The Big Three
Romans 5:1-5
Introduction
When I was a child, there was among the college athletic conferences no Big Twelve; it was the Big Eight in those days. As a farm boy in Kansas, I rooted for my K-State Wildcats to win the Big Eight. Basketball season was a lot happier for K-State fans than football season back then. That has completely turned around today.
Back then, the Big Ten Conference was old-fashioned enough to have just ten schools, not eleven as now. No wonder our children can't do arithmetic!
But that leads me to a thought: if the Big Twelve would add just one more school, it could change its name to the Baker's Dozen Conference, with the thirteenth school thrown in like the bonus doughnut. It sounds kind of fun, doesn't it? I wonder if the Arkansas Razorbacks are tired of the SEC yet....
Whether we are young or old, a lot of things have changed in our lifetimes, but one of the things that has not changed is this: of all the many promises in the New Testament, three promises have always stood out and will always stand out as the promises around which all the other promises revolve. I call these promises the Big Three:
1. Forgiveness for the past
2. The Holy Spirit for the present
3. Eternal Life for the future
When you read the New Testament carefully, with an eye out for these promises, you will find evidence of them everywhere. They may go by different names in different places, or they may even be anonymous in a few places, but the Big Three are everywhere in the New Testament.
Why the Big Three?
There is a reason for the prominence of the Big Three. They deal with the basic realities that are necessary to overcome the problems caused by human sin.
Sin is a word that cannot be relied upon to communicate clearly in our time. I understand sin to be anything that causes us to fall short of the purposes for which God created us.
God created us to represent his perfect love, first of all in relationship with God himself, and then for all creation. Above all else, we are to love our Creator with every fiber of our being: body, soul, mind, and heart.
Then we are to love ourselves. We are not to love ourselves selfishly, but we are to love ourselves in the sense of caring that we reach our created purposes as children of God. We have to love ourselves in the right way so that we can go on to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus doesn't let us put arbitrary limits on the word neighbor. He teaches that we are even to love our enemies (that does not necessarily mean hanging out with them, but it does mean seeking the best for them in the same way that we seek the best for ourselves).
Once we understand what God's perfect purposes for us include, we become aware that we are indeed sinners; we fall short of the glory of God daily. And we come to understand that God cannot allow our sin to stand without forfeiting his perfect plan for us. If God gave up his perfect plan for us, he would not be really loving us.
Bob had a successful career as a banker until he took early retirement. He was comfortably situated, married to his college sweetheart. They had two grown children and two grandchildren who lived nearby. Bob had once felt the call of God on his life, but when he went to college, all that got explained away. He was taught that all religions were alike, basically about being good, moral people. He concluded that he could be a good, moral person by his own flexible standards without a living God or a church. So he had for several decades focused on the banking world.
As Bob recounts it, one day it occurred to him that there was no one to preside at his funeral when he would die. He needed to be known by a pastor. He decided to find a church. Maybe not the best motive as Bob sets up the story, but God could make do with it. When Bob wandered into church, God met him there and woke him up. Now Bob is a Christian leader, an avid Bible student, an outstanding Sunday school teacher, a person committed to helping his church reach the lost. Family members say that the change in him is significant and for the better. God loved Bob all his life, but he loved him too much to leave him where he was.
I was a successful college and seminary student, but I had learned to offer rational discourses that explained God away as a living factor in real events. I was a dedicated pastor who talked a lot about God, but I did not serve the living God. God came to wake me up. Over about a decade from the late 1970's to the late 1980's, God showed me again and again, "I am here. I know the details of your life. I care about you and about those you serve." I was a slow learner, but gradually I woke up. People who have known me along the way see a huge change in me; I trust that it is for the better. God loved me all my life, but he loved me too much to leave me where I was.
Once we have sinned, we cannot get back on the perfect path by our own efforts. Only one human being in all of history has succeeded in walking God's perfect path, and by the grace of God, rather than condemning us, the one-and-only perfect Son of God has offered to become our Savior.
Of all the religious communities in the world, I know of only one--the community of faith in Jesus Christ--that offers a God-designed satisfactory solution to the human dilemma. The Big Three promises are the one-and-only God-designed solution.
Promise 1. Forgiveness for the past: Since we have been justified, we have peace with God and access to this grace in which we stand.
