful unbelief and murmuring had deprived them of God's special protection which would have been theirs by right. Moses' making a snake of brass and holding it up high on a pole was an acted prophecy of Christ to be uplifted on His cross.
"The Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' ... Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived" (Numbers 21:8, 9, NIV).
But how could a poisonous snake represent Him? Here is the answer: He was "made ... to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV). We see how close Christ has come to us. He never sinned, but He identified with us so closely that He "took" our fallen, sinful nature. He was "made" to be something that He was not. In that reality is our salvation from the "serpents."
Note how easy the healing was: all the people had to do was look. Jesus is telling Nicodemus: there is something to see on that cross—look. But it is more than gazing at a crucifix. "Looking" is believing in the sense of a heart appreciation of what it cost the One who died there to "be made sin for us," and save us. (It meant that He died the death that we have deserved.)
An appreciation of what He did is what brings healing to a sin-sick person. And, of course, healing is exactly the same as that new birth.
Then Jesus spoke the well-known words that have become the most loved verse of the entire Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16, NIV).
Obviously, the power is in the One on that cross, not in its wooden beams. How can believing or appreciating God's act of loving and giving do anything to change sinful hearts?
One of Christ's followers made it clear how it worked for him. He expresses it as a principle that operates in everyone who will look and say, "Thank You" for what He accomplished. Paul was defending himself against the charge that his all-out devotion to Christ was virtual insanity (his faith worked like that "violence" that Jesus spoke about in our last chapter). He was going through incredible hardships and persecutions for Christ's sake, but almost incredibly, he sang for joy as he went along.
The idea that he was sacrificing anything seems not to have crossed his mind. On and on he went through scourgings (and one lethal stoning!), imprisonments, fastings, cold and nakedness, shipwrecks, hunger, weariness. His career as a missionary went on for decades, even into old age. Why not restrain his self-sacrificing devotion, and settle down and enjoy a well-earned retirement? Wasn't it time for Paul to begin looking out for "number one"?
No, not for him. He says: "If we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died [that is, all would be dead if He had not died for them; and so closely are we identified with Christ that when He died, we died too]; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again" (2 Corinthians 5:13-15).
Here we see what it has seemed impossible to understand. Paul was not a better person than we are, nor more heroic. He simply saw something that made all his sacrifices easy:
- He saw that he would be in a hopeless grave if that "One" had not died in his place.
- He saw that even his next breath he owed to Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
- He saw himself a slave bought by love, responding to the blood shed there.
- He saw that nothing he possessed he could count as really his.
He could have sung Isaac Watts' hymn:
When I survey the wondrous cross,
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a tribute far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.
As easily as the believing Israelites were healed of their fatal snake bites, so easily does the new birth occur in the heart of anyone who "sees" the cross like Paul saw it.
Of course, he did not see it literally—he was not one of the original Twelve. He saw it by faith, and his experience is therefore an encouragement to us who also have never see it literally. What he saw by faith seems to have made a more profound impression on him than the actual event made on those apostles who did see it. None of them seems to have caught its meaning as vividly as Paul did. That means something special for us who never saw the physical happening as did the Eleven (a thousand movies can't portray it!). We are especially fortunate because that same faith-inspired devotion can be ours. Because of faith, Paul has to be better news than the other apostles! Faith has far sharper discernment than our physical eyes.
Suppose someone looks but does not appreciate the sacrifice of Christ? The heart can be hardened by a choice to dis-believe which immediately becomes the famous sin of "unbelief." Jesus went on to tell Nicodemus that no one will ever be lost because of his past sins, because Christ already has died and paid their penalty. Our own dis-belief sets us up for a do-it-yourself job of judgment:
"God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil" (John 3:17-19, NIV).
Thus everyone's destiny hangs on his heart-response to that cross. The new birth occurs, not by our doing this or that impossible assignment, but by simply looking with the eye of heartfelt faith at what that "wondrous cross" means. The healing power is in the word itself; it contains the Good News. And it is already yours; it has already been given you "in Him"; don't throw it away.
Let it come into your heart. Let it take root. Don't practice abortion on it. Cherish it. Plead with God with all your soul for His gift of faith. He has promised to give you every tiny bit that you are willing to cherish.
There can be no such thing as Bad News unless we ask for it, or choose it, and thus willfully bring on ourselves a final verdict of choosing darkness after we have seen Light.