8/19/18 Juan (video) about 30
One of the great paradoxes of the Gospel is that it is so
simple a child can receive it, yet can be so complicated it baffles the most
intelligent of adults. It might be
compared to food, which people willingly receive as infants, yet can spend a
lifetime trying to understand how it works.
We eat food because it tastes good, but not all food is good for us, so
some understanding of nutrition can help us avoid problems down the road.
When it comes to spiritual food, many people I meet are like
Juan, about 30, who believes in God and Jesus and that he will go to heaven as
a result, but he doesn’t know why. “No
one has ever really explained it to me” he told me, in a sidewalk
conversation.
So just as a nutritionist might try to explain the basics of
nutrition in order to help people eat more healthy foods, I tried to explain
the Gospel to Juan in the hope that he will be more grounded in it and avoid
all the spiritual junk food that only leads to problems down the road in his
faith.
For example, Juan has heard that “Jesus saves us from our
sins” but didn’t know why or how that happens.
Apparently, the Apostle Paul knew that many of the Christians in Rome had
the same problem, so he wrote his letter to the Roman church ahead of his visit
to ground them in the how and why of the Gospel. On his way there he encountered many
difficulties, such as a terrible storm that left him shipwrecked, so perhaps he
wrote in advance in case he didn’t make it there in person.
In the introduction to his letter Paul wrote “I long to see
you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong… 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. 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.”
During our conversation, Juan made a few statements that
indicated his confusion about the nature of salvation – is it by good works that
he could be saved or by simple faith in Jesus?
I tried to explain the Gospel in the short time I knew I had on the
sidewalk to help him see that it is, as Paul wrote, “a righteousness that is by
faith from first to last”.
Paul’s letter to the Romans is a long and complicated explanation
of the simple Gospel. Yet it is
necessary to understand if we want to give helpful spiritual food to those who
already have a simple faith, including ourselves.
PS – Juan graciously allowed me to record our conversation,
which can be seen HERE
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