The Fourfold Gospel Week 2 - Christ Our Sanctifier Revamped February 2026

  After I accepted Christ, I began to share my experience with others. With my friends at school, with people online, whoever I could share with, I did. Even when I was fulfilling my community service, I would share my experience of coming to know Jesus

But as I did, I found that there was a lot of resistance. From those weren’t Christians, the resistance was understandable, they simply didn’t believe in Jesus. That resistance only spurred me on to deeper reading of the Bible, and how to refute arguments that were presented against me. It deepened my faith rather than shaking it. What was strange to me, however, was the resistance I received from Christians.

As I shared with my Christian teachers, including my Bible teacher of the school I was attending, I found a wall. Looking back, I felt kind of like Paul. Though I hadn’t tried to kill any Christians, I had created enough of a bad image, that an experience didn’t seem to be enough to break people’s perception of me. Not only them, but my fellow classmates, who I thought were Christians, rejected this new me. It was through this experience of speaking to other Christians, especially those that were in my age group, I came to realize that, though they professed to be believers, many of them had not taken Jesus as their personal Savior. It was a social acceptance of the Gospel, not a personal one.

At the end of that school year, I had been basically expelled and asked not to come back to that school, which made perfect sense for the year I had with them. No amount of change could stop that at the point I was at. But I spent the summer in pursuit of knowing God deeper. Things began to change in my life, and how I related to people. This was nowhere more evident than in my relationship with my parents.

A few years later, I was led by God to a deeper life in him. This put me on the path of going to Redding, CA, to attend college. Through that time, I received a calling to full-time ministry, a wife, and an understanding of what had been going on for the last several years. I was now longer the rebellious youth of fifteen, Christ had changed me. I came to understand that God had been sanctifying me, and it’s this concept of sanctification, which will now take a look at, as we first turn to the Gospel of John chapter 15 starting in verse 1. And as we open our Bibles to John 15:1, I want to quickly recap what we talked about last week.

Last week we began to talk about what drives the Alliance at it’s core. And so we talked about how the Alliance is driven by, what the founder of the movement called, the Fourfold Gospel. It was the first message of this Fourfold Gospel that we covered last week, which is Christ our Savior. An aspect that is so important that it drives us to go to the ends of the earth to share with people we’ve never met. It’s not unique to the Alliance, every Christian denomination holds to this truth of sharing the Gospel, but the emphasis on it by the Alliance is something I like. Last week we ended with the understanding that, God wants us to know the depth of sin from which he pulled us from, and the life he intends for us. When we have this understanding, then the next message of the Fourfold Gospel makes sense.

With this first message now back in our minds, let’s dive into John chapter 15 starting in verse 1. Jesus states, 

  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.  (Jn. 15:1-8)”

This passage is essential to the Christian’s walk with God, because it speaks to the very nature of our relationship with God. You and I were never intended to be unconnected with others. That’s why when people try to get away from civilization, civilization follows them. That’s why we get married and have children, and have animals as pets. We were made to be connected, but the greatest connected relationship that we are to have is with God. And without him, we can do nothing. We are simply unfulfilled, and never reaching a full experience of life. We limp along without a cure for our alignment, we are zombies roaming the earth until we finally decay enough to no longer move.

This is because of sin. Sin disconnects us from the life of God, our source of fulfillment, healing, and life. When we do something that’s in rebellion against God’s law, like lie, cheat, steal, or a list of other things, we create a barrier between us and God. We become unconnected to the source of life, and because of that, all of our other connected relationships become brittle to the point where we break them as well. 

But through God’s love, God the Son came down to earth to live as one of us, yet in perfect connectedness to God the Father and Holy Spirit. He then willingly allowed himself to be killed and sacrificed on our behalf for our sin. And when we accept that sacrifice, that work of Jesus, we are brought into connectedness with God. That is Christ as Savior which we talked about last week. Too often that’s where we leave it. We got our ticket out of hell, so now it’s time to wait for the uncloudy day, that sweet by-and-by. But that’s not all!

