Last month was my birthday, and I got a message from a friend of mine in Swift Current, where I had served as a pastor before I came here to Langley. We were messaging back and forth, and he said, “It’d be great to sit down and have a coffee with you sometime.” I replied, “Yeah, I would like that too.”
I said, “I am going to come to Alberta soon. Maybe I could pop down to Swift Current.” He responded, “Yeah, ever since …(and he mentioned the name of a mutual friend who is very dear to both of us) … passed away, I haven’t really had someone that I could connect with the way that I connect with him and you.”
I was like, “What? Our friend died?” And it turns out that it happened 18 months ago. I didn’t know, and that news changed my perspective completely. I thought about it, and I realized I can’t do anything about my friend that passed away, but I still have some friends there who are alive, and I can do something about that. I went from “Well, maybe I’ll go to Swift Current” to “Yeah, for sure, I’m going to Swift Current.” You could say that news changed the direction of my life because after we dropped some of our family members off, Logan and I went down to Swift Current and reconnected with some friends there. It was tiring, but we both saw a lot of people we hadn’t seen for a while, and it was a lot of fun.
I share that story with you because it’s an example of how news, even old news, can change the way we think, the way we act, and even the direction of our lives. And I’m using the word “news” in a general sense, not just the news you get from a news program, but news in the sense of information.
You and I have more information coming at us than we can handle. There’s information from the world around us. There’s information from our screens. There’s even information from inside of us, the thoughts that come to our mind and the sensations we experience in our body.
How do we interpret all of these things? How do we deal with them? Which of these things do we take in and allow to impact us, and which of these things do we leave out and not allow them to have an effect on us?
All of us use filters to help us deal with all the news coming at us, and there are three different filters that we tend to use.
One is our emotions – how the news, the information, whatever it is, impacts us emotionally. But there’s a problem with using our emotions as a filter because our emotions can be used against us. There are people and other entities that focus on doing using our emotions to manipulate us. For example, if they can get us anxious, then maybe they can get us to do whatever it is that they want us to do.
The second way is we tend to filter news is through the way it impacts us personally. If the news means good things for us, it is good news. If it means bad things for us, then it’s bad news. But there is also a problem with this kind of filter.
Recently, I had surgery to build up a portion of my gums that had receded. The dental surgeon that operated on me took flesh from the roof of my palate and then transplanted it onto the side of my gums. Now, in the moment when I was in the chair, if somebody would have asked me if what I was experiencing was good news or bad news, I would have said, “This is impacting me negatively. This has to be bad news.” But the truth is, it wasn’t. It was actually good news because now, a month later, it’s healed up, and I have more gum tissue protecting my teeth on that side of my mouth than I did before. There are many examples in life of instances where we have to go through suffering of some kind to get to something better on the other side. So that way of filtering things doesn’t work either.
The third way of filtering news is by comparing it with how we think. If the news aligns with the way I think, then it’s good news. But if it challenges the way I think, well then it’s bad news. We might even say it’s fake news. But what’s the problem with that? With this filter, we are assuming that we know all truth. By doing so, we are putting ourselves in the place of God, who is the only One who really knows all truth.
So what kind of a filter should we be using to determine how to deal with news and help us as we think about that question? That’s the question we are going to be considering in this post and we are going to be looking at Romans 1:1-17 to help us as we reflect on that question. If you have a Bible or a Bible app nearby, I invite you to turn there now.
As you do that, what we find is a letter that Paul has written it to the Christians in Rome. The church in Rome is mostly a Gentile church, but it also contains a large minority of Jewish Christians there as well. There’s some friction between these two groups because the Gentile Christians are looking down on the Jewish Christians who are still following the dietary laws of their previous Jewish faith. Paul writes this letter with three things in mind: he wants to prepare them for a visit he’s hoping to make to them later on, he wants to lay out for them God’s plan of salvation, and then as part of that, explain how Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians ought to relate to one another.
Very early in the letter, he says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16) This verse is his theme for the entire letter, and we could say, in a way, it’s the theme of the entire Christian faith. So let’s spend a few moments just unpacking this verse and what it means for us.
In this verse, Paul refers to something called the “gospel,” and he says it is “…the power of God that brings salvation.” So what does he mean by that? Well, the word gospel was a popular word back then, and it’s still used in many places today. In ancient times, they didn’t have smartphones and they didn’t have WhatsApp. Your messenger app was to send a servant with a message from where you were to where you wanted your message to go. The messenger would then share your message with the person on the other end, a much more time-consuming process than what we do today. And if the message was good news, it was called “gospel.”
