The Gospel of Joy

"...I bring you good news of great joy..." Luke 2:10

"After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.'” (Genesis 15:1, NKJV)

God’s declaration to Abram (Abraham) was that God Himself would be his exceedingly great reward. And as it was for Abraham, so it can be for you.

There’s nothing greater in all the world than to know the living God in a personal relationship. To know God now, in this life, and ultimately to know the fullness of His glorious presence forever surpasses the value of anything in the universe. There’s no greater joy or pleasure to be found than the joy and pleasure of being with God. As the Psalmist says: 

“In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Psalm 16:11)

Good News of Great Joy

To know God forever is to know joy and pleasure forever. In fact, to know God forever is what it means to have eternal life.

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)

Heaven is not an extension of the pleasures we have on earth. Heaven is not just earthly existence free from suffering and sickness and death. No, heaven is eternal life, and eternal life is life forever with God, and life forever with God is to experience eternal joy and pleasure far beyond anything we can experience in this life. Seventy years of earth’s most exquisite pleasures would be like a mouth full of dust compared to a single second in the presence of God.  

His presence can be your exceedingly great reward.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a call to know God: The Gospel is not a call to religion; it’s a call to relationship. In the Gospel you are being invited, not just to know about God, but to know Him in a living, vital, and personal way. In truth, the Gospel is an invitation for you to do what you were created to do.    

You Were Created to Know God

People are hard-wired by God to seek joy: And most often our quest for joy is expressed by looking for things we think will make us happy. We look for happiness in food and fame, guns and gold, power and prestige, movies and music, games and gadgets, computers and concerts, sex and sports, and the list goes on. People are hungry for happiness, but deep down what we really want is joy. Happiness is fleeting, but joy remains. 

But there’s no lasting happiness here: That’s the problem; nothing in this world can bring lasting happiness. We pursue things to make us happy, but when we get what we want and the newness fades, we immediately look for happiness in someone or something else: a new lover, a new job, a new car, a new computer, a new game, a new vacation, a new… whatever. And after we get that next thing and the newness fades, we look for happiness in something or someone else, rinse and repeat.  And this cycle continues until we die. 

We do find a less fleeting joy in relationships: It’s in our families, our friends, our co-workers, our classmates, our teammates; it’s in relationships that we know a more enduring joy. But even relationships with people don’t last; classmates and teammates lose touch, those with whom we work change jobs, friends often lose track of one another, and even family members, even those closest to us, are ultimately lost in death. It’s a simple, tragic truth that the joy we find in relationships doesn’t last.

Why do we find our greatest joy in relationships: Because God hard-wired us for to find joy in relationship, and specifically we’re hard wired to find true joy in a relationship with Him. We were made to enjoy God by knowing and loving and experiencing Him in the fellowship of relationship. But if that’s true, why do people run so hard after happiness instead of finding joy in God? 

The Separation of Sin

“…your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2)

People have not always run hard after happiness: God is holy, completely without sin. And so those who experience fellowship in relationship with Him must also be without sin. Adam and Eve were created in holy, sinless perfection, and because of that they did experience fellowship in relationship with God. Adam and Eve knew and enjoyed God; they walked with Him in Eden in the cool of the day.

But the hearts of Adam and Eve became sinful when they chose to eat the fruit God had commanded them not to eat. In that moment of disobedience their relationship with God was shattered. The sin of Adam and Eve made them unholy; their sin separated them from the God they had loved. And so that day, when they heard God walking in the garden, they hid themselves from Him (see Genesis 3:8).

When Adam and Eve lost fellowship with God they lost their only source of joy: And because of that our first parents began the desperate and futile pursuit of happiness to fill the void. Today, thousands of years later, we’re still doing the same thing.   

The Depth of Sin

When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the garden, that was a single sin: And yet that one sin led Adam and Eve to commit innumerable sins throughout their lives in this world. Why? Because when they sinned, the hearts of Adam and Eve became sinful. Here’s how.

Our first parents couldn’t find joy in God, so they ran hard after happiness in other things: But to want anything more than we want God, to love anything or anyone more than we love God, to prefer anything more than God is the essence of sin. It is, in fact, idolatry. Adam and Eve sinned once in eating the forbidden fruit. They continued sinning by seeking happiness in the world instead of seeking joy in God. Their sinful heart drove them to sin, and so they sinned constantly until the day they died.

