How does the gospel actually function in the life of a Christian believer? How does it work? What difference does it actually make? How do you get the gospel from something out there that I believe to something that’s making a difference in here, touching every area of my life? Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick. And Colin, some big questions right there. So how do we get the gospel from something which is out there to something which touches every part of our lives? Yeah, well, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. And to be a Christian, so much more than believing in Christ, it’s having the presence of Christ in me by the power of the Holy Spirit. Someone just last week said, put it like this to me, I’ve always had Jesus Christ in my life, but now he’s in me. There’s a big difference between these two things. You know, here was a person who was around the church and had been in Sunday school, but it was all external. Jesus Christ is in my life, but now he’s in me. What had happened was this person had been born again, to use the Bible’s phrase. The Holy Spirit had come. Christ was present in that person’s life. And that’s at the very heart of being a Christian. And the difference is quite remarkable. I guess we’ve all had conversations with people who say something like, oh, yes, I believe in God. What’s your response to that? Well, you always want to be gentle with someone. You know, you don’t hit a person because they don’t see a thing. So what you want to do is to describe from the Bible what a Christian actually is. A Christian loves Christ, though we have not seen him. We love him, Peter says, and we’re filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. It would be reasonable to say, do you know anything of that? What do you know about an inexpressible, glorious joy that you have over Jesus Christ? And a person who’s merely saying, well, I believe in God will fairly quickly say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, now we’re at a place of being able to say, well, now we can talk about what a real Christian is. And maybe there’s more in this than you have yet discovered. And there’s more in the gospel than many have discovered so far. So I hope you’ll join us in the second book of Corinthians, chapter eight and verses one to nine, as we begin our message, A Generous God. Here’s Colin. Now, I want to begin today with really the big picture. This is largely introductory so that we will understand the teaching of these chapters. But I want you to think back over this year and really everything that we’ve been learning. And as I look back on what we’ve been learning from the scriptures, what the Lord’s been teaching me and what I’ve been trying to learn in my own life, I think that there’s one theme that stands out more than any other. In many different ways, we keep circling back to this great theme of what it means to apply the gospel to every area of our lives. What difference does knowing Christ really make to a person’s everyday life? Back in September, Pastor Mike Boulmore, who pastors up in Kenosha, a number of you may know him and his ministry, he came here to our church for a special training session with our pastors and with our lay leaders. And he gave us some marvelous help in a presentation which he called the functional centrality of the gospel. The functional centrality of the gospel. And what he meant by that is simply this. How does the gospel actually function in the life of a Christian believer? How does it work? What difference does it actually make? My way of putting that is how does the gospel apply to every sphere of life? How do you get the gospel from something out there that I believe to something that’s making a difference in here, touching every area of my life? Now I want you to see that actually the New Testament is really one massive project in applying the gospel to all of life. The New Testament fundamentally does two things. First, it tells us what the gospel is, who Jesus is, why he came into the world, what it is that he has done for us. But then it also tells us, secondly, how the gospel works, what it means to be in Jesus Christ, how knowing Jesus Christ actually makes a difference to every sphere of your life. Now I want to give you some examples so that you get the idea. Because once your eyes are opened to how again and again the New Testament keeps applying the gospel to all of life, you will find you start spotting it all over the place. So I hope you have your Bible ready. I’m going to give you one or two examples of how the New Testament applies the gospel to life. Let’s start, for example, with the application to marriage, to take one very practical subject. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25. Now suppose that you’re sitting down with a husband who’s not doing a very good job of loving his wife. And you’re trying to help this person. Try and picture that situation. How might you help him? Now there seem to me to be three basic ways in which we can try to motivate people to change their behavior. There’s a guilt way, there’s a pride way, and there’s a gospel way. And it’s very important to understand the difference. Let’s take the guilt way first, okay? I’m sitting down with a guy who’s not doing a very good job of loving his wife. Here’s what it sounds like if I try and motivate him the guilt way. It goes like this. Now look, Joe or Jimmy or whatever your name is, you made a vow. You promised to love this woman for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Whether you’re happy right now or not, you have to live up to what you said in that promise. Now what am I doing? I am appealing to this man’s conscience. I’m saying to him, you did this. You said you would do this. Now it’s time for you to step up to the plate and for you to deliver on your promise. That’s a very reasonable way to motivate this guy to change his behavior, but it is a way that is based fundamentally on touching conscience and therefore it works on a person’s sense of guilt. Here’s another way you could do it. I could try the pride way. It goes like this. Hey, Joe, you’re a great guy and you don’t want to mess up your marriage and I’ve looked at your life and you can succeed in just about anything you turn your hand to. So why not this? You can do it. So why don’t you just turn your marriage around? Now that’s not an unreasonable way for me to try and encourage him to change his behavior. But here’s the problem. Working on the guilt way increases guilt. Working on the pride way increases pride. So I want you to see that in fact the New Testament works in an entirely different way to motivate change of behavior. I’m just giving a first example here from the sphere of marriage, but I want us to understand how this works. Look at Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25 and you’ll see that the gospel approach is completely different from guilt and from pride. Husbands love your wives, not as you promised, not as only you can do because you’re a great guy, but as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. In other words, the gospel way of encouraging a Christian man to grow in his love towards his wife is to say, now look at Jesus Christ. He was ready to sacrifice anything, everything for his bride, the church, so that his bride would flourish and be radiant and full of joy. Now this Christ lives in you. The Holy Spirit has been given to you so that the life of this Jesus Christ may be reproduced in you. Now here’s what that means in your marriage. Can you imagine anything more beautiful than a marriage that is gospel shaped? In other words, that is a reproduction of the kind of love that Jesus Christ has for his church because that love has been imparted into the heart of a husband. Now I want you to see then that the Christian life in the New Testament as it’s laid out to us, I’ve just given one example, but the Christian life is not based on guilt. It is not based on pride. It is based on you being in Christ and on Jesus Christ being in you. And let me give you a second example so that we get the feel of this. Turn over if you would to Colossians in chapter 2 and verses 8 and 9. Colossians chapter 2 and verses 8 and 9. Here’s a very different example. Let’s apply the gospel now to the sphere of freedom, getting free from the control of other people. Notice how Paul says in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive. Very important statement. He’s writing to Christian believers and he’s saying, don’t let other people trap you. Don’t let other people bind your conscience. Don’t get into the position where other people are all the time telling you what to do and what not to do. Don’t let other people control your life. Don’t let other people lay burdens on you that God never intended you to carry. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated by the advertising of this world. Don’t let the culture squeeze you into its own mold. Very important statement. But the question arises then, how? How am I to enter into all the dimensions of Christian freedom to be my own person in Jesus Christ? And the answer in verse 9 is, for in Christ, here’s how, all the fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form. In other words, you will enter increasingly into the joy of Christian freedom as you realize that everything that you need for life and godliness is yours in Jesus Christ and you are under the control, therefore, of no one, because you belong to the hands of your sovereign Redeemer. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and our message, A Generous God. It’s the first message in our new series, A Generous Life. And today we’re looking at how we apply the gospel to our whole life. And we’re in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. And if you miss any of our broadcasts, don’t forget you can always go back later and catch up or go back and listen again online. Come to our website, openthebible.org.uk. Back to the message now, here’s Colin. Now once you see this pattern, you see that the whole of the New Testament is really applying all the desires in Jesus Christ to every sphere of life, marriage, freedom, you begin seeing it all over the place. I’m going to give you another couple of examples before we come back to Corinthians. Let’s apply the gospel to forgiveness. Back to Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 32, Ephesians 4.32. Here’s Paul teaching Christian believers. He says, be kind, be compassionate to each other, forgiving each other. Now, how in all the world are we to forgive each other? Well, notice what he says, Ephesians 4.32, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you. See, there is a sort of way of forgiving out of guilt, isn’t there? Huh, I guess I’m a Christian, so I suppose I’ve got to forgive. I’ve heard people talk like that. You ever felt like that? That’s forgiveness out of guilt. There’s a kind of forgiveness that comes out of pride. I’m bigger than the hurt you did for me, so I’m going to show that I’m actually bigger than you. It’s a kind of forgiveness that comes out of pride. But what Paul is calling us to in the New Testament isn’t either of these. He’s calling us to a gospel forgiveness which says, I am forgiven by Jesus Christ and I live in the good of that every day of my life. Right now, my only standing before God is in the forgiveness that is mine in Jesus Christ. And as Christ lives within me by his Holy Spirit, reproducing his likeness, making it possible for me to reflect something received into the life of another person. All the difference in the world. Fourth example, Philippians in chapter 2. This is perhaps one of the most surprising. Let’s look at Philippians 2 in verse 4, where you find perhaps the most ordinary of verses followed by the most amazing of passages. Philippians 2, 4. Each of you should look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. Now, can you imagine a more ordinary verse in the Bible? Look out for the interests of others the same as you look out for your own interests. That’s about the most ordinary verse in all of the Bible. Now Paul wants to tell us why. He says, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. And then he launches into one of the most amazing passages in the New Testament. The Lord Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Now you see what’s happening here? Paul launches into a massive statement of the humiliation and the exaltation of the Son of God simply to tell us that we ought to look out for the interests of other people. I read a commentator who said, the apostle is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You know, that’s exactly what the New Testament does. It brings the most massive truth about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and it applies it to the most ordinary situations of your everyday life and mine, so that we learn to live not from guilt or from pride, but from the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now I want to emphasize this as we come to the end of the year, because the truth is that in many churches, many Christians live much of their life on guilt, or they live much of their life, their Christian life on pride. And I want to say to you, but that is not the New Testament way. That is not why Jesus Christ came into the world. More than anything else, I want for us as Christian believers to learn increasingly what it is to live on the gospel and on the freedom and joy that flows from it into every area of life. Now are you seeing the pattern, how Paul takes the massive truths of the