Jesus is not in the ground, he’s risen! And those who put their trust into Jesus as Savior are also risen to new life. That life is a life that begins at the moment of accepting Christ and last into eternity. It’s a life where we are being reoriented into the person we were created to be. This is why Paul tells on us in Romans 12 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (v.2)” Jesus says it like this later on in his pray in John 17, “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (v.19)” This transformative, deeper connectedness, is the sanctifying life that God has brought us into through Jesus our Savior. This is the second message of the Fourfold Gospel, Christ our Sanctifier.

Now the word sanctification is a big word, but it simply means “to be set apart” or “to be made holy.” I’ve always likened the idea to that of laundry.

Picture this, you worked all day, sweating, getting dirty, there might even have been some blood from a cut, and all you want to do is get out of those clothes. So you do, and they go right in the washing machine, because they’re just too stinky, and dirty to go in the regular wash basket.

That is exactly what being saved by Jesus is, stinky clothes being put in the washer. But you don’t just leave them there, or the whole house would smell. You grab that detergent, and dump it in and turn on the roughest cycle to make sure those clothes get cleaned. That’s sanctification. That detergent is the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. In fact, that’s just what Paul says about the Church in Ephesians 5:25-26. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”

Have you ever listened to a washing machine go? I’m glade I’m not those clothes. They get beat around. Dirty clothes go in, the machine starts moving, and sure enough, out of that washer, comes those stinky dirty clothes, fresh and clean and ready to be dried.

God’s sanctifying work sends us through trials so that we can come out on the other side cleaned of all our sin and ready for him. Through suffering and trials, highs and lows, through failing, and getting back up, God works through every circumstance of the believers’ life to cleanse them of the sin that once held them in bondage. If any of you have ever made a New Years commitment to change a long standing behavior in your life, you know the difficulty of change. The sanctification of God battles against the sin that wants its control in our lives back, and it can truly be a battle sometimes. Several weeks ago, while we were working through the problem of evil, I mentioned the question, why do the saints suffer? One reason is because God is sanctifying us through suffering. This is why, in James 1:2-3, were told, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”

For the first two years of my Christian life, I didn’t have anyone to tell me that this was part of my relationship with Jesus, and so I floundered. But when we begin to understand that God wants us to go through this process, where he is cleaning us from every stain of sin, the depth that we can go, and the experience we can have with God is endless. Because it doesn’t push off the glory of God to some future date, but rather brings it to the here and now.

Like we did last week, here are some insights to this sanctification process by the Alliance founder, A.B. Simpson. Simpson gives us Six “Nots” of sanctification of what the process isn’t. And Four “Is’s” of what the process is.

The first off the nots of sanctification: Sanctification is not justification. Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Justification is the moment we move from death to life in an eternal and spiritual scope. Sanctification, on the other hand, happens in the life you have now, so that the person Jesus sees us as, is the same person that we see ourself as. Here, Paul tells us to work out what has been given to us. We work out Jesus’ saving work, meaning, we are active in the process alongside the Spirit. Justification is the moment when salvation begins, from then on out, we’re in the sanctification process.

  Second, sanctification is not merely a moral improvement. Isaiah 64:6 states, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Having a better moral compass is not what’s happening. This idea that sanctification gives me a better morality, has some truth to it, but if we’re just trying to become more moral, more good in the human sense, then we’re just falling into legalism. It’s us trying to just adhere to a code, which the Bible teaches cannot bring us to God. And in our own power, we just make things filthy, because their tainted with our own self-centered desires. This leads into the third “not.”