We’re all descended from Adam and Eve; we’re all born with sinful hearts. And so, just like Adam and Eve, we spend our days seeking happiness in anything and everything BUT God. That’s idolatry. Idolatry is sin, and our sin separates us from God.

And the outcome of a life of sin is death.

“The soul who sins will die.” (Ezekiel 18:4). 

Adam and Eve would have lived forever in fellowship with God forever had they not sinned: The day they sinned was the day that Adam and Eve began to die physically. Years later they did die, and so do we. 

As descendants of Adam and Eve, the moment of our birth is the beginning of our journey to the grave. Everyone you know, everyone alive today is slowly dying. And while we’re dying, we’re sinning constantly, hungrily seeking happiness in things that cannot make us happy.  

Now if physical death was merely the end of life, none of what I have said to this point would matter. The problem is this. Physical death is not the end of life. Physical death is just the beginning of an eternal existence. And between death and eternity, there will be judgment.

A representation of the Great White Throne

The Judgment

After you die, you will be raised from the dead, so will I: The Bible makes this point quite clearly:

“For since by a man (Adam) came death, by a man (Jesus Christ) also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22, Emphasis added)

"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised can imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." (1 Corinthians 15:42-44a)

After death everyone who has ever lived will be raised to life (1 Corinthians 15:21-22), and we will be raised to live forever in eternal, imperishable bodies. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44a). We will be raised in bodies that can never die and never be destroyed. But before we begin living forever, we will face judgment before a holy God:  

“…it is appointed for men (people) to die once and after this comes judgment…” (Hebrews 9:27)

In the judgment you and I will stand before God, and there all of our deeds and all of our words and all of our most private thoughts will be read aloud before Him. Good deeds and evil deeds, good words and evil words, the secrets of your heart and mine will be laid bare before a just and holy God.

And after every deed and word and attitude and action has been made known, each of us will give an accounting of himself or herself to God. As Jesus says, even:

“...every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” (Matthew 12:36).  

After a futile attempt to explain ourselves to God, He will render His final verdict. It will be either “guilty” or “not guilty.” Those “not guilty” will enter into the eternal presence of God, safe and secure to live with Him in joy forever and ever.

Those found “guilty,” will be sentenced to eternal death.     

Eternal death is known as the second death: Eternal death is the lake of fire, what we call hell. And for those who have eternal, imperishable bodies that can never be destroyed and never die, hell is a terrible and terrifying end that has no end:

“And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night…” (Revelation 14:11). 

God is absolutely just, and so the degree of torment the sinner suffers in hell will be in proportion to the degree of good or evil done in this life, and in proportion to the knowledge a person had of God.

Nonetheless, torment is torment and forever is forever. Hell is forever, and forever never ends. There are no second chances. There’s no way out. Those in hell will reside there in some measure of torment, day and night, forever and ever and ever…

This leaves every human being alive today in an incredibly dangerous place: The ONLY people who will survive the judgment and live forever with God are those who are found “not guilty.” But the verdict “not guilty” will only be rendered to people who are sinlessly perfect, and none of us is. In fact, scripture could not be clearer:

 “THERE’S NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE…” (Romans 3:10). 

None of us is righteous. None of us is perfect. None of us is pure. None of us is holy.

“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23)

We have all sinned, and so no human being will ever hear the verdict “not guilty” unless, somehow, the sin problem is solved.

The Magnitude of the Sin Problem

Our sin problem is much bigger than we realize: In fact, our sin problem is a two-part problem.    

First, all of us have committed countless individual sins: lying, cheating, stealing, gossip, grudges we hold, envy and jealously… the list is endless. And every individual sin is an act of cosmic treason against a holy God. God is absolutely just and therefore must punish every single individual sin. That’s what happens in judgment, noted above. However, we sinners have another issue. 

And the second part of our sin problem is worse: As bad as it is to have to pay for every single individual sin we have ever committed or ever will commit, there is a deeper issue. Jesus says:

“…out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” (Matthew 15:19).

Sinful human behavior is driven by the sinful hearts we inherited from Adam and Eve. The sinful heart drives us to near perpetual idolatry because we pursue happiness in stuff while we ignore God. And while the sinful heart remains, we will continue to sin while we live in this world.

