PART I: INTRODUCTION
Chapter One
Comfort and Dismay
Welcome to The Unadorned Gospel, a Slow but Certain Journey to Assure Salvation in Christ. The Unadorned Gospel is written for you for three reasons.1. To help you back on track with God and eternity.
2. For a fresh start with Christ and Christianity.
3. For a more solid and sure foundation for your Christian life.To accomplish these purposes, The Unadorned Gospel follows the Apostle Paul through the first four chapters of Romans. Romans is perhaps the most important book of the entire Bible. Of it, Martin Luther said, “Romans is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is a bright light, bright enough to illumine the entire scripture.”1 John Calvin said of Romans, “that when one gains a knowledge of this letter, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of scripture.”2If you’re looking for a quick overview of salvation or a short Gospel presentation, this is not the book for you! However, if you’ve come to understand that the important things of life take time, The Unadorned Gospel is exactly what you’ve been looking for.
COMFORT AND DISMAYHere are two important observations to get us going. First, in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis said, “The Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in dismay. It’s no use trying to get the comfort without first going through the dismay.”3 Second, in the first two and a half chapters of Romans, the Apostle Paul details horrible news about the human situation before getting to the good news of the gospel.So we have Lewis arguing that dismay comes before comfort and Paul giving bad news before good news. This is the correct approach to understanding salvation and the Gospel, but I didn’t comprehend it until more than two decades after becoming a Christian. Here is my (abbreviated) story.
PART ONE: SALVATION
I came to be a Christian in 1979, in accordance with the Billy Graham method of salvation—I responded to an altar call, said the sinner’s prayer, got baptized, and joined a church. I was twenty-three years old and married with two small children. Life at that time was an intense struggle. I was smart but lazy, with a mind clouded by unhealthy substances (readily available in Gainesville, Florida, where I’d gone to college). But salvation in Christ changed everything. Soon after getting saved, I joined the United States Army and did well. I was promoted from private to specialist, then to lieutenant, and eventually to the rank of major. I continued throughout my Army years to stay involved in church activities. I taught Sunday school. I had a morning quiet time, reading the Bible and praying daily. I listened to all the Christian teachers of the day such as Chuck Swindoll and Dr. Dobson. I read Christian authors such as Charles Colson and C.S. Lewis. I devoured the available Christian novels by Bodie Thoene, Frank Peretti, and more. I listened to Christian music, artists such as Keith Green, Twila Paris, and Rich Mullins, and threw away all my secular music. I tried to do everything I was supposed to. I left the Army after the Cold War ended and started my own successful contracting business. But something went wrong. PART TWO: THE DEEP, BLACK PITIn 2002 my business took me to Seattle where I was contracted to work at Albertsons grocery stores. The work could only be done at night, and I didn’t see sunshine for at least three months (or so it seemed). The time in Seattle was the low point of my life. Everything unraveled. My daughters had grown and gone. I had serious marital difficulties, the worst of my twenty-five years of marriage. Everything I had been told about Christianity seemed a farce. Nothing had turned out as expected. I was fortyfive years old and stuck in a deep, black pit. My whole life seemed a waste. The blackness enveloped me for months on end. I’ve known other people who encountered that darkness. They fall into the pit, and many never get out. I thought I was stuck for all eternity. But one day, I began to read the Bible again. I decided to start over, tossing out everything I had been taught by the pastors, teachers, books, and tapes. I began to look at what the Bible says, and the Bible alone. My life was over anyway. What harm could be done? Why not throw out everything I’d been taught and start fresh?PART THREE: EMERGING FROM THE PIT
I started my new life studying the life of David in the books of Samuel and Kings. That soon led to the “greater David,” the Lord Jesus Christ. And soon, I “discovered” the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. As I sank deep into the Apostle’s words in Romans, my outlook and mood slowly lifted. I began to see Christianity in a new light, the Apostle Paul’s light. For the Apostle Paul doesn’t avoid dismay. In fact, he deals with bad news and dismay head-on in the first two and a half chapters of Romans, thus preparing his readers for the “unspeakable comfort” of the good news of the Gospel. Paul is the one you can trust to tell the truth about life and Christianity. Of course you can trust Matthew, Mark, Peter, John, Isaiah, etc. But you must be wary of many of today’s teachers and preachers. With some exceptions (notably John MacArthur), today’s preachers and teachers slant their teachings so that you don’t get the real picture of reality and truth. They avoid dismay and bad news and accent comfort and good news.Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles (unless you are Jewish, that means you). He’s the man God gave to tell us about Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul speaks the Gospel truth without sugarcoating or watering it down. Paul’s truth is unembellished, undiluted, and unadorned. It’s what we need. At this point in our lives, we don’t need a spoonful of sugar to help the truth go down. We need the unadorned truth straight from the great Apostle’s mouth.
We need The Unadorned Gospel.