Sanctification is not our own work. Ephesians 2:8-9  says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Piggy backing on the concept of filthy rags, we can’t do this by just working on it. We didn’t enter into salvation by our own works, we cannot hope to transform ourselves by works. If we do, we’ll fall into legalism, trying to fix ourselves in our own power. We can then project it on to others. That’s the kind of people Jesus doesn’t want. That type of earning the cleansing is what the Pharisees were getting people to do. No it’s God who does the cleansing, we get to be actively a part of it, but we cannot do it solo.

This fourth “not” is a big one, sanctification doesn’t happen at death. In John 10:10, we’re told by Jesus that, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The sweet by-and-by is a great aspect of God’s work to look forward to, but in the sweet now-and-now, Jesus is actively working in this life. That’s life now, not just later. This life is given to us to be fully experienced with Jesus, and through Jesus, not just in a future time, but now.

  Fifth, sanctification is not self-perfection, Colossians 1:27-29 states, “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” It’s Jesus’ work in us, not our own. We are to mature in this, but we do so through his powerful work. Am I just repeating myself at this point? We can’t do this on our own, this cleansing from sin is based on the connectedness we have with Jesus.

  Finally, sanctification is not based on emotion, First Corinthians 14:15 states, “What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.” Sanctification is based on our will being purposefully and intelligently given over to God. Does that mean our emotions won’t be apart of it? No, but it’s based on a cognitive and purposeful choice to say, “Not my will by Thine.”

  With the “nots” of sanctification understood, we can move on to the“is” side.

The first “is” of sanctification is that Sanctification is being separated from sin, Romans 6:11-14 reads, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Sin loses it’s foothold in our lives through Jesus’ saving work on the cross and through the resurrection. Sin doesn’t control us who have been justified by Christ. Though we will always struggle with sin in this life, we are being moved further away from it’s control, and closer towards the control of God.

Second, sanctification is becoming more dedicated to God, First Corinthians 15:56-58 states, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” In the sanctification process, God’s work becomes more focused in our minds. “The things of this earth grow strangely dim,” because the focus moves away from earthly endeavors and onto heavenly ones. When God’s work becomes alive in us, it becomes more important to share the Gospel, than it is to stay silent about it.

Third, sanctification is being conformed to the Image of the Son. From Romans 8:29 we read, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” In the Basic Beliefs of Christianity course I teach in our apologetics class we cover the idea of the Image of the Son. In Greek, the idea of image is not a sketch, where the image kind of looks like original but is clearing seen as different. It’s also not a carbon copy of the original, as if it were a photo copy. No, the idea of image in the Greek, is a mirror image, very similar, but slightly different. It’s our uniqueness that God created us to be, melded with the characteristics of God himself. We are an individual, but fully connected to God.

  The final “is” of sanctification is, sanctification is love becoming more abound in our life, First Thessalonians 3:12-13 states, “and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Jesus said the two greatest commands is love God and love people (Mk. 12:29-31). Paul echoes this idea with his statement that love is never ending (1 Cor. 13:13). God’s love explodes in our life. Not that sappy love kind of love, but a love that endures pain, anguish, and strife. Love that brought a perfect God to earth to die for his creation. But not just love, all of God’s characteristics that Paul talks about being the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), begin to show through us, because of our deeper connectedness to him.

This is sanctification, God’s cleansing us from all unrighteousness right in front of our eyes. It’s to be a daily process, where we rely more and more on the Holy Spirit, connecting ourselves more and more to the God who loves and saves us. In the Alliance, we call this the filling of the Holy Spirit, because over time, the Spirit’s already indwelling status takes more and more control. Each believer has the indwelling, but not all have an active filling. The sanctification process is the filling of the Spirit in our lives.

Since it’s a daily process, I want us to leave here today with some practical steps to engage this process purposefully. I had a mentor named, Bill Griffen, one time say it like this, “We are cookie dough ready to be transformed, but we need the heat of God to bake us.”