So what’s the solution: In order to “fix” our sinful hearts, what we need is a new heart. And that’s exactly what God promises to give. In Ezekiel 36:26 God says:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

In the New Testament Jesus calls receiving a new heart being born again. A Christian is a person who has been born again; he or she has received a new heart.

Here I should make it clear that the new heart God gives does not eradicate the old sinful heart. Those who are born again don’t immediately stop sinning. What does happen with the new heart is that God sends His Holy Spirit to live within that person, even while a remnant of your old sinful heart remains. And it is the Spirit’s power, working through our decisions, that enables us to live in this world as God commands. There will be more on this later. Just know that God’s purpose for us as Christians is that as we live in this world we sin less and less, and do good more and more. As Jesus commands:

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

A new heart is required for us to “let our light shine,” that is, for us to sin less and do good more. And the Christian will be engaged in the process of sinning less and less and doing good more and more until death or until Jesus comes.    

Here’s the summary of what we need:  In order to hear the verdict “not guilty” from God, and to live in joyous eternal fellowship with Him forever, 1). We must have the debt paid for every individual sin we have committed, and 2). We must have a new heart to enable us to live as God requires, sinning less and doing good more. 

Without a comprehensive solution to these two problems, every human being on the planet is perched precariously on the precipice of eternal destruction. And after death there are no second chances. 

The Gospel of Joy: The Sin Solution

The Gospel is Good News: And it’s good news because Jesus Christ solves both aspects of our sin problem. In the work of Christ, the debt for all your sin, past, present, and future, can be fully paid, AND you can be born again; you can have to have a new heart.  

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born as a human baby in Bethlehem. And during His 33 years on earth, He lived a sinlessly perfect life. Jesus was truly tempted, just as we are, and yet He never told a lie, He never lusted, He never stole, He never cheated.  As author of Hebrews says, Jesus:

“…has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

But Jesus wasn’t just sinless, He was also perfectly righteous. Jesus lived his life in perfect obedience to His Father. He loved the Lord His God with all His heart and all His soul and all His mind and all His strength every second of every minute of every day of His life on earth.

In short Jesus lived the perfect life we must live in order to be declared “not guilty” at the judgment.

And then Jesus did what was necessary so that sinful people, like you and me, could be declared “not guilty” by God. at the judgment. And He paid a terrible price. 

In obedience to His Father, Jesus Christ submitted Himself to humiliation and torture and crucifixion on a rugged Roman cross. And on that cross Jesus absorbed the full fury of the wrath of God for sin.

The Apostle Paul says that God made Jesus:

“...who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus Christ was perfectly sinless, and yet God made his perfect sinless Son to be sin for those who would trust in Him. And He did that so that we might become righteous. 

For those who receive Jesus Christ by faith, His death on the cross becomes your death on the cross. And so, when Jesus was crucified, we were crucified with Him spiritually. When God’s poured out His wrath for sin on Jesus, He was actually pouring out His wrath for your sin, and mine. When Christ died, we died with Him and because of that, the debt for all of my sin, past, present, and future has been paid in full. This great blessing comes to all who embrace Him by faith. 

And in this sin problem number 1 is solved: Through faith the penalty for all individual sins of the believer has been fully paid in Christ’s death. 

More than that, though, Christ’s resurrection is your power for new life: After He died and was buried, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. This is not something Christians just believe might have happened. There is, in fact, more historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than for any event in human history. Jesus Christ is alive today. And when you embrace Him through faith, Christ’s resurrection becomes your resurrection. And to be raised from the dead is to be given the power to live a new life.

As Paul says, the Christian is raised with Christ so that he or she…:

“…might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection…” (Romans 6:4b-5)

Walking in newness of life begins with a new heart; it begins when we are born again. And when you are born again the Holy Spirit comes to live in you, and with His presence in you comes the power to defeat sin in your life. Temptation can be resisted and addictions can be broken. And just as a sinful heart produces sin, so a new heart through faith produces good works by which God is glorified. You will be given the ability to sin less and less and to do good more and more. 

And with a new heart, with God’s Spirit living within, you will also begin to enjoy a restored relationship with God, and you will begin to love God as Jesus did, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Your love for Him will not be perfected in this life, but it will grow as you grow to know God better. Indeed, your relationship with God will grow greater and greater until the day you come into His full presence, where your joy and satisfaction will continue to grow forever and ever. 

