Paul wrote, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” He embraced the gospel with confidence and conviction. He was not embarrassed of Jesus Christ or timid about the Christian faith. He knew that it was the power of God, and it was humanity’s only hope. This is the same gospel that we have inherited. We hold in our hands this power of God to save humanity.
Why did Paul need this confidence and conviction in the first place? What kind of awful message did he preach that he faced pressure to be ashamed of it? He faced opposition because he preached good news. He preached grace instead of effort and sacrifice. He preached about the cross of Christ to save humanity instead of our suffering to save ourselves.
Paul preached that salvation is by grace through faith, apart from works, so that no one can boast. It was a message that upset the religious establishment of his day. They accused him of promoting lawlessness, of undermining righteousness by declaring that God’s grace was sufficient, even without the works of the law. The accusation was that a message of grace could be interpreted as permission to sin.
It was not the pagans who most strongly opposed the message of grace, but it was the religious people. The Pharisees, the scribes, and all those who wanted to achieve their own righteousness were the fiercest critics. They viewed Paul as a threat to the established religious order, a preacher of an immoral doctrine, a subversive who challenged their perception of loyalty to God. But Paul understood that this gospel, this good news, was the way that God revealed to humanity. It was the only way to salvation, and the only way that could glorify God.
Grace is scandalous and offensive. It takes away all the religious credit from people, and so they slander it as a message of licentiousness. It is also seditious. It removes the illusion that the religious establishment has the power to save anyone, or that it is the bridge between God and humanity. The gospel of grace teaches that God is the only one who can save, and that he saves only through faith in Jesus Christ. Human doctrines and traditions cannot save anyone. Human institutions do not have authority to govern your relationship with God.
The good news is that anyone can become a priest in Christ and approach God through faith, and no one needs to rely on institutional religion for spiritual awakening and salvation, or even for psychological support. This is why the religious establishment hates the gospel. It hates good news because it is bad for business. It wants to preach religion as bad news that can be managed only if you depend on their doctrines and institutions, and only if you respect their religious history and heritage.
This opposition against grace and against good news has continued to this day. Mainstream orthodoxy continues to glorify human authority and mediation, rituals, sacraments, and special days, even as they pretend to champion a message of grace. Nevertheless, grace for the salvation of our souls has become more established, and religious people tend to offer it at least lip service in order to maintain a semblance of legitimacy. But they often affirm grace for salvation only in pretense. And whether or not in pretense, this is as far as they would allow grace to invade their turf. For them, religion must remain bad news, so that they can use it to keep the people dependent on them and so that they can control these people.
Just as Paul faced persecution for preaching grace for salvation, Christians today face persecution for preaching grace for healing and prosperity, grace for miracles and blessings, grace for confidence in prayer, and grace for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Faithless religion contends that these biblical doctrines are dangerous, that they promote greed, selfishness, carnality, and fanaticism. This is the same strategy of misdirection that the Faithless used to condemn the gospel of grace when Paul preached it. They called his gospel a message of licentiousness, as if they themselves were models of purity and holiness!
Thus grace remains scandalous and offensive, not because it is a message of sin and greed, but because it is a message that depends on God alone and glorifies God alone, and it is a message that produces no positive effect in reprobates who cannot have faith. And grace remains just as seditious as ever. It overturns human authority and elitism, and the institutions that are established upon these corrupt qualities.
The Faithless accuse those who preach about receiving these blessings through faith as distorting religion into something for personal gain. So what? Even the salvation of the soul is for personal gain! What? Do they think that God is the one getting saved when we believe in Jesus Christ? Their complaint is a deception. It is a misdirection that makes them look like they care about God and truth, when in fact they wish to turn you away from faith and grace. In Christ, we are the ones who receive all the benefits. He is the one who gives and sacrifices. This is grace, and grace benefits us and glorifies him. Faithless people hate it. They hate God so much. And if you believe in grace, they will hate you too.
The attack against grace for healing and prosperity is remarkably similar to what the early disciples faced. The problem is not that these things contradict the gospel, but that they threaten those who are established in their human orthodoxy and who find that they cannot have faith. Grace challenges their religious sensibilities and assumptions. Grace undermines their self-effort, and it mocks their meaningless suffering and sacrifice. It devalues their sense of personal righteousness, a sense of righteousness that comes from self-admiration rather than faith in God.
Just as those who persecuted Paul could not tolerate a grace that forgives and saves without demanding effort and suffering, faithless religious people still cannot tolerate a grace that freely offers health, wealth, miracles, peace, favor, and hundreds of other blessings to those who believe, without demanding people to either sacrifice these things or to acquire them by human effort and wisdom. Historic human orthodoxy detests this entire worldview of grace. They seethe at the good news of Jesus Christ.
However, the grace of God is one, just as God himself is one. The Bible reveals that his name is “the Lord who heals” and “the Lord will provide” just as much as it reveals that his name is salvation and righteousness. If you believe in salvation, you must believe in healing and prosperity; otherwise, you would have no basis to believe in salvation. If a person rejects one thing that God has revealed about himself, it exposes the fact that he rejects God, so that he rejects everything about God, because it is the same God who has revealed everything. What this person believes about God is not faith in God or in the gospel, but it is the person’s own religious ideology. A human ideology never saves anyone.
Paul was not ashamed of the gospel because he was not ashamed of God, and he reveled in this message that could save everyone who believes. He was not ashamed of the good news even though his enemies thought that he was unspiritual and sacrilegious for preaching it. But the message of grace has never been limited to spiritual salvation, just as sin did not result only in spiritual corruption. And God has never been a finite deity like the idols of myths and fables, who ruled over definite categories and limited territories.
Historic human orthodoxy has always treated God as nothing more than one of the heathen idols. Even though they may regard him as the chief idol, this idol offers only spiritual salvation and promises blessings only for the next life. But if they worship such an idol, then they have never believed in the true God, and this means they cannot even attain this spiritual salvation that their idol represents. The logic is undeniable. Nevertheless, we will not press the issue further, for the grace of God is indeed great. The point is that the ones who reject God’s grace in healing, prosperity, miracles, and other blessings are those who should be persecuted. They are the ones who should be ashamed and embarrassed.
Salvation is the restoration of everything lost through the fall, and then it offers a lot more than that. It includes healing for the body, prosperity in all areas of life, superhuman abilities through faith, and the fullness of peace and joy. Salvation is wholeness. To preach healing and prosperity, and the ability to receive these things through faith, is to preach the same gospel that Paul preached. When we confess, “Jesus himself took our infirmities and carried our sicknesses,” we declare that the work of Christ is complete, that his sacrifice is sufficient, and that his suffering can produce miracles when we believe and affirm the gospel. And this is only one example among hundreds of blessings that belong to us through Jesus Christ.