So how can we purposefully put ourselves in the fire? Well first, we need to accept God’s word over ours. We need to trust it even if we do not yet understand it. This is huge, because I no longer come to God’s word trying to get it to say certain things, but rather I allow it to say what God intended it to. That means that I need to dive deeper into it, and wrestle with what he says, and what I believe, and then I have to submit my way of thinking to his. It’s hard, because sometimes I don’t wasn’t to agree with God, but I’ve learned that he is right, and it ends up being more fruitful for my life when I submit to his word.

  Next, we need to spend intentional time in prayer. We need times of purposeful prayer, where we set time aside. Time like in the morning, or before we go to bed. But we also need to develop praying throughout the day, in a moment-by-moment long lasting conversation that doesn’t really end until we fall asleep. These types of moments can be in a car, in the shower, in the line at the post office. But we need to develop a strong prayer life, where we’re talking with our Father in heaven consistently throughout our day.

Finally, we’re all going to experience temptation, I want to encourage you to stand firm. Having a submission attitude to God’s word, and a strong prayer life will help us overcome the temptations of this world and grow from the experiences. However, if you fail to rely on God, do not turn away from him. Rather the key to dealing with temptation, whether we overcome or not, is to turn back to God. Remember, sanctification is the process of greater connection to God. Repentance and a continuous trust in the saving work of Christ, is a firm foundation on which to grow in that connection. So whether in the triumph or failure, we must remember that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” That means he’s already seen us at our worse, and loved us in it, so we have nothing to fear if we mess up, because our Father still loves us.

My challenge for you this week is to take these three purposeful steps in sanctification. Remember, we can’t do it on our own, it is the fire of Spirit of God that does it, so wake up with a prayer asking God to move in you to accomplish his work for that day, and that you will live by the Spirit’s strength instead of you’re own. By doing that, you can place yourself purposefully in the process, so that you may see the work of God in your life today.

Let us be the people of God who strive to have his cleansing work in us, not just in the future when we move into eternity, but today as we walk this mortal plain. Amen.

The Fourfold Gospel Week 1 - Christ Our Savior revamped February 2026

  Several years back a couple came to our church, and like a lot of people asked about what the Alliance is. I explained to them a little history, a little bit of the theology, and a little bit about what our particular ministry was here in Quartzsite. At the end of this, about a ten minute explanation, the woman responded with, “All that sounds good, we thought you were some sort of cult.” At the time I was taken aback by what she said, but now I think it’s funny.

I can see why she might have thought that. The Alliance denomination isn’t widely known. It has no where near the high profile of a Baptist, Methodist, or Calvary Chapel. And in the community we’re simply known as the Alliance Church.

So when people see our church signs, or ads, I can see them thinking, what type of weird cultist place is the Alliance? Well, every few years, I like to share a little about what the Alliance is. And to me the best way to understand what the Alliance is, is to focus in on a core teaching that is seen through our denomination’s logo, and is a bedrock for why we do the things we do.

So if you have your Bibles, we’re going to start in the book of Romans chapter 5 starting in verse 6. As we open to Romans 5:6, you need to know that the Alliance is short hand for the Christian and Missionary Alliance. It was found in the late 1800s by people who had a desire to bring the Gospel to the unsaved. There were two arms of the group: The Christian Alliance, a network of congregations in the US, and the Missionary Alliance, a missions board that was supported by the network to send missionaries over seas. The central founder was A.B. Simpson, a Canadian Presbyterian who moved to the states for health reasons, then to New York for a pastoral position, which he stepped down from to pursue the calling of sending missionaries across the world. 

Over the course of his life, he saw within the pages of Scriptures, what he would later call the four-fold Gospel. Not that the Gospel was only four things, but, as he states, “… there are four messages in the gospel which sum up in a very complex way the blessings which Christ has to offer us and which it is especially important that Christians should emphasize today.”

It is the first part of this four fold message of the Gospel that we begin within in Romans 5:6-8, let’s read it together. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

These words, “… while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” are the words that pierce my life. I remember myself as a young man in distress; I remember my pain and hurt; I remember the moment I accepted Jesus as my Savior, and the radical impact it had on me. And I praise God that while I was a sinner, Christ died for me.