This is how sin problem number 2 is solved: Through faith the believer is given a new heart, and with it the power to begin to defeat sin, and to begin to know God in the fellowship of relationship.      

So, the question now is this. Do you want everlasting and ever-increasing joy and delight and pleasure in God’s presence? Do you want to have eternal life, worshiping God while loving and enjoying a soul satisfying relationship with Him, beginning now and continuing forever?

If so, please read on. 

Saving Faith?

What is Saving Faith?

As the Bible makes clear, eternal life is to live forever with God. That blessed benefit was purchased by Christ in His death and resurrection. And it is only through faith in Jesus Christ that we receive eternal life. The key question now is this. What does it mean to have faith in Jesus Christ? Or more concisely, what is saving faith? 

To define what saving faith is, let me begin by explaining what saving faith is not. 

Saving faith is not just believing true things about Jesus. You can believe that Jesus Christ was a real historical person. You can believe He died on the cross and rose from the dead, and that His work pays the penalty for sins. Believing true things about Jesus Christ is not saving faith. 

And even if you make those facts personal; even if you believe that the work Jesus did, He did for you, that’s not saving faith either. Even if you believe Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for your sins. Even if you believe that He rose from the dead to make you perfectly righteous before God, even believing personalized facts about Jesus is still not saving faith.

Saving faith is not just believing facts. You can diligently study the Bible and believe everything it says. You can believe and embrace every point of orthodox doctrine. You can passionately preach and defend the truths of scripture for two decades, as I did. None of those things is an expression of saving faith.

Saving faith doesn’t just believe facts, saving faith receives the person of Jesus Christ: The Apostle John says that when Jesus came into the world His Own people didn’t receive Him, but…:

“…as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…” (John 1:12).

Receiving is believing. Saving faith doesn’t just believe facts about Christ; saving faith receives Christ. More specifically, saving faith warmly embraces Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and Great Reward. And with that embrace you receive a new heart, you are born again, and a living relationship with the living God begins. How then does a person receive Jesus Christ? As was just mentioned, we receive Him in three ways, as our Lord, as our Savior, and as our Great Reward. 

Saving Faith: Receiving Christ as Your Lord

In Romans 10:8 Paul talks about “the word of faith” which is the message of the Gospel that Paul preached. In the next verse Paul defines what that “word of faith” is. He says: 

“…that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)

The word of saving faith is that those who confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead, will be saved.

Saving faith embraces Jesus Christ as the resurrected, living Lord: Jesus is not lying dead in a tomb somewhere in the Middle East. The resurrection is an established historical fact, but saving faith goes beyond just believing the fact of Christ’s resurrection.  Saving believes from the heart that God raised Jesus, that He is alive today, and that He is a living person Who really acts with power in the lives of real people like you and me. Jesus Christ is alive today to be known in relationship, to be embraced and to be enjoyed now. Saving faith embraces the resurrected living Lord Jesus.  

Jesus Christ is Lord: It is vital for us to understand that Jesus will not be received on human terms. He will not be embraced as an advantageous enhancement of my self-life. The embrace of Christ is not about self-improvement. Further, the confession of Jesus as Lord is not just words spoken. Rather, saving faith confesses Jesus as Lord, and confession is the outward declaration of the inward embrace of Christ as your Lord, your King.

As Americans we’ve never had a king, and so the concept of Christ as Lord/King is hard to grasp. It’s not necessary to understand what Christ’s Lordship will mean for you before you embrace Him. For now, just know that when you embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord, you no longer belong to yourself. When you confess Him as Lord, you are acknowledging the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ over your life. Therefore, you belong to Him.

Freedom loving Americans may find the idea of belonging to someone else repugnant; if that “someone else” is a sinful human being, I agree.  But consider the price Jesus paid to redeem you. Your Lord endured the horror of the cross to pay for your lifelong rebellion against God. He suffered unimaginable shame and pain so that you might be set free from your sin.

Your Lord loves you and sacrificed Himself for you.  The Lord Jesus is not an aloof tyrant. He is the God who made you and Who loves you and Who died for you. And so everything He commands you to do is for your good. That is the Lord you are called to embrace.

