Am I responsible for how I respond to the claims of Jesus and the message of Jesus?

At the church where I serve, we have been looking at what we believe as a church as it is contained in the doctrinal statement of our church. This week, I would like for us to look at the tenth statement that comprises our doctrinal statement as a church. This tenth statement addresses what we believe as a church when it comes to how our response to Jesus determines our eternal destiny.

This statement summarizes the answer to the question “Am I responsible and accountable to God for how I live my life here on earth? And am I responsible for how I respond to the claims of Jesus and the message of Jesus? What happens after I die? And how does my response to Jesus determine what happens to me after I die?” So let’s look at this tenth statement of our doctrinal statement together:

We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

Now as we have talked about throughout this series, to fully understand what is being communicated in this statement, we first need to understand what all the church mumbo jumbo talk words in this statement mean. So, as we have done throughout this series, I would like for us to break down this statement into parts so that we can come to a better understanding of what is being said here.

First, let’s take a minute and unpack the phrase “We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ.” When we say that God commands everyone to believe the gospel, the gospel refers to God’s message of rescue that was proclaimed by Jesus to all humanity. Now repentance is a big fancy church mumbo jumbo talk word that means to feel remorse that results in a change of one’s mind and heart.

To repent means more than simply feeling sorry for something you did; to repent means that you feel sorry for what you did and the sorrow that you feel drives you to change something in your life. To repent means to change the trajectory of one’s life that is moving away from God back toward God in a way that result is you living in the relationship with God that you were created for.

Now a natural question that could arise here involves the idea of receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean how does one receive the Lord Jesus Christ? This is a church mumbo jumbo talk phrase that simply refers to how one can experience the forgiveness and the relationship with God that they were created for.

And in a section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of John, Jesus makes a statement to a man named Nicodemus that is probably the most familiar verse in the entire Bible. And it is in this single verse that we see the core message of the good news of the message of the gospel and how one receives the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s look at this verse together in John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

In this verse, we see Jesus reveal for us we need to know and what we need to do in order to enter into a relationship with God. First, Jesus says for God so loved the world. God sent His Son Jesus to earth not because He was mad at the world; God is in love with the world. Jesus then tells us that God did what people, who are in love, do. God gave. God sent His Son Jesus because He loved the world.

You see, while God created humanity to experience a relationship with Him and a relationship with one another, all of humanity selfishly rebelled and rejected that relationship, instead choosing to love ourselves and do things out of that selfish love that hurt God and others. That selfish love and rebellion is what the Bible calls sin.

God responded to that selfish love and rebellion by giving what was closest to Himself to rescue what was furthest away. God’s love and interest in us was made known and shown in the most powerful way when He sent His unique, one and only Son to earth, who allowed Himself to be treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives, so that God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life.

Jesus then explained that God loved and God gave so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish. Now this little phrase believes in, in the language that this letter is written in, literally means to entrust oneself entrust to someone with complete confidence. To trust is a lot sitting on a stool: while I could stand and say that I believe that a stool can hold my weight, it is only when I sit on the stool that I demonstrate that I trust the stool to hold my weight.

The person who trusts Jesus will respond to Jesus by placing Jesus Christ as large and in charge of their lives and will strive to follow His message and teachings. That is how you receive the Lord Jesus Christ so that you can experience forgiveness and the relationship with God that you were created for. And for the person who believes, trusts, and follows Jesus, Jesus explains that they shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Now eternal life is not simply living forever. You see, everyone lives forever; we are created as eternal beings. The question is not whether or not you are going to live forever, the question is where are you going to live? When Jesus uses this phrase, He is revealing to Nicodemus that the person who places their confident trust in Jesus life, death, and resurrection will not be separated from God as a result of their selfishness and rebellion, but will experience the forgiveness of sin and the relationship with God that we were created for. And that is the good news of the gospel: God loved, God gave, so that those who believe and place their confident trust in Jesus would receive life in relationship with Him.

Now you might be thinking “I am still having a hard time buying that God is like this. I still see God as being like a cosmic cop around the corner waiting to bust me. The idea that God loves me and desires a relationship with me is hard to accept”. If that is where you are at this morning, just look at what Jesus says next in John 3:17:

"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."

If Jesus was communicating this in the language that we use in our culture today, these verses would sound like this: Nicodemus, God did not send Me as the Messiah to the earth in order to judge all of humanity, but that all of humanity would have the opportunity to be rescued from their selfishness and rebellion. The person who places their confident trust in Me is not condemned. However, the person who refuses to place their confident trust in Me is already condemned because of their selfishness and rebellion. Everyone is condemned and the reason that they are condemned is because I have revealed Myself throughout all of human history and all of humanity has responded by rejecting and rebelling against Me. They want nothing to do with Me because I expose the selfishness and rebellion that is in the center and core of their being. Everyone is already condemned because of their rebellion and I have come to rescue those who trust in Me from condemnation. And everyone who places their confident trust in Me and lives in relationship with Me reveal the reality of My transformational intervention and activity that has brought them into relationship with Me.” 

You see, Jesus wanted Nicodemus to clearly understand that all of humanity stands condemned to an eternity apart from God as a result of our selfishness and rebellion. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to clearly understand that rescue from selfishness and rebellion was not based on what we did for God, but in trusting in what God was doing through Jesus, who entered into humanity as the culmination of God’s Divine plan to provide an opportunity for forgiveness and restoration.

And as a church, we believe that God commands humanity to respond to the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel. We believe that all humanity is responsible for their response to the question “Who is Jesus”. We believe that all humanity is responsible for their response to Jesus message and teachings and His offer to rescue us from our selfishness and rebellion so that we can experience forgiveness and the relationship with God we were created for. We see this reality revealed for us in the next section of this statement, which says “We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world.”

Now a natural objection that I often hear at this point sounds something like this: “Well Dave, what about the people who never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus? What about the people around the world who never read the Bible? How can God hold the pygmy in Africa accountable for something that he has never been exposed to?

That is a great question. Tomorrow we will address those questions and objections…