My eighth grade teacher told my mom that what she saw in my future was prison. But her prophecy did not come true. Because when the teachers, and judges, and everyone else looked at me and said, that boy is just going to be a dredge of society, Christ saw me and loved me. He died on the cross 2,000 years before I was a speck, and though I was a sinner after the fact, his death broke through history and saved me. 

I was not abandoned by God in my time of need. Though I broke everything from his law, to my parent’s hearts, “while I was a sinner, Christ died for me.” Not because of anything I did, but because of his deep love. I, an imperfect sinner, was loved by the perfect God who came to earth, died on a cross and resurrected for me. And I didn’t have to become good, I didn’t have to fix my life, I didn’t have to look, or act, or smell, or think a certain way, Christ died for me even in my sin. Even when I didn’t think, or act, or speak right. Christ died for a sinner like me. And in my powerlessness, the work of Jesus on the cross brought me salvation. And I moved from death to life in a flash.

This is the first of the four fold message that A.B. Simpson saw in the Scriptures: Jesus is our Savior. This is the first step in our understanding of God. Jesus saved us, not because we deserved it, but because of his deep love for us. God’s saving work through the cross, speaks to the depth of his love, and the extremes he is willing to go to show us that love. Jesus as Savior brings us from death to life. It brings us from rebellion into right relationship. And it brings us from eternal self-absorption to eternal selfless worship. 

A.B. Simpson gave 8 things that Jesus saves us from. First, Jesus saves us from the guilt of sin. Romans 8:1 states, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So when the lies of the enemy tell us, “you messed up again you sinner,” we can exclaim, “Yes I messed up, but Jesus does not condemn me by his work on the cross!”

Second, Jesus saves us from the wrath of God. Romans 5:9 reads, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” God hates sin, and seeks to destroy it in every place it hides. But through Jesus’ work on the cross the wrath of God passes by, because sin has been and is being dealt with in our lives.

Third, Jesus saves us from the curse of the law. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Paul writes that through the law of Moses we recognize what sin is, and it’s by the law we are condemned to death because of our sin. But through Jesus’ work on the cross, the law’s judgment is broken because Jesus paid our penalty.

Fourth, Jesus saved us from our own evil conscience. First Peter 3:21 states, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ ….” We try to justify our sinful acts and thereby pervert our conscience into agreeing with our lies, but through Jesus’ work on the cross we are now clear of the lies and deception we need to create to make ourselves feel good.

Fifth, Jesus saves us from our own evil heart. In the book of Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9, it reads, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” God knows that our hearts are corrupt. Jesus even says that, “out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts (Mk. 7:21).” Through the work on the cross Jesus saves us from this corrupted heart.

Sixth, Jesus saves us from the fear of death. In First Corinthians 15:55-57 Paul stands defiantly and proclaims, “‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The fear of death should no longer constrain us, but rather we stand in front of it and proclaim Jesus’ work is greater than the grave.

The seventh thing that Jesus saves us from is Satan’s power. First John 3:8 states, “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” The works of the enemy do not control us who have accepted Jesus as our Savior. And so we can stand on the work of the cross and proclaim, “I am a servant of only one master, and his name is Jesus!”

The final thing Jesus saves us from is certainly not least. Jesus saves us from eternal death. Jesus states in John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” When we accepted Jesus as Savior, we moved from the road that leads to a place of eternal death and decay, onto the road where everything is new for eternity.

I’ve experience all of it. I am free from the shackles that I placed on myself, because of my rebellion. But while I was a sinner, Christ died for me and set me free from all the things that God never intended for my life. But that’s not all.

A.B. Simpson brings out that we are not just saved from something, but also to something. Jesus saved us to be justified in God’s sight. Romans 5:1 reads, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God sees us through the lens of Jesus, and when God looks upon us, all he sees is the perfect work of the Son.