What God has decided to do is to let Jesus make a great exchange with us: Jesus takes on himself the filthy rags of our sins and shortcomings, and then Jesus lets us wear the clothing of his righteousness. When we trust in Jesus as the perfect Son of God, as our Savior and Lord, when we believe that he died for us and has been raised for us, that he is exalted to reign with his heavenly Father, then God agrees to see Jesus' own righteousness when he looks at us.
This makes it possible for us to have peace with God, to come into his holy presence, to take our stand based not on our own accomplishments but on the gift Jesus has given us. We call that gift grace, amazing grace!
No matter how far short we have fallen, the gift of Jesus' righteousness is sufficient. No matter how successful we may have appeared in the eyes of the world, only the grace of Jesus' righteousness gives us peace with God. God loves us so much that only Jesus' clothes are good enough for us.
Once we accept Jesus' clothes, we still have a long way to go. When you were a small child, you probably at some time tried on the clothes of your parents or an older sibling. They looked pretty silly. It would take some time to grow into them. At the beginning, Jesus' righteousness may look pretty silly on us too. That is why we have the second promise.
Promise 2. The Holy Spirit for the present: God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For some people, the Holy Spirit is, for various reasons, a scary idea. That need not be so. The Holy Spirit is simply one of the three persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Person of God through whom God comes to be with us, to live in us, to transform us into the image of Jesus the Son, who is himself the perfect image of the Father. So, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are perfectly united not only in who they are, but in the work they do.
The Holy Spirit does many things in our lives:
- He gives us a new birth, a birth from above as children and heirs of God.
- He confirms our faith in Jesus.
- He convicts us of our shortcomings and of our need for transformation.
- He affirms our baptism into Christ, welcoming us as children and servants of God.
- He fuels the ongoing process of our degree-by-degree transformation into Christlikeness, producing in us the fruit of the Spirit, growing us up to fit Jesus’ clothes.
- He guides us with truths we could not know or understand by our own intelligence.
- He empowers us with gifts to use in our witness and service for Jesus.
- He gives us the strength and courage to hang tough in trying times.
- He fills us with a joy that is ever so much deeper and more satisfying than what our culture calls happiness.
- He fills our hearts with love, and that fullness gives us hope that we will in due time reach the goal.
- Finally, the Holy Spirit brings us the blessed assurance that will not disappoint us, the assurance of the third promise.
Promise 3. Eternal Life for the future: We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
The hope of glory is the assured confidence that we will one day be like the glorious Jesus. If we hold fast to the faith in which we stand, one day, in the fullness of time, we will in fact live with God in the perfect new heaven and new earth. We will reign alongside Jesus. We will share his glory as a perfect child of God.
There will be no more dying, no more crying, no more strife, no more stress. There will be healing for all, wholeness for all, beauty for all, fulfillment for all. The really goods news is that there will be no committee or board meetings there. The fellowship of the saints will be for the pure joy of celebrating the goodness of God. Most important, the presence of God will be all-penetrating.
If we have faith in the good news of Jesus Christ and if we let the Holy Spirit work in our lives on a daily basis, we can live today with confidence that we are heading toward such a future.
When our hope in our eternal inheritance starts to waver Paul tells us that we can refer back to Promise 2, and the Holy Spirit will once again assure us that we are beloved children of God.
With our eternal hope in place, Paul tells us that we can even rejoice in present suffering, knowing that the suffering cannot separate us from the love of God, but can only hone our character so that our faith shines all the more clearly.
If God has started a great work in your life, stick with him. He will see it through. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.
Conclusion
1. Forgiveness for the past
2. The Holy Spirit for the present
3. Eternal Life for the future
I would encourage you to store these three promises right in the front of your memory files. They will get you on the road, snatch many victories out of the jaws of defeat along the way, and take you at last to an incomparably glorious destiny.
If you have not started on this road, there is no better time to do so than today. The three promises can provide the guidelines.
If you are on the road, but a little confused about what will keep you on track, these three promises can serve as road maps.
If you are already out in the harvest field serving Jesus, the three promises may be a tool for helping you explain your faith to others.
Ask God what he would have you do with these three promises in your life today.
1. Forgiveness for the past
2. The Holy Spirit for the present
3. Eternal Life for the future
You are welcome to use our resources in your work for Jesus. You may use them without charge so long as you are not charging others for the use to which you put them. We ask that you give published credit to the author and to www.Christviewmin.org for any such uses. If you find material on this site helpful, please consider supporting Christview Ministries through donations and by buying resources through links from this site. Your support will help make it possible for us to continue building this ministry and Website.