You NEVER Outgrow Your Need for the Gospel

I would highly recommend that you listen to my pastor’s (John Piper) recent sermon “God Strengthens Us by the Gospel”. You can read it here, as well as find links to watch or listen to it online or even to download it.  

The text for the message is Rom. 16:25-27.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith”” to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Piper sees the main point of this passage being that God strengthens us according to the gospel. And the gospel was given according to preaching and revelation of the mystery through  prophetic  writings, and was given according to the command of God, and the gospel was given to bring obedience of faith.    

Piper saw something  incredibly striking in all of this. The passage ends  Romans and is a typical doxology. That means that something about God is  said to be glorious and worthy of praise. The thing  (of all  of God’s attributes  or actions) that  Paul chose to stress at the end of arguably the greatest letter ever written, is that God strengthens us through the Gospel. Piper saw this as stating something great about God. Other dictators and kings become great by walking on the backs of those they govern. They glory in being stronger than others and in holding them down.

But God is so much greater  than that. He glorifies Himself by strengthening those whom He governs. He is big enough that He does not have to fear competition and advance His cause by humbling his own subjects. God strengthens His people, and that indeed is glorious, and an amazing grace we are so unworthy of!

Then Piper makes the obvious point, that Paul considers the gospel to be central to life as a Christian. It is not merely a “ticket to Heaven”, that once acquired you can drop in your pocket and forget about. No it is much more than that. Piper said,

You never, never, never outgrow your need for this gospel. You don’t begin the Christian life with this and then leave it behind and get stronger with something else. God strengthens us with the gospel to the day we die.

If you listen to the sermon, you will see that Piper adds about four or five more “never”s in that statement: “You never, never, never, never, never, never, never, NEVER, outgrow your need for this gospel.” The gospel is to fuel our worship and be ever in front of us as we come to God for acceptance. All of our works should flow from the gospel, and not be separate from its impact. This is the heart of gospel-centeredness. The gospel is what strengthens us. (Take the time to look up Acts 20:32 in this regard.)

Finally, I want to encourage you to follow this series. There are four more messages on this paragraph. One of them, I am sure, will delve into the fact that now the mystery of Christ is revealed in the prophetic Scriptures (the OT, as far as I can tell). That part, to me, is a justification for the redemptive historical hermeneutical approach to Scripture. But that is for another post.

(P.S. I wanted to beat John Chitty to posting on this sermon! I am sure that he will have a post on it soon, as “gospel centeredness” is the main theme of his blog.)