Later, the word “gospel” took on religious meaning. In the eastern part of the Roman Empire, people worshiped the emperor as a god. There’s an inscription in Asia Minor (which is present-day Turkey) which heralds the birth of Caesar Augustus as “the beginning of the gospel [good news] for the world.
Within the Christian faith, the word “gospel” means something very specific. It is still good news, but it is good news about Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. Paul gives us an explanation of what the gospel is in one of his other letters. He writes, “For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that He was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) So Christian gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, that he was buried, and that he was raised again on the third day.
That’s the content of the message. But why does it mean anything for us 2000 years later? To get the answer to that, we have to go back a ways in history, back to the very beginning. That was when God created everything and, after doing so, said that it was very good. We also read in the Bible that God created the human beings in his image. This means that in some very important ways, we are like God. We share some of the same qualities that God has, like intelligence and that ability to love. Bearing the image of God also means that, in a way, God put his imprint upon us. We fit together with God, we were made for relationship with him. As his image-bearers, God placed human beings in His world to reflect his image, his character, and his qualities out into the world so that all creation would know that there is a God who loves them.
Now, unfortunately, very early on, our first parents disobeyed God, and because of that, all of creation was corrupted. The image of God that all human beings bear was tarnished. The sin that infected humanity created an impassible gap between us and God. God is pure and holy and therefore cannot have anything to do with us because we are thoroughly corrupted by sin. So there’s this estrangement between human beings and God. That estrangement not only means distance between us and God in this life, it also means that, on our own, we are all headed for condemnation, which is nothing other than eternity without God and his goodness.
God, however, did not leave humanity without hope. From the very beginning, God promised to send a Messiah who would come to defeat evil, overturn all of the corruption of sin, and bring forgiveness and life for every human being. God also chose for himself one group of people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to be his people in the world. They were to be the ones who would reflect His love and His character into the world, so that the rest of the world would know that there was a God who loved them. And God’s people would also carry the promise of the Messiah down through the generations, for the Messiah would come from them. God always gave humanity hope because, as we read in Joel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Joel 2:32)
Then, centuries later, when the time was just right, a young teenager became pregnant in a miraculous way. She gave birth to the Messiah, who was fully human from the DNA of his mother, Mary. and yet also fully divine, because he was conceived when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary.
This God-human Jesus Christ lived on this earth, just like one of us. Hee stood in our place and lived a perfect human life that counts as goodness for everyone in the whole world. That’s because he did everything he did as a human being, but there was an infinite value to all his actions because of his divinity.
Then, when the time was just right, Jesus willingly went to the cross and suffered and died to pay the full cost of forgiveness for all the sins of all people in the whole world throughout all time. When that price was fully paid, only then did he give up his life and die. With the forgiveness he won for us, Jesus also opened the door for everyone to also have salvation and eternal life. We know that this news is true because on the third day that followed, Jesus rose from the dead. He’s alive, and he’s with us right now.
So that’s the content of the gospel. But what does the gospel do and why does it matter to us all these centuries later? The reason why the gospel is so very, very important is that it contains within it God’s power to do what it implies. In other words, the gospel not only informs us, it transforms us. As we trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, we actually receive the forgiveness of all our sins. As we trust in Jesus for the rich, abundant life that He’s promised to give us, we actually receive that rich, abundant life. As we trust in Jesus for the healing that our souls so desperately need, we actually receive that healing from Jesus, in part now and in fullness in the life to come.
The reason why we have all those gifts is that as we receive and believe in the gospel, the Holy Spirit brings to life within us a new person. This new person only wants to love God and follow Jesus. And this new person will live forever. This new person is who will be raised from the dead on the last day, and our whole body will be made new again and brought together with this new person. We will live forever with Jesus in the New Heaven and Earth.
So the power of God that’s in the Gospel is the power to bring to life within us a new person who will live forever with Jesus. And then there’s the matter of righteousness. As I mentioned earlier, because human beings were corrupted by sin, there’s that distance between us and God. God can’t have anything to do with us because of our sin. And we don’t want to have anything to do with God because of our sin.
