Gospel hope and gospel change

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.

—Hebrews 6:19-20a (ESV)

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

—Hebrews 6:11-12 (ESV)

The gospel rests ultimately on the fact that God is faithful. We have hope because God who cannot lie and who cannot go back on his word made a promise, and in Jesus, he kept it. In Jesus, we need not worry about being swept away by the storms of life or capsized by their waves, for our hope in him is a soul anchor, a sure and steadfast anchor for the soul that holds us firm and steadfast where we need to be in the face of the worst life can throw at us. Nothing in this world can pull that anchor loose, because it isn’t hooked onto anything worldly: it’s hooked onto the very throne of God.

This is, or should be, our reason for holding fast to our faith in Christ and pressing on even when it’s difficult; and it’s essential for trying to live life by faith rather than by control. Unfortunately, too often in the church we undermine it, because we’re trying to build the church ourselves, our way, rather than trusting Jesus to be faithful to build it his way, and so we go looking for motivational methods that “work.” Some opt for driving people with fear, leaning heavily on warnings about sin and Hell; others push with the language of duty and obligation, speaking in the tones of command, or try to whip people along with the lash of guilt. Still others use the carrot, trying to use people’s self-interest to produce the desired behavior. These can all be effective motivators for building successful organizations; but what they can’t do is make disciples of Christ. Disciples of Christ, people of the gospel, are built by hope which is rooted in trust, grounded in the assurance of the unending faithfulness of God our Father; we are built by the transforming work of that hope, as Jesus changes us by his Holy Spirit, not from the outside in (as law seeks to do), but from the inside out.

This is one of the key differences between the religion of the gospel and any merely human religion, even if that human religion uses the language of Christianity. Human religion is all about power and effort, command and control, bribery and coercion; it seeks, by one means or another, to make people behave in a certain way. It’s primarily about the outward self, because that’s what people can see. The gospel, by contrast, is first and foremost about our hearts, because God sees us as we are, all the way down, all the way through. It’s about shifting our deepest allegiances, freeing our souls from all the idols to which we’ve given ourselves so that we can give our allegiance totally and wholeheartedly to God; it’s about purifying and redirecting our deepest desires, the wellsprings of our motivation and conduct; it’s about setting us free from our fears and healing our distorted understanding of love. The gospel breaks the shackles of sin on our lives and changes the things that drive and steer us, changing what we do by changing why we do it and what we want to gain from it. The gospel says, “Fill yourself with the love and the grace of God, fill yourself with the full assurance of hope in Christ, and the rest will follow.”

(Adapted from “Soul Anchor”)