God is Not a Cosmic Bell-Hop (Understanding the Gospel)

          The following is a quote by J.I. Packer.  I have added scripture references
     in parentheses.



          [Have modern evangelicals lost their grip on the biblical gospel]?

          "Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong.  We are inclined to
     believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us
     happy.
          "But in the gospel, God does not play the role of butler.  In the gospel we are
     told that God, the Creator who made all things for His own praise and glory, has
     gone into action as mankind's redeemer ('in accordance with His pleasure and will
     ... in Him we have redemption through His blood ...to bring all things in heaven
     and earth together under one head ... to the praise of His glory ...' Ephesians 1:3-14).

          "We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to
     God in any shape or form (... 'the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit
     to God's law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please
     God'  Romans 8:7-8), but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for
     sins ('But God demonstrates His own love for us [His people] in this:  While we
     were still sinners, Christ died for us'   Romans 5:8), and then He sends the Holy
     Spirit to change our hearts ('I will give you a new heart ... and remove from you
     your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh'   Ezekiel 36:26) and make us
     willing to see and respond to Christ ('... if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is
     Lord, and believe in your heart that God raise Him from the dead, you will be
     saved'   Romans 10:9-10).

          "Now if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God's work in that absolutely
     radical sense, that is, God sends the Savior, God gives us the gift of faith to re-
     spond to the Savior ('... by grace you have been saved by faith ... it is the gift of
     God'   Ephesians 2:8), then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel
     means.

          "You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless ('... you were dead
     in your sins..'   Ephesians 2:1). that they need Christ ('... I am the way and the truth
     and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me'   John 14:6), and that
     they must ask God for new hearts ('... circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by
     the Spirit ...'   Romans 2:29) and for the ability to trust Christ ('Trust in God; trust
     also in me'   John 14:1).

          "In other words you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right
     from the start ('You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ
     died for the ungodly'  Romans 5:6).  If on the other hand we forget this and go a-
     round saying that God is just there to help you, and that you can call on Him when-
     ever you to, that He is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well then we are misrepresenting
     the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner.

          "Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are
     hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, ('... at that time you were separate from Christ
     ... without hope and without God ...'   Ephesians 2:12), requiring also that God does
     the work of salvation from start to finish ('Salvation is of the Lord'   Jonah 2:9),
     then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament ('God
     made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the
     righteousness of God' "  2 Corinthians 5:21).
                                                                                   J.I. Packer