Jim Harbaugh, the polarizing head coach of the National Champion University of Michigan football team, has established the practice of asking his players and fans the same question. He brings up the question so frequently that the response is chanted in unison as if just one booming voice. His question? “Who has it better than us?” The response of the crowd? “Nobody!”
As Christians, fresh off another celebration of Christmas and again seeing Jesus reveal himself as the world’s Savior, we can’t help but ask the same question: “Who has it better than us?” “Nobody!”
But when we consider who we were on our own, who we are now in Christ, and what that means for our present and future, do we really know how good we have it? Do we?
Paul wanted to make sure the Christians in Thessalonica knew how good they had it – and why. It wasn’t because of their own achievements or some outstanding accomplishment on their part, but rather because of everything God had done for them through Jesus Christ. So when Paul celebrates them, what he is really celebrating is what God has done for them. He thanks God for them – because they are loved, they are chosen, they are firstfruits, they are saved. And he recounts what brought all of this about: the gospel.
Simply put, the gospel was/is everything. There would be no letter, there would be no celebration, there would be no congregation of believers even gathered in Thessalonica, if not for the gospel. Paul hits that point home directly after all of the reasons to celebrate who they are because of what God has done when he wrote, “He called you to this through our gospel…” (v.14). The gospel was why they were who they were and the gospel is what God used to call them to be who they were.
That is the case for all Christians. Anyone who belongs to God, anyone who has ever believed, including anyone who is right now basking in the sinless joy of heaven while we wait eagerly for the Last Day, is so because God called them.
It’s how he called you and it’s how he will continue to call others. In the Word of God, God has revealed that the Bible is how he has chosen to call us. The gospel message – the good news for sinners that forgiveness of sins and salvation are ours through Jesus – is what God uses to call us today and tomorrow and until he comes again. This good news is God himself calling sinners to him for refuge and rescue. So what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians he might as well be writing to us and to anyone else who ever comes to faith in Jesus: “He called you to this through our gospel…” (v.14).
Since the gospel is how God calls everyone – anyone – to faith in him, then in that gospel we have everything we need to flourish in the ministry that Jesus has given us. Go then and tell people the good news that Jesus is their Savior because he paid for their sins. That’s it. It’s that simple.
Don’t complicate it. Don’t skirt around it. Proclaim it – so that God can call others to faith through it. Don’t argue about it. Don’t apologize for it. Don’t avoid it. Don’t try to sweeten it. Just proclaim it. Just share it. Just pass it on to others, fully trusting that God calls others through the gospel – and only through the gospel.
What makes this gospel so amazing? Through it we know and will continue to know glory and grace.
The rest of what Paul writes at the end of verse 14 ought to blow your mind. “He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v.14). What?!? You realize that when we speak of the glory of Jesus Christ that we are on another whole level of glory, right??? Paul described it in his letter to the Philippians, explaining the glory that would follow Jesus’ incarnation (i.e. God becoming man) on earth.
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). Jesus is the glory of God the Father! Every knee bows and every tongue confesses who Jesus is – and YOU share in that glory! Page through John’s visions in the Book of Revelation and see the glory of every creature lavishing praise and acclaim on Jesus on his throne – and YOU share in that glory!
Imagine being brought up on the stage for the Golden Globes or Academy Awards, or with a team after they won the championship game. You had absolutely nothing to do with winning, but they still call you up on the stage to bask in the glorious celebration. Although you made zero contributions, nonetheless, there you are, relishing the glory that someone else earned for you. Christ earned a far greater glory, and he shares it with you!
If there is no greater glory we could ever experience aside from the glory we share in Christ, then why is it that we still seek out self glory? Isn’t that really what we’re doing when our pride is wounded or when we insist on demanding a certain level of recognition or acknowledgment for what we’ve done? Why do we resent the teacher for not rewarding our hard work? Why do we feel that the coach only seems to harp on our mistakes but ignores our contributions? After so many years and all I’ve done for my company, why does the boss still hardly give me the time of day? Why won’t my spouse give me the respect I deserve for all that I do for us? I never get recognized for anything I do at my church.
Friends, do we forget the glory that we share with Christ? How could any of these things, or even the sum of them all together, ever amount to the glory that is already ours in Christ?!? And that is why the gospel is so amazing. We could not know of this glory that is ours with Jesus apart from the gospel.
That same gospel doesn’t just assure us of the glory we’ll share with Christ; it also reveals the radical side of God that is responsible for that glory, which is totally and completely unique to Christianity: grace.
Christians are familiar with the word “grace.” But if we aren’t careful, something so profound as grace, so radically life-changing and unparalleled anywhere else in the world like grace, can become… ho-hum. When that happens, grace seems less and less amazing. Its usage can become so routine and so frequent in how we speak that we begin to be less in awe of what it really is. So how do guard against losing that awe of grace? How do we recapture its greatness? How does it crash into us a like an ocean wave smashing into a rocky cliff so that we are left completely drenched by it, refreshed and and re-awakened?
We remember what makes grace so amazing. Christian author, Randy Alcorn, shared a story about that very hymn, Amazing Grace:
Before I spoke at a conference, a soloist sang one of my favorite songs, “Amazing Grace.” It was beautiful. Until she got to the tenth word. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a soul like me!” My heart sank. The word wretch had been edited out! I thought about John Newton, the songwriter. This former slave trader, guilty of the vilest sins, knew he was a wretch. And that’s what made God’s grace so “amazing.” Mind-boggling. Knockdown awesome. If we’re nothing more than morally neutral “souls,” do you see what that does? It guts grace. (The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance)
When we define grace as God’s undeserved love, we have to remember what makes it so undeserved: we do. If grace is just “God’s generic love in general,” it loses so much. It is love that is undeserved. It is love for wretches. It is love for the worst of the worst, love for me. No matter the sin, there is always more grace. We sin in ways old and new. We sin in ways planned and premeditated. We sin in ways unexpected and even unknown. And grace covers all of it.
And it is the good news of the gospel that assures us that God’s love for wretches will never be exhausted. It is that gospel which takes the ugly reality of my sin – all of it – and crosses it out at Calvary, at Jesus’ crucifixion. It takes the whole record of my sin, every last sin that I’ve stored up over the course of my life, and completely empties it, just as Jesus did his tomb.
Dear Christian, who has it better than us? Nobody. Now if that’s true (it is!) and if you believe it (you do!), then let it be plain as day in how we live our lives, just as Paul encouraged: “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word” (v.16-17).