C&MA 4-Fold Gospel: Christ our Savior
Dr. James Smith
10 April 2005
Our church is part of an evangelical Protestant denomination called the Christian & Missionary Alliance. It was started by a Canadian Scotch-Presbyterian minister named A.B. Simpson in 1887.
Dr. Simpson was one of the great preachers of his day and he was the pastor of several prominent churches both in Canada as well as the U.S.
Influenced by several 19th century evangelists, Simpson shocked his wealthy New York City Presbyterian congregation when he decided to rent out a theater and hold evangelistic services.
His congregation went along with the idea as long He didn’t bring his poor immigrant converts to church. The “axe fell” when he tried to bring a group of Italian dock-workers into church membership.
His sophisticated congregation wouldn’t tolerate this and Simpson realized that if he was to reach the urban masses for Jesus Christ, he would have to dispense with traditional ways of “doing church.”
And so he resigned, stepped out in faith and started his own church called the “Gospel Tabernacle.”
Simpson was troubled that so many people held nominal church membership in mainline Protestant churches but had no personal experience of Jesus Christ as their savior.
In a day when liberal theology and modernism was seriously questioning Biblical Christian beliefs, Simpson and many others proclaimed Jesus Christ as the “only name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
During his life and ministry, Dr. Simpson became convinced that there were 4 basic messages in the gospel which summarize what he called, “the complete blessings of Christ which should be emphasized among Christians.”
He called it the 4-Fold gospel and you will find it on the cover as well as the back of your bulletin this morning.
Simpson noted that Christ is our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King and over the next few weeks I am going to speak a bit on each of these foundational aspects of Christ and the Christ life along with frequent reminders of the Great Commission to go and make disciples.
Throughout history, Christians in the Western world have frequently used the imagery and the language of the courtroom to remind us that Jesus is our Savior.
Jesus pleads as a lawyer with a judge to release us from our debts and transgressions against the divine laws of God. He offers his life, his goodness and his holiness in his loving desire to free us from the law of sin and death.
But this morning, I would like to offer the imagery and the language of the medical sciences to remind us in a different way that Jesus Christ is our Savior.
When we think of this foundational belief that Jesus is our Savior, it strikes me that far too many people have forgotten the radical significance of the cross of Jesus Christ.
The cross has ceased to be understood as a terrifying instrument of death and has become more of a fashion statement than anything else.
After all, wouldn’t you be somewhat shocked if you saw someone wearing a little electric chair or a hypodermic needle on a chain hanging from their neck?
The cross is a surgical instrument held in the hands of the master physician Himself, Jesus Christ.
The One who defeated sin and death by dying on the cross and rising again from the dead, beckons all people, of every tongue, tribe and nation to come to Him as their Savior.
And when we consider Jesus Christ as the Great Physician, we instantly must dispense with any kind of cheap or easy “believe-ism.”
After all, I don’t know anyone who enjoys going to the doctor. We go to the doctor because we have to, because we are sick and can’t heal ourselves.
In fact, most people have some anxiety when they go to the family physician. Children fear getting a shot and adults fear the cost, but only the doctor can treat our sickness and prescribe medication to get us back on the road to health.
Far too often, we as modern Western Christians fail to consider what a wonderfully rich thing that salvation in Jesus Christ is. Salvation comes from the Latin word, “salve” which means “health.”
The salvation of Jesus Christ is wholistic and has implications not only for our spiritual condition, but also our mental, emotional, psychological and physical well-being.
After all, we are spiritual and material creatures and that is the way the God made us. When Christ as Savior comes to dwell inside a person, there is provision for our total and complete health.
If you read the medical accounts from the Roman Empire during Jesus’ day, you will soon discover that it was a serious thing to go to the doctor. The literature is filled with the cries and pleas of the patients to their physicians to be gentle.
But deep down in their hearts, the patients knew better. They wanted to be free from the intense pain of the surgeon’s scalpel, but they knew that to flee from the knife would mean further sickness as well as pre-mature death.
C.S. Lewis commenting on this issue in his memorable book entitled, The Problem of Pain, reminds the modern world that “all the great discoveries were made by our ancestors, except chloroform/anesthesia.”
Today, so much of our evangelism and proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior has conveniently forgotten the cost of it all. It is has dispensed with the scalpel and offered band-aids and colorful pills in return.
But this essential doctrine of Jesus Christ as Savior reminds us that for there to be healing and wholeness in our lives, we must submit to the cross of Christ as a surgical instrument in the loving and skillful hands of Jesus, the great physician.
He is the only One who understands the depth and the significance of our illnesses and who will cut away the diseased and dead portions of our lives so that we may become alive to God.
This is a hard word and I have no right to preach it to you and let myself off so easily.
We all know that men aren’t very good at taking care of themselves. Women have always been better at that. For men, it’s usually a funny blend of pride and fear with a good of sheer obliviousness.
Men don’t like asking for or receiving directions either. And all of these things have spiritual implications.
I remember a couple of years ago going to the family doctor, Dr. Ryan Brown. After my appointment, I said to the man who was the first medical doctor in my life that introduced himself by his first name, “Ryan, no offense, but I really would rather come and see you as little as possible.”
Over the past year and a half, I’ve been ignoring my body and some very serious back problems and only went to the chiropractor after months of intense pain.
It would have been easier if I had only gone earlier. But after 15 very painful spinal adjusts, my Haitian doctor, with “hands of absolute steel,” has helped me considerably.
Again, one of the cornerstone beliefs in the Christian & Missionary Alliance and part of what our founder, Dr. A.B. Simpson called, “the 4-Fold gospel” is that Jesus is our Savior.
He is a skillful doctor who loves us so much that once we agree to “undergo the knife,” He will not stop cutting until He removes all of tumor called sin and death.”
And like a loving parent, He loves us too much to heed our childish and selfish cries. Because will be Savior and Lord over all of our life and person or He will be Savior not at all.
The doctrine of Christ as Savior graphically reminds us through the symbol of the cross that there is no middle ground.
Let’s Pray
