The Walk: Week 1 Day 5 “Relationship with Jesus is Rooted in the Gospel”
DAY 5
Consider a visual illustration that can help us think about how the gospel has to be the foundation for our relationship with Christ and a life of discipleship. This visual illustration is adapted from the World Harvest Missions book, “The Gospel-Centered Life”.
The starting point of the Christian life (conversion) takes place when you become aware of the issue of your separation from God due to the incredible gap between God’s Holiness and your sinfulness. When you turn to Christ as your Lord and trust in him as your Savior the gospel assures you that your debt of sin is cancelled, you are forgiven everything, you are declared righteous in God’s eyes, you are reconciled to God and at peace with him. This is the foundation for your relationship with him. You do not follow Jesus in order to achieve this. This is where you begin and what you build on. 1 Peter 3:18 says, For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God
Most of the time when we first come to Christ we have a pretty limited view of both God’s holiness and our sin. As time goes on, and we live as followers of Jesus, we come to understand more and more about the holiness of God and at the same time we come to see more clearly than ever how sinful and broken we are. It is important to know that when this happens we are not actually becoming more sinful and God is not becoming more holy we are just coming to sense and see spiritual truths more clearly. We are seeing God as he really is (Isaiah 55:8-9) and ourselves as we really are (Jeremiah 17:9-10, 1 John 1:5-9).
In light of the story of Jesus and the woman who loved much because she had been forgiven much, this growing sense of our sinfulness and God’s holiness can serve to deepen our love for Christ. But this deepening of our love and discipleship will only happen if we have a growing understanding of, and appreciation for, the cross and the gospel. If your understanding of the love of God and his grace revealed in the gospel also grows larger and larger, love for Christ and true discipleship is strengthened.
What we have to fight against in discipleship is the tendency to take a different path. Sometimes instead of magnifying the cross we fall into minimizing our sins or trivializing God’s holiness. We think too lightly of God’s hatred of sin or we think too highly of ourselves. When that happens we sort of “shrink” the cross in terms of its place in our lives and its importance for us. The result is that the powerful dynamic of love that Jesus praised in the woman with the alabaster jar becomes something foreign to us.
What needs to happen is that our view of love for, and faith in, the gospel needs to grow. But what seems to be the tendency of the human heart is that we try to resolve this tension in other ways. Instead of our understanding, love for and faith in the gospel growing we do several things. Sometimes we try to deal with the tension by pretending we are better than we are. Like Simon, we think of ourselves as pretty good and certain others as serious sinners.
Sometimes along with pretending we try performing. We try very hard to live better lives so that we can feel that we are acceptable to God, to others and to ourselves. What’s wrong with that? Well it’s good to live a better life. But Jesus says we are just too broken and sinful to ever live well enough to earn God’s acceptance. Titus 3:5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. If you try to earn your acceptance you will end up anxious and dishonest. And you will never awaken the dynamic of love that could most powerfully change you. So we have to receive the good news that he has done for us what we cannot do. Then we love, follow and obey him, not to earn his acceptance but because we already have it and we love him for it.
Sometimes we get tired of pretending and tired of performing and so we just opt out. We go for numbing or distracting. Maybe that was the path the sinful woman in the story was on until it caught up to her and she came to Jesus. We drink too much or watch too much TV, spend too much time on the internet or try to fill our lives with engaging hobbies or people that keep us occupied. Some of these things are not bad in themselves but they aren’t the answer either.
What is the answer for us? When we come to see more clearly God’s holiness and our sinfulness and feel the tension of the huge gap between who we are and who we ought to be, the only thing that will help us is a larger view of the cross. Our understanding of and dependence on the gospel has to grow with us throughout our lives so that no matter how much we see our sins and short-comings we see the cross as even larger and always sufficient to cover our sins and bring us to God.
If you find yourself like Simon, unhappy with what Jesus is doing or allowing, complaining in your heart, critical and condemning toward others you are not deeply understanding and believing the gospel.
If you find that the devotion in this woman seems very distant from anything you have ever felt or experienced in your heart then you are not deeply understanding and believing the gospel.
This story is in the Bible not so that we can simply know it happened once but so that we can hear in it Jesus speaking to us and calling us to believe more deeply so that we love and follow him. Believe big, believe in a big gospel full of promises and keep growing in your believing.
Continue reading the Bible. Keep reading the gospel of John. Write down your questions, thoughts and insights as you read. Don’t forget to review your memory verse also. ____________________________________________________________________________________
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Larry is the senior pastor at 