Christian faith and applies them to every area of life? Are you getting the pattern? You’re not certain? Are you getting the pattern? We’re getting it. Marriage, the interests of others, forgiveness, freedom. Let’s do one more. Second Corinthians in chapter 8 and chapter 9, money. I want us to see how the Apostle Paul takes the gospel and applies it to the whole area of our money and of our giving. I want you to notice as we get into this then, the particular circumstances in which the Holy Spirit moves the Apostle Paul to write perhaps the most significant passage in the New Testament applying the gospel to the subject of money. The reason that these verses were written was that Paul was actually raising money. He was raising funds to bring relief to Christian believers in Jerusalem who had come on particularly hard times. And if you look at second Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 10, you’ll see that the folks in Corinth had responded to this appeal for funds to help poor believers in Jerusalem. They responded with initial enthusiasm. Corinth was a bustling commercial center. It was really in many ways just like Chicago. And when these folks found out about the needs of Christians who had become through particular circumstances no doubt including persecution very poor, they were eager to help. So verse 10 of chapter 8, last year, you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. So Paul knows these are wonderful folks. Their instinct was, hey, if there’s a need we want to help. And so Corinth had really become a sort of flagship church known among other churches for its generosity and for its enthusiasm. In fact, if you look at chapter 9 and verse 2, you’ll see that Paul says, I know your eagerness to help. And he makes it clear that he’s actually talked to other churches about the Corinthians and their enthusiasm. And he says, your enthusiasm has stirred other churches to want to respond generously as well. So when the need became obvious, there was initial enthusiasm. But putting together the pieces here, it becomes evident that after a time there was a growing reluctance. The Corinthians had promised to give generously, but they had been slow to follow through on their promise. How does Paul tackle the problem? That’s the key thing. Let me suggest to you following the pattern that we’ve already seen that there are actually three ways to give money or three ways to raise money. They all have different effects, and the one that you follow will have a distinct shape upon your character. And that’s true not only for individuals, but it’s true for us as a church. You’ll know where I’m going with this if you’ve been following so far. There’s a guilt way of raising money and of giving money. This one basically focuses on the need. There’s a second way, of course, and you know where I’m going here. There’s a pride way of either raising money or giving money. This one focuses on the opportunity. You lay out a great project and you say to people, now look what we can accomplish. So there is a kind of giving that is out of guilt, and there is a kind of giving that is out of pride. I want you to see, as we’ve seen is the pattern of the New Testament, that Paul doesn’t go to either of these places. He wants to introduce us to a gospel kind of giving, which is focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ. You’ve been listening to Pastor Colin Smith on Open the Bible and a message called A Generous God. It’s part of our series, A Generous Life, and it talks about how we can apply the gospel to marriage, to freedom, to forgiveness, and to caring for others. I hope you’ll stay with us to hear later in the series how we can also apply the gospel to money, to guilt, and hear about the distinguishing marks of a generous life. If you miss any of the series, don’t worry, you can always catch up or go back and listen again on our website. Come to openthebible.org.uk. You can also find any of our messages which have already gone out on air as podcasts, and you can find those at your regular podcasting site. Just search for Open the Bible UK. Open the Bible is a worldwide ministry, and as we approach the end of 2023, we’ve released a video which I hope you’ll check out. It’s called Celebration of Impact, and you can find a link to it on our website, openthebible.org.uk. You can also find it directly on YouTube. Just search for Open the Bible Celebration of Impact 2023. Also on our website, you’ll find Open the Bible Daily. This is a series of short two to three minute reflections, with a new one appearing every day based on Pastor Colin Smith’s teaching. It’s read in the UK by Sue MacLeish. Open the Bible Daily is also available as a podcast. Go to your favorite podcast site, search for Open the Bible UK, look for Open the Bible Daily, and subscribe to receive regular updates every day. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners, and this month, if you’re able to begin supporting Open the Bible with a new donation in the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to thank you by sending you a book of prayers called Valley of Vision. Colin, who would you say this book is for? Oh, for every Christian who wants to pray, and it’s beautifully laid out to help us in different areas of prayer. So there are prayers here that will help you in expressing worship to God. There are prayers here that will help you in confessing sin to God. Prayers here that will help you in bringing your own needs to God. And they’re beautifully crafted. These are prayers that have come down to us over centuries from Christian believers who have crafted words that really help us speak from the heart to God. I just love this. I mean, for example, here’s one of the prayers speaking about how the broken heart is the healed heart. The contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit. The repenting soul is the victorious soul. To have nothing is to possess all, and to bear the cross is to wear the crown. Well, you know, you read things like that. They’re not only prayers that you can offer to God, but they stimulate and they enrich the mind and the heart. This is a marvellous resource for a Christian to have. I would love that there was a copy in every Christian home, because it’s really going to help stimulate prayer to God. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of this book if you’re able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more. Full details of this offer and lots of other information and resources on our website, openthebible.org.uk. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick, and I very much hope you’ll join us again soon. When you think about the character of God, does the word generous come to mind? Discover why he dared to become poor, next time on Open the Bible.