(The Gospel Has Your WHY)
What is the WHY that the Gospel changes?
"What motivates you? What drives you? Who are you!? What are you living for?"
All of these WHY questions, for every single human being, may be found within the Gospel.
[The Gospel is: 1) Who Jesus is, 2) What Jesus accomplished, and 3) What this means for us. (For example, 1) Jesus is the Savior, 2) Jesus accomplished salvation for sinners, and 3) since I have put my faith in Him, I am therefore saved by Him and His work.)]
Every part of what Jesus accomplished for us, is a direct answer to something lacking in us; and that sense of lack is what motivates us.
Let’s take a non-exhaustive sample of what Jesus accomplished for us—forgiveness, justification, cleansing, acceptance, inheritance, and eternal life.
Are people motivated by a desire for forgiveness, a need to compensate for what they’ve done wrong?
Are we motivated by a desire to seem right and good, in our own eyes or in the eyes of others?
Are we motivated by a sense of shame, of needing to live in a way that fixes whatever we've done or had done to us?
Do we desire to be with the in-crowd, or to gain a certain person’s approval, or status in a larger group?
Does anxiety about the future, about having enough, motivate us?
Do we want to have a legacy that outlives them? Do we want to quiet an anxiety about what awaits us in death?
We’d probably all say that, Yes, to a certain extent, these are motivations for all of us.
The Gospel names these things. For everyone.
Simon Sinek build a mini-empire by telling people “Start with Why.” WHY-questions, as we’ve observed, are at the bottom of everything. But if we ask ourselves, What’s my WHY? We might not be sure. (Sinek has a follow up workbook called, "Find Your Why")
Well, the Gospel helps us know our WHY and, at the same time, solves, resolves, and satisfies every WHY we might have.
Everyone is to some extent motivated by what these Gospel-WHYs deliver.
The Gospel is not just the story of the salvation God delivered in Jesus. Or—it’d be better to say—within that salvation is the entire story of every human heart, and the complete healing of every broken, misdirected, fatigued, heart too.
The Gospel gives us everything we need. (And for those of us who are confused by personality tests and motivation assessments, the Gospel tells us all we want or need.)
The Gospel changes our WHY and everything changes—it is the power of God. The Gospel also instructs us on what are our motivating-WHYs—it is the deep wisdom of God too.
*Holy Week isn't the rehearsing of a sad story of a thing that happened a long, long, time ago, but which has only some relevance to our lives. In fact, everything everyone is seeking after, working toward, numbing themselves from, distracting themselves to avoid, or going to therapy, counseling, life-coaching, etc., to discover, is contained within the story of Holy Week.
In what Jesus did for us, we find all our hearts desire. Not "all our hearts should desire." All they most truly desire.
As the song lyrics say, "Lord, take me deeper / into the glories of Calvary." Why? Because in there, that's what we're looking for.
All we lost by sin, was promised by God, and restored by Christ. And is revealed by Holy Spirit.
"Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the LORD, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." (Col 2:6-7)
Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!
Photo by Rolands Varsbergs on Unsplash