What Is The Gospel?, Part III: It’s Bigger Than You Probably Thought

There’s a passage in Acts 3 that I’ve come to love, and I think it is scandalously underpreached.  Even by me.  

The setting is that Peter and John have just healed a lame beggar at the Temple gate.  (This is where Peter says his famous line,  “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”)  Afterward, a crowd gathers, astonished at the miracle.  Peter turns to them and says:

“Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? ¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. ¹⁴You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. ¹⁵You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. ¹⁶By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.

 ¹⁷“Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. ¹⁸But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer. ¹⁹Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, ²⁰and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.²¹He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.

Peter goes on a bit more, but that’s enough for right now.  There’s a lot to notice already:

• The healing of the crippled man is part of the ongoing glorification of Jesus by God the Father.  It’s truly a remarkable (wonderful!) thing that when his son was shamed by crucifixion, God chose to bring him renewed glory not through vengence, but through acts of mercy and healing.  Yeah, we all know that on one level, but reading this stuff again just bowls me over.  “Why are you guys suprised that this cripple is jumping around?  It’s not us–it’s God glorifying Jesus again.  When beggars with bedsores become healthy joyous high jumpers, more honor goes to the one you falsely shamed.  This is just God’s weird way of undoing what you did.”  That’s lesson one.  God is really into glorifying Jesus, and he does that by healing broken people.  It might not be the most obvious way to bring Jesus honor, but it’s apparently the most fitting one.  In essence, Jesus is honored when his ministry continues through his disciples, empowered by the Spirit.  Hold onto that one.
• Notice the three-fold purpose of repentance here.  
  • So that your sins might be wiped out
  • that times of refreshing might come from the Lord
  • that he might send the Christ 
• What is Jesus doing right now?  “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.”  This is the kind of thing I was thinking about when I said that “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?” is a question that completely misses the point.  The great promise about heaven isn’t that we will go there, it is that Jesus is waiting there until he comes back and fixes everything.  The end of the story is that the prophetic vision will come to pass.  You know all that stuff about the desert bursting into vegetation, lions lying down with lambs, swords beaten into plowshares, justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream?  That wasn’t just idle talk.  God hasn’t ever given up on that vision.  Jesus Christ himself is going to come back and make it happen.  In the meantime, the good works that Jesus’ disciples do are continuing what he began, but also anticipating the way he will conclude.  It’s part of a chain that links the Old Jerusalem to the New.
• There’s a lot that could be said about “repentance,” but I’ll sum it up with this: it’s not so much about feeling sorry as about thinking differently.  It’s gaining new eyes and catching on to this vision.  It’s about coming to understand that when you restore that which is broken, you glorify Jesus and take part in the work he is doing.  And even though you can’t restore anything perfectly, and maybe some things you can only polish a little, that’s okay, because every little step honors Christ, and when he comes back, he’ll finish it all.  In this case (Acts 3) Peter acknowledges that they acted in ignorance.  That’s what he’s trying to fix.  He’s cluing them into what God is doing.  And when they repent “times of refreshing will come from the Lord.”  How does that happen?  The same way the beggar just got healed, I imagine.  Disciples who want to honor Christ offer what they can.  When you start offering what you can, times of refreshing come.  You are refreshed by God’s spirit working through you, and you also bring refreshing to others.
• This is good news!  We can learn to see things the way God sees them, change our worldview and work to advance what God is doing, all in anticipation of the ultimate restoration of the cosmos by Christ.  “Your sins can be forgiven and you can go to heaven when you die” is nothing close to an adequate summary of this vision.  But since that has been widely hawked as “the gospel,” millions of Christians have missed the big picture.  And that’s tragic.  Because when you don’t really see where God is taking things, you don’t understand what he’s calling you to do in the meantime.  Way too many people have settled for belief, baptism, and their backsides on the back bench.  Because we didn’t tell them that the good news was that God was recruiting a massive team to join him in honoring Christ by restoring the world, one step at a time.  We told them that the good news was if they assented to the intellectual proposition that Jesus was the Son of God, their soul would rise to heaven upon their death.  They assented, and having fulfilled their part of the narrow vision they were given, they are now kicking back, contented, fire insurance in place.