Who Thought Up the Gospel?

We have spoken extensively of Christ's solicitude toward little children, and what that says about His determination to save His younger brethren, God the Father's little children entrusted to the Son for rescue and safe-keeping.

This week, the whole world held its collective breath as the children were rescued from the underwater cave in Thailand. They couldn't save themselves. An obvious method of rescue was devised, but its execution was hard and dangerous. One of their rescuers lost his own life. When the last one was brought out, there was rejoicing the whole world over!

The method of salvation in that case was nothing surprising, and was quite obvious.

But the method God used to save His children is astounding and surprising!

In order to see why, we must observe that the law is a lesson to us in our helplessness to save ourselves.

Unlike those children, lost sinners are full of confidence that we can save ourselves! All we have to do is keep some law in order to please God, and offer some good works or sacrifice to appease Him for our disobedience.

When sinners say, "we can save ourselves, we just have to try harder to get our spiritual lives back on track," they are relying upon themselves and not upon the Savior. They are not coming to Christ as helpless little children, but self-confident grown ups.

All man's religion is about self-help, and self-improvement, to please God.

In order to prove the impossibility of righteousness by law-keeping, God ordained His perfect covenant of works at Mount Sinai. He annexed to law-keeping the promises of temporal blessings.

Yet Israel could not keep that law, proving that only God could save us!