Jesus also saves us to experience the favor and love of God. The Psalmist, in Psalm 5:11-12, wrote, “But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.” We who put our trust into Jesus can experience this love and favor because we gain Jesus’ righteousness.

Remember how Jesus saves us from a corrupted heart? Well, we are saved so that he may give us a new heart. God prophecies about this in Ezekiel 36:26, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Our heart can beat as it was supposed to, with the fruits that will be produced in us through Jesus’ work.

Jesus’ work also saves us to experience God’s grace to live every day. Paul talks about this kind of grace in Second Corinthians 9:8, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” God’s grace is there so that we can do the work that he has saved us to be a part of. And that grace jumpstarts our new lives in Christ, and is leaned on every moment we live from that moment on.

Jesus’ work through the cross also brings us the help of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul talks about the giving of the Holy Spirit to us in Romans 5:5, “and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” We can live daily in the power of God, through the Holy Spirit who lives within us. If Jesus, being fully God, relied on the Spirit as he walked this earth, how much more should we?

Jesus’ work also brings us God’s working out of all things for our good, In Romans 8:28, Paul tells us, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Even when we mess up, God can take those mess ups and turn them for good as we seek him in his purposes.

Next, Jesus’ work on the cross also brings the opening for more blessings to flow to us. Paul recognizes this in his prayer for the Church at Ephesus in Ephesians 3:14-21, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” We cannot even begin to understand the blessings God has for us through Jesus.

Finally, but not the least of these, we are saved to eternal life. The most beloved verse of the Bible, John 3:16 is memorized for a very important reason, for it states, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And that life, begins at the moment we accept Jesus as our Savior and moves into eternity. 

None of these things we deserve, but because of God’s deep love for us, he gives them freely.

Jesus as Savior is one message, of what A.B.Simpson called the FourFold Gospel. This approach to understanding the Gospel spurs the work of the Alliance ahead. The gratitude we as believers have, because of the depth of love shown through the cross, that, “… while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

This sinner, who from an early age was in rebellion, was given up on by almost everyone he came into contact with, but Christ died for such as he, and now I serve at the command of Christ. Not to earn my salvation, but in adoration of the God who has done so much for me. 

Too often in our lives we take for granted the depth of the work God has done for us to bring us to salvation. But God wants us to remember and understand the depth of work Christ did on our behalf by his work on the cross. And in understanding it, to rejoice in it. 

  Jesus spoke this parable and questioned his disciples in Luke 7:41-43, “‘A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ 43 Simon answered, ‘The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.’ And he said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’”

I now seek to understand the depth of my debt, so that I might understand the depth of the forgiveness my Savior brought to me. 

 

This week, my challenge is simple, seek God’s understanding of the depth of your debt to the Savior. Make a list with the words, “while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me” at the top. Then, after writing all that Jesus saved you from, write at the bottom, “while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me” and praise him for his work.

Let us be a people that seeks to know the depth of love that our Savior has for us. It is seeking to understand this depth that we join together as a family of believers to be called the Alliance. Amen.

The Problem of Evil Series, Wk4, “God's Purpose and Answer in Evil”

  A man was living a great life. He had a large healthy family, and his health was doing well too. His assists were diversified and made him rich. And he was known by everyone as a good man. Then one day everything crumbled. He lost his family in a freak natural disaster. His assists were destroyed over night. Eventually his health was ravaged. When his friends showed up, they should have comforted him, but instead, they began to tell him it was all his fault. He had done something wrong in his life and now the bad was coming for him. He didn’t understand it, and he never did. His story ends without a real resolve as to why. Sure his health, and wealth came back. He even had more children, but he never had the answer as to why it happened in the first place. 