And when you embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord, you must also be prepared to follow Him. Once again, it’s not necessary to understand all that means; just know this. God’s purpose is that His people (Christians) become more and more like Jesus in the way they live, in what they say and in what they do. As the Apostle John says, Christians are to:

“…to walk in the same manner as He (Jesus) walked.” (1 John 2:6) 

That’s what it means to follow Him. And Christ’s word to those who would follow Him is both a warning and a promise:

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25) 

Our Lord calls us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross daily and follow Him. The cross is an instrument of death, and in the power that God provides the Christian learns what it means to die to sin and to live for God. In dying to sin and living for God we will sin less and less and to do good more and more. The process of dying to sin and living for God is the essence of it means to become like Jesus.

Does the price of following Christ as Lord seem too high? Consider what Jesus says one verse later in Matthew 16:

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)

To embrace Christ as Lord and follow Him is to gain absolutely everything; to reject Him and go your own way is to lose absolutely everything. And, as the missionary Jim Elliot once said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

In saving faith, we embrace Jesus Christ as our living Lord and loving King. Your confession of Jesus as your Lord is the expression of your desire to follow Him; it is as you grow in Christ that the implications of your confession will become known.

Saving Faith: Receiving Christ as Your Savior

When you embrace Christ as your Savior, His death on the cross becomes your death on the cross and that is the full payment for all of your sins past, present, and future. Embrace Christ as Savior and you will be free from the penalty of your sin. But the work of Jesus Christ goes well beyond just paying the penalty for sins. The work of Christ also frees you from sin’s power.

As we just discussed, God’s purpose for His those He saves is that they become more and more like Jesus in the way they live, in what they say and in what they do. God’s purpose is that we learn to die to our sin and to live for Him. Or, as Paul says, God’s purpose it is that we become conformed to the “image” of Jesus:

“For those whom He (God) foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…” (Romans 8:29, emphasis added)

When you truly embrace Christ as savior, you will be given a new heart, you will be born again. And when you are born again the Holy Spirit comes to live in your heart. It’s the Spirit Who will give you the power to die to sin and to live for God. 

It’s important to realize that even after you have been born again, even with God’s Spirit living in you, your old sinful heart is not completely eradicated. Even as a Christian you will still be inclined to sin because a remnant of your sinful heart remains. That remnant of sin is what Paul calls “the flesh.”  

In order to become conformed to the image of Jesus, the Christian must engage in the process of dying to sin and living for God. That process is called sanctification, and it requires both the Spirit’s power and our will. The idea is expressed by Paul when he says to the Philippian Christians:

“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)

Paul command is not that we work for our salvation or work to keep our salvation; we are commanded to work out our salvation. How do we do that?

As an example, when I am tempted to sin, I must decide against what my “flesh” desires; I must choose not to engage in that particular sin. But I don’t make that decision on my own. When I decide against my flesh, I also breathe a prayer to God, seeking His help to enable me to defeat my temptation. When I seek His help, my decision to say “no” to my flesh is empowered by God’s Spirit. In that moment, the temptation that would have overwhelmed me before, is beaten. While the same temptation may return again and again, over-time it will be defeated.

Our temptations come in two varieties: 1). Temptations to do what is wrong or 2). Temptations not to do what is right. The process of sanctification is defeating temptations, one at a time, in the power the Spirit provides. To use the words of Paul, sanctification is putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit:

So then, brethren, we’re under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:12-13)

At this point we should consider 3 things concerning sanctification:

First, in this life our pursuit of sanctification will never be perfect. We will be tempted, fail to call on God for help, and the result will be sin.  And when we sin, we confess our sins to God. As John says:

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

Second, as we pursue sanctification it’s important to understand that we will never become fully sanctified in this life. We will not reach a state of sinless perfection in this world. In the end God will fully sanctify us, when we die or when Christ returns. But in this life full sanctification is not required for final salvation.  

Third, participation in the process of sanctification is required for final salvation. We will fail at times as we pursue sanctification. We will never be fully sanctified in this life, and full sanctification is NOT required for final salvation. But what is absolutely necessary is that we be engaged in the process of sanctification. As Paul says above, we are “…under obligation…” to put to death the deeds of the body; that is, we are under obligation to pursue sanctification. As the author of Hebrews solemnly warns:

Pursue… the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

When you embrace the living Christ as your Savior, His Spirit gives you the power to defeat sin in your life. And as you engage in the process of sanctification sin problem number 2 is (being) solved for you. 

