“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

© Brian Labosier  July 15, 2022

God works in different ways in each of our hearts, but we need to hear at least a minimal core of content about who God is and His works if we are to place our faith and trust in Him.  In other words, there is a certain minimum amount of gospel we need to hear in order to make a genuine response to this good news.  Thus, we need to hear something about knowing Him as Creator, knowing Him as Ruler and Judge, knowing Him as Redeemer, and knowing Him as the One who promises to be our Restorer and Perfecter, in order to respond meaningfully to God’s call of salvation. 

Becoming a child of God only marks the beginning of the process.  It is a common experience for us to keep learning more about each of these truths as we continue to live the Christian life once we are God’s children.  For example, we need to grasp an awareness of our own sinfulness and need before a holy God in order to become one of His children, but then as we continue to live our lives, we discover more and more the depths of our own sinfulness and neediness before Him in the years and decades to come.  We don’t need to know everything about God as we begin the Christian life or have our theology all lined up properly before we can be become a child of God, but we do need to grasp at least something of who God is and how He wants us to relate to Him.

One fact we do need to realize is that we are insufficient in and of ourselves.  In fact, there is in only one means of salvation, and ultimately that is through God the Son, Jesus Christ.  The Apostle Peter describes it this way in a message he delivered to the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem only days after Pentecost, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  This is why Christ is always an essential part of the gospel message. 

The gospel message is always both Trinitarian and Christ-centered.  It focuses on Christ, but it also includes God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.  God the Father is the One who initiates and orchestrates our salvation, and the Holy Spirit is the One who applies it to our lives.  Knowing the Triune God is a package deal: if we truly know one member, we know all Three; whereas, if we reject one member, we reject all three.  This is why John tells us in 1 John 2:23 that knowing Christ is directly related to knowing God the Father, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”  Yet knowing Christ is often the place where we begin to know God.  This is why the person and work of Christ are so central in the gospel message.

Perhaps reflecting briefly on how God’s plan of redemption functioned during Old Testament times (as well as Jews living in the time of Jesus’ earthly life but still prior to His death and resurrection) will help us understand how God calls us to faith in the present Church Age that was ushered in by Jesus’ earthly life, death, and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  At the time of the Fall in Genesis 3, God promised Adam and Eve an offspring who would set things right and fatally destroy the serpent (Genesis 3:15).  Adam and Eve undoubtedly wonder whether this glorious event would take place during their own lifetime.  But it was not to be.  God for His own purposes delayed the coming of God the Son to earth for countless thousands of years until “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4).  But what about all those who lived before Christ’s coming?  How were they saved?

King David in the Old Testament, approximately a thousand years before Christ, had full assurance that his sins, grievous as he knew they were, had been forgiven.  He wrote in Psalm 32:1-2, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”  How did David have this assurance, especially in light of his grievous sins with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11)?  The entire Old Testament sacrificial system offered no provision for dealing with the sins of adultery and murder like David had committed.  Humanly speaking, there was no hope for David.  Yet God was gracious and the Prophet Nathan came to David and told him, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”    David’s forgiveness was made possible solely through God’s grace.

But still, we can ask, how did God forgive David’s sins?  Ultimately, there is only one answer. David’s sins, along with all the sins for all the other of God’s people, past, present, and future, were placed on Jesus Christ when He died on the cross of Calvary.  Old Testament saints are saved in exactly the same way as New Testament saints; the only difference is that New Testament saints have a clearer and more specific gospel message.  Whereas David and other Old Testament saints would have looked ahead in faith and simply believed that God would do whatever was necessary to forgive their sins, New Testament believers now understand that God sent His only Son to live a perfect life and die a sacrificial death on our behalf.  Whereas Old Testament saints would have had a less precise object of their faith in God’s grace, New Testament believers can reflect on the marvel of Christ sacrificing His life for ours at Calvary.  Thus, Old Testament believers would have looked ahead in faith for the forgiveness of their sins; we look back in faith and believe that Jesus’ death on the cross two thousand years ago was fully sufficient to pay the penalty for our sins. 

Ultimately, there is only one plan of salvation, and this plan focuses on the person and work of Christ.  The moment we think otherwise, we assume that there are two plans of salvation, for example, one prior to Christ for Old Testament believers and one involving Christ for present-day believers.  Yet if this were true, if salvation were really possible apart from Christ, then God really didn’t need to send His Son to this earth to live and die on our behalf.  The historical reality of Jesus’ death reminds us that there is no other way.  Jesus’ death was the only sufficient means of securing the redemption of His people—past, present, and future.

In every age, God calls for a response.  Joshua challenged the people in his generation to “choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).  This is God’s call to each of us in our generation, too.  Our choices and decisions are significant and count for eternity.  Salvation, new life, and the experience of knowing God are all related to the gospel message of God’s goodness and grace in sending His Son into this world to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.  We can never hear the gospel message too often or without responding to it—either positively in faith, or negatively in resistance and rejection.  The choice is ours.

Pause and Reflect

(1) What about you?  Will you give God the place He deserves in your life and accept Him as Lord and Savior?  Remember, if you accept Him as Lord, this also means God is calling you to live a new and different way of life right here in this present world for the rest of your life.

(2) If you are already a Christian, the same gospel message that saved you initially is also the same message you need to hear as a believer in order to grow and mature.  We need to remind ourselves on a regular, ongoing basis of the greatness of God, the depths of our own need, the wonder of Christ, and how God is continuing His work of grace in transforming His people to be more like Christ.