This is the summary of the book of Job. Job never found out the the purpose to the evil that befell him. But as the reader, we do. We know that God was making a point to Satan, and future generations. First, bad things happen even to those who follow God. This was a foreign concept in the Ancient Near East, as it is today, where we ask the question, why do bad things happen to good people? But there are things that God knows that we don’t as to why certain evils fall into our lives. Second, God is in control. Though we might think that evil has reign in this world, God is still working out his plans to bring about his end goals. In both, we should awe in God for he does everything for his good purposes, and that is a comforting thing.

 

The understanding that God does have purpose in evil, is what brings us back to our final week in our Answering the Problem of Evil series, where we’re going to look at God’s purpose in allowing evil, and his answer to it. But before we dive into his purpose and answer, we need to recap what we’ve talked about so far leading up to this week.

In our first week, we looked at the origin of evil. Since the Scriptures tells us that God is wholly good, and that he creates all things good, evil cannot begin with him. Instead, what we see is that evil comes out of the will of God’s creatures in rebellion against him. It is the choices of God’s creatures to seek their own desires outside of God, that produces evil. 

In our second week, we looked at the affects of evil in the natural world. Here we discussed a link between the image bearers of God who are given dominion over the physical creation and the rebellion of those image bearers against God. Through a spiritual connection that we have with the physical creation, by way of our dominion position, we are the primary source to the chaos that is occurring in the world today. There is also a secondary source of evil in the creation, which are those spiritual beings who are also in rebellion against God. Finally, in the same week we talked about how God uses natural calamities to bring just judgment down upon evil.

Then last week, we asked the question about the amount of evil in the world. Why is there so much? The answer being that God is actually restraining the amount of evil there is. There could be more, and yet, God is working to mitigate evil for a time. However, there will be a day when he allows evil to run rampant for a time, and then, we will see what real untethered evil looks like. But we’re not there yet.

With these three aspects of the problem of evil addressed, we can now ask our first question of the day, what is God’s purpose in allowing evil? This is a general understanding of why, and doesn’t address every specific reason, because those specific reasons are for God’s counsel alone, and may or may not ever be revealed to us.

At the beginning of series we wrested just a bit with the concept of what it meant to be an image bearer of God. One of the things we must understand that when God creates anything it is automatically less than himself. It is deficient, or lacking, in some way compared to himself. Not deficient in the sense that it is created somehow imperfect, but rather it cannot carry all of the divine aspects of God. God does not create mini-gods. There are not other all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present beings. There are not eternal and self-sufficient gods out there. When God creates, he creates with eternity in mind for his creatures, but they are not eternal as God is. They have a beginning, he does not. They have reason and are able to know things, but they are not all-knowing. They can do amazing feats, but they are not all-powerful. So they are deficient in the totality of divinity. Yet they can participate, in limited ways, in God’s divine nature.

We see these to concepts in places like Isaiah 43:10, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.”

And in what Peter writes in Second Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

One aspect of this participation is knowledge. God’s divine attribute of knowledge is that he is omniscient, or all-knowing. God does not need to open a book to know something. He does not need to be taught, or instructed in any way. God has the divine knowledge of all things. However, his creatures do not. They are limited to only know what they themselves are instructed in. 

One of the aspects of the choice in the Garden of Eden, is the choice to pursue knowledge from God, or to pursue knowledge outside of God. God’s knowledge expounds his goodness, whereas seeking knowledge outside of his good already begins in evil. The clue as to the central issue that God is trying to teach us is found in the very name of the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The concept of good and evil doesn’t make sense to a creature who is made in total goodness, as Adam and Eve were. But to God, who knows all things, he fully knows the concept of good and evil. He knows what the effects of evil are without ever needing to act in evil, or to experience and understand it. 

However, for the creature of God, they can only learn by two options: either they learn through obedience, which is trust in what another says, or they learn through experience with the effects happening to them and those around them.