Saving Faith: Receiving Christ as Your Great Reward

God told Abram that He, God, was Abram’s exceedingly great reward. People today can’t know the great reward that God is, we can’t know anything of His joyous and pleasurable presence, because our sin has separated us from Him.

Jesus came and suffered and died, He conquered sin and He conquered death so that He might bring us to God. There, in God’s presence, we glorify Him in worship. And as we worship Him, God will reflect back to us everlasting and ever-increasing joy and delight and pleasure in His presence, now and forevermore. 

Saving faith embraces Jesus Christ as the great reward not just because He gives us access to the greatest treasure of all, God the Father. More than that, Jesus Christ is our great reward because He Himself is God.

This is a profound mystery that expresses a profound truth. It was God the Father and God the Son who repaired the relationship that our sin had shattered. It was God the Father and God the Son who paid an unimaginable price so that we might bring Him glory. Our benefit is that we get to spend eternity with an infinitely creative God who has chosen us to experience every increasing joy and every more glorious pleasure as we worship Him. We embrace God in Christ as a reward of infinite and surpassing value. 

Saving Faith: Receiving a New Heart 

I’ve talked all the way through this writing about receiving a new heart; it is on this point that we end. 

Jesus said that for a person to be saved and enjoy God forever, he or she must be “born again.” To be born again is to have a new heart, and it is from a new heart that saving faith flows.

It’s a new heart that embraces Jesus Christ as the living Lord who is God.

It’s a new heart that receives Christ as Savior and receives the benefits of His death and resurrection.  It’s a new heart that has the power to defeat temptation, to sin less and to do good more.

It’s a new heart, with new affections, that sees Jesus and His Father as an exceedingly great reward.

It’s God who gives people new hearts. It’s God who takes out the stony, rebellious, dead hearts and replaces them with warm, worshiping living hearts. 

Do you want a new heart? If not, that’s for taking the time to read this far. 

If you do want a new heart, then are you willing? 

First, are you willing to embrace Jesus Christ as your living Lord, even if you don’t understand all that will mean for you? Are you willing to confess Him as Lord, and that you are not your own? Are you willing to surrender yourself to His loving, sovereign authority? And are you willing to follow Him, and are you ready to learn how to take up your cross, dying to sin and living for God? 

Second, are you willing to embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior, not depending on your own good works. Are you willing to trust completely in Christ’s sacrifice as the only way to pay for all your sins, past, present, and future? And are you willing to use the power that the Holy Spirit provides to pursue sanctification, to begin sinning less and less and doing good more and more, to become conformed to the image of Christ?  

Third, are you willing to embrace Jesus Christ as your Great Reward, as the one who brings you to the Father? Are you willing to begin to experiencing joy and peace and pleasure in a relationship with God in Christ now, and on into eternity?

Are you willing?  If so, then go to God in prayer and ask Him to change your heart. 

Will He listen? Will He provide? Consider the words of Jesus. 

“So I say to you, ask (literally “keep on asking”), and it will be given to you; seek (literally “keep on seeking”), and you will find; knock (literally “keep on knocking”), and it will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9)

And here’s Christ’s promise in the next verse:

“For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.” (Luke 11:10)

Keep asking and you will receive. Keep seeking and you will find. Keep knocking and the door will be opened to you. 

After this, in Luke 11-12, Jesus illustrates this truth:

“Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?” (Luke 11:11–12).

The answer, clearly, is no. And so, Jesus concludes this parable of promise with these glorious words:

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13)

Please allow me to paraphrase this promise of Jesus:

Anyone who keeps on asking WILL RECEIVE the Holy Spirit and with Him, a changed heart.

Anyone who keeps on seeking WILL FIND joy in knowing God now, in this life, and forever.

Anyone who keeps knocking, to him or her God WILL OPEN the door to glory and joy in Him.   

Keep asking.  Keep seeking. Keep knocking until God provides. 

Feel free to contact me so that I and those I know can pray for you. My desire is that you be born again and that you embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord, and Savior, and exceedingly great reward.