A Savior Indeed

In an early episode of the show “The Chosen” a fledgling disciple of Jesus name Mary Magdalene is depicted having a conversation with a Religious leader, a pharisee, named Nicodemus.

Nicodemus has previously met with and tried to help Mary, when she was deeply troubled — a demon possessed alcoholic — and was going by the name “Lilith.”

No matter what he tried, he could not fix her or free her from the chains that bound her. The next time that Nicodemus encounters Mary, she is completely different. Clearly something has changed… she has found the healing that he could not bring to her.

Asking what it is that has happened, who it was that had the authority and power to heal her, she says “I don’t know why I’m sharing this with you, I don’t understand it myself. But here’s what I can tell you. I was one way...and now I'm completely different. And the thing that happened in between was Him."

We are now in our 3rd week of a Sermon Series called “The Simple Gospel.” We are looking at what the Gospel is, and how it directs us live lives that fulfill our divine purpose to spread God’s goodness across our world. We are finding that while the Gospel, The Good News of a new King — Jesus — is vast in its implication, it is simple. And I believe that this interaction between Mary and Nicodemus is the perfect representation of this simple gospel:

I was one way, now I’m completely different, and the thing that happened in between was him.

Over the past two weeks we’ve looked at two key ideas.

God loves the world. Remember old John 3:16

John 3:16 NRSV

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

God loves the world because God created the world. And God particularly loves human beings because God created human beings in his image for the purpose of caring for… of loving the world on his behalf. Humans were created to be agents that spread the blessing and love of God across the earth.

2. Humans proved that they weren’t up to the task of living out this vocation on God’s terms. We have taken every possible opportunity to define good and evil for ourselves, to try to shape the world in our own image, and to elevate ourselves to the status of “god” of our own lives and of our world if we can garner enough power to do so.

And this has been the problem that humanity has struggled with since the very dawn of time. But it’s a struggle that God has not left us alone to deal with.

Some time after the events of Genesis 11 - which is the story of the Tower of Babel, God saw that humans were going to need divine intervention in order to get their act together. So, out of the country of Babylon he called one family. A man named Abraham would become the seedbed in which God would start to do a new work here on earth. Abraham was promised that the whole world would be blessed through his lineage.

His descendants became a nation called Israel, and for thousands of years God would work in and through Israel, molding them into a people who would serve as an example to a chaotic world that the God of Israel, the true creator God Yahweh, offered a way of living in the world that was different.

Where all of the rest of the world was bent towards violence, conquest, and oppression of one sort or another, Israel was to be a place where the goodness of the original divine purpose that God created humans for could be on full display.

But even that project was not successful. Israel had its moments, but it was clear that something else, something more needed to happen. God had given Israel a law, a moral ethic to guide them and try to teach them how to live, but they weren’t capable of obedience… just like the first humans.

What needed to happen was something more. Human hearts needed to be transformed. They needed that encounter that would allow them to say “I was one way, but now I am completely different.”

In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul penned these words to describe this reality:

Ephesians 2:1–3 NRSV

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

Paul begins with the hard truth. The way we were living was death: Spiritual death that leads to the eternal physical death that sin naturally propels us toward. This is the hard reality of the human state.

For some people this is much more obvious that for others. For Mary Magdalene — her alcoholism was a clear and undeniable reality that she was on the fast track to death. But she was already dead inside.

Whatever our favorite vice in this world is, at some point we come to the end of it and realize that it was bringing death into our lives, into our relationships, and into our hearts. In some cases like alcoholism, addiction, and other high risk behaviors, the hope is that we come to that realization before these things bring physical death.

But there are other things that bring us spiritual death that we just love. Gossip, creating discord within our families or within our church body, greed, slander, envy… the list goes on and on. We’ve all got our thing right. Remember, we love living life as if we are the ones who are in control. As if we are god, the ones who define good and evil for ourselves.

To Paul this is the greatest fallacy because we aren’t in control of any of this at all. It is another power at work, the work of our spiritual enemy — convincing us that we are not on the path that leads to spiritual death.

So that’s the bad news according to Paul, which is simply the same news that I gave you last week. Humans were created for good, but on a grand communal and individual scale we fail at doing the good we were created for. However, there is hope.

So after Paul says “you were lost, dead, hopeless…” he says this

Ephesians 2:4–5 NRSV

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

But God. But God loved us, and because of that we were once dead, but God has made us alive.

We were one way, but now we are completely different. And the thing that happened to us was Him. God, in the person of Jesus Christ.

Every single one of us sitting here today has some sort of story that follows this pattern. Who I was, who I am now, and what happened.

11.5 half years ago my life was not good. Actually it was terrible. I was knocking on death’s doorstep. My internal organs were on the brink of failure, everything had fallen apart. Jobless, penny-less, dignity-less, hopeless. I lost everything, and was still incapable of putting down the one thing that had caused all of that wreckage. I could not find my way out of the bottle. Alcohol was my god, whether I was willing to admit it or not.

Circumstances beyond my control — the work of God through a few people that loved me and several moments that showed me that I was at the end of my road — afforded me the opportunity to be removed from the death I was pouring into my body for a long enough period of time to learn that there was a different way to live. That there was a way that lead to life and life abundant.

I was introduced to a program of recovery, and I heard stories upon stories upon stories that all took the same shape.

What it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.

I was a miserable drunk, I found God through the 12 steps, and now I am able to fully live out my life.

Friends, this is the same story that people have been telling since they first encountered Jesus on those streets of Jerusalem. This is the same story that Paul tells. This is our story. This is my story.

I was spiritually dead and staring down the inevitable and imminent reality of physical death. But God, rich in mercy gave me another chance. And through that chance I met Jesus in a little Methodist Church in Tampa Florida. And everything changed. I’m completely different, and what happened to me was him and his church.

This is the good news of the Gospel, the simple Gospel that Paul wants us to know and understand. There is power in the name and life of Jesus to rewrite the ending to whatever miserable story you were living out or are currently living out. There is freedom from the hell that you’ve found yourself in.

This is the Good News of our king Jesus, news that the whole world needs to hear because it has implications for the whole world. You see Paul doesn’t just end his little proclamation here with, “you’ve been made alive in Christ.” he continues on: He says by grace you’ve been saved:

Ephesians 2:6–10 NRSV

and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

We are going to really dig into this idea more next week, but I need us to all understand this one point here today. There is a purpose behind why God would stoop to such lengths, to take up the cross on our behalf. And that purpose is Paul’s final sentence here. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works — to spread goodness throughout the world. Goodness that God has prepared for us long before we even knew him.

And this is something that distinguishes our simple gospel from all of the rest of the messages and ideologies and gospels of this world.

When God created humanity he looked down and said “they are very good.” This wasn’t qualified by any action, and work, anything outside of the simple fact that God had created these humans. God loved them before there was any work — good or bad — that they had done. This love was and is unconditional.

And although the mess that humanity created has deeply wounded our world, God still loves us enough to give us this gift of grace and salvation through Christ. And still, to this day, this is not something that we earn.

There is no work that we can do to earn God’s favor and salvation. All that we do is come to that moment of “but God” where we realize the immeasurable life and transformation possible to us in Christ Jesus and then allow God to work in our hearts. It is then that God becomes God in our lives. It is then that the agents of death that we have loved and devoted our lives to up until this point are defeated. It is then that we become able to realize and live out the purpose that God created us for.

This is the moment that changes everything for us. And it’s a moment that cannot be forgotten. It’s a moment that we must share about. It’s a moment that says to this world, I was one way and now I am completely different, and the thing that happened in between was him, my savior indeed. Come and see what the Lord has done for me.