We can see this in things such as addictions. I have never been addicted to alcohol or drugs, because I obeyed those who told me about the effects of the addiction. Yet there are countless people that learned the hard way, through experiencing their effects. In the garden’s choice we see these two ways of learning presented to the creatures. They could learn through obedience, or they could learn through experience. They chose experience, and do to that choice, we all are learning what evil is by way of experience.

But the next question must be, what then is the point? Why does God want us to understand good and evil? Last week we briefly talked about a greater world to come. As Revelation 21:3-4 told us, a world where, “… the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

In this greater world, evil has no place, because there will be no rebellion against God. This is because the will of God’s creatures will be willing laid before him. He will have a people that, in a small way, know what he knows: that his goodness is what we should seek through trustful obedience, and that evil should be turned away from. 

In the opening to the book of Isaiah, the first time God speaks through the prophet is to address the wickedness of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Lord says this beginning in Isaiah 1:16, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Is. 1:16-20)”

The Lord is seeking those who will turn from evil and to his goodness. Those who are in eternity have sought the goodness of God in obedience to him. So the overarching purpose of God in evil, is to allow his creatures to understand the horridness of it, and to seek only his goodness.

But what is his answer to dealing with evil? There are three parts to this. The first is this, God’s fix for evil has always been through the cross. First Peter 1:17-21 states, “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

The cross is God’s answer to the plight that we are in. Through the cross the punishment for evil is placed on the shoulders of God himself. Though the trespass was our fault, God placed the punishment upon himself as a display of his goodness. At the cross of Christ, the justice and love of God collide. Justice in dealing with evil, and love that would not hold us to an eternal accountability, but make the way for salvation.

The second answer to the problem of evil is the Church. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:4-12, "When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”

The Church is to proclaim God’s fix which is in Christ Jesus. God answers evil by saying, I’ve dealt with it on the cross. The Church’s role is then to proclaim it to all people of all nations. This is why the proclamation of the Gospel is important for every Christian believers to participate in. By word and deed we are the trumpeters of God’s answer to evil. That though we were the cause of all the evil around us, God himself heaped the punishment onto himself, that we may turn from evil and to his goodness.

And because our Lord suffered for others, those who put there trust in him may suffer to prove that God’s word is true. That though we suffer here, we trust there is a greater world ahead.

God’s final answer to the problem of evil is this from Revelation 20:7-15, “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

There will be a day when God will bring about his final judgment on all evil. Neither image bearers nor spiritual beings will be safe from the final judgment of God. And the judgment isn’t whether we accepted Jesus or not, Jesus’ sacrifice is what broke evil, and through him we can receive eternal life. But make no mistake, it is our own desire to turn away from God and to evil that brings judgment upon us. God has given us a away out of the judgment, but if we are unrepentant of evil, then all that’s left in us is a heart which only desires it. But that evil must be dealt with, and at the end he will. God’s final answer to evil, is the lake of fire.

This is why Pauls states this in Second Corinthians 6:1-13, "Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.”

The call of the Church to the world is to repent and turn to Jesus before we move into eternity, because on that day there will be no more repenting, and our eternity will be sealed.

In the coming weeks we’re going to zero in on these last three aspects as we talk about Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King, but for now, we need to end on this: Church, our Savior broke the power of evil on the cross, we are now to live in his victory. We are to proclaim it with our words and deeds, until the day he returns or takes us to himself, because there is an eternity where there will be no more turning either to God’s goodness or away from it. For the decision we make in this life reverberates with eternal consequences. 

So my challenge for you is this, is to seek the Lord for one person in your life that needs to hear the Goodness of the Gospel which broke evil’s hold on humanity. I want to challenge you to steep yourself in prayer for them and seek the Lord to give you the words and the moment to share with them the Gospel. That they may hear it and that seeds may be planted. Then give them over to the Lord who will bring the flowering of faith.

Let us be a people, not scared of the question of evil, because we have and know the answer, it is the Lord Jesus himself. Amen.