So by sending Jesus into the world to be our Savior, what God has done is He has bridged the gap between Himself and all humanity. And in Jesus, we have God’s righteousness. In God’s eyes, we are just as righteous as Jesus. So it is in Jesus that the gap between us and God is fully removed. In Him, we have that close, intimate relationship for which we were created, and which we actually deeply love. It’s ours in Jesus Christ.
As Paul says later in his letter, “For in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. Just as it is written, ‘The righteous will live by faith.'” (Romans 1:17) And it could easily be put the other way around and said, “Those who live by faith are righteous.” Both statements are true.
So, what does that mean for us? It means that the news, the information that we need to treasure above all else, in the very core of our being, and through which we filter all other news, all other information, is the gospel. Because the gospel changes everything for us. It not only changes our status and our standing before God, but it also changes how we think, how we feel, and how we act.
The reason why this is so very, very important is that, dear friends, we are living in the midst of a renovation that has been fully paid for, but it’s not yet complete. Have you lived in a house while a home renovation is being done? It’s not very fun, is it? And that is the state of the world that we live in. We could even go further say we’re living in the midst of a battleground between good and evil that’s going on in the world around us.
With the gospel as our filter through which we process all the information coming at us from the world, we are able to stay on track and not be disheartened or dismayed by the news that the world is in a terrible state. The world is in a terrible state, but God is at work in the world and, one day, he’s going to make all things right. With that piece of news settled in our hearts, we won’t get shaken up by what’s going on in the world around us.
Now, there’s also a battlefield going on inside us between our old and new natures, our old sinful nature, and our new child-of-God nature that Jesus has given to us. In my own personal experience, the battle is often against things like fear, anxiety, or discouragement. However, with the gospel as our filter, it can govern that inner dialogue, so that the things we are telling ourselves are not lies that get us upset and anxious, but the truth that God loves us and he’s with us, we are his beloved, forgiven child, and in the end, all things are going to be made right.
Don Wickstrum tells the story of his life in a video on I am Second called “Chasing Hope.” When he was little, his mum and dad sold everything they had and moved up north to help his dad’s sister with a business she was starting up there. They invested everything they had, but there was some big fight that happened and, when Don was eight years old, he and his family had to leave with nothing. Don remembers feeling very hopeless at that time.
A few years later, Don was in university. He was discouraged with Christianity to the point that he became an atheist and wanted to prove that Christianity was false. After about a year or so of trying to do that, he was unsuccessful. At some point, God, through the Holy Spirit, brought him back into faith in Jesus Christ.
Fast forward a few more years to 2018, and Don had a business, a wife, and children. He went to the doctor, who told him that he has cancer and if he didn’t sell his business, he would be dead within a year. So he probably sold his business. But he continued a hobby he had of with some other guys to successfully complete the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
As he continued with his efforts to climb Pike’s Peak, Don and his team ran into some problems. The first year, their vehicle broke down. The second year, the climb was shortened because of fog at the top of the mountain. Don completed the climb, but it wasn’t all the way to the top of Pike’s Peak. But they kept persevering, and finally, on his next attempt, Don made it all the way to the top of the mountain.
For Don, his racing hobby is a ministry because during the Fan Fest held two days prior to the Climb, he tries to encourage people who have been diagnosed with cancer like he has, and those who have had dreams that they’ve been fighting for, and it seems like they’re not going to happen.
When asked what he hopes people will get from the work that he’s doing, Don said he hopes that no child feels like he did when he was eight years old. He wants people to know that there’s hope. There’s endless hope.
Then he was asked what he hopes his five children get out of this experience of life that they’ve been going through. He said, “Hope. I hope that they can see the love that I have for people, the love I have for them, but also the fact that it is okay to dream, to make sure that we are aligning those dreams with what God wants for our lives. But I hope more than anything, that even though life may not always seem to present you with the best hand, the best place to put that hand is in the hands of God.”[i]
So, dear friend, the challenge that I want to leave with you today is to put whatever hand life has given to you in God’s hand. And then let the gospel and its mighty power transform your relationship with God, transform your inner being, and transform the way that you relate to the world.
Amen.
[i] “Chasing Hope – Don Wickstrum’s Journey to Race for What Matters Most,” I Am Second, November 16, 2022, Video, 23:34, https://youtu.be/zejI9uSsZfU.
(This message was shared at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley BC on July 30, 2023. For more info about WGLC, go to wglc.org.)
Farewell to Shadowlands 