Recently I was looking at a book in my library about the gospel, and the subtitle of the book said, The Good News at the Heart of the Gospel. Now this book, this particular book, was about justification by faith alone. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone. And it's a good book. It's actually John MacArthur's book, The Gospel According to Paul. But like so many books in the evangelical and Protestant world, it takes justification by faith alone and makes it the very heart of the gospel. And if John were sitting right here next to me, I would ask him if that's what he really meant, because In my view, and I think in the view of the New Testament, the good news at the heart of the gospel is Jesus himself. not a doctrine about Jesus or a doctrine that's even integral to Jesus, but Jesus himself. Now, I don't believe that I'm splitting hairs here. I don't believe I'm just being antagonistic or trying to pick a fight. I really think this is very important and it's something that since the Reformation we have got away from. We've become so doctrinally oriented that we forgot about the fact that our relationship with the Father and the Son by the Spirit is not a transactional relationship. It's a relational relationship. God is not transactional with us. He's relational with us. And Jesus is the all-important center of all things. He's not only the Alpha and the Omega, he is the center of all things. And this is so important. Now, our first love then is not a doctrine about Jesus, our first love of Jesus himself. Now, let me give you some idea of what I mean by this as far as the writings of Paul. 1st Corinthians chapter 3 verse 10 through 11 Paul says this by the grace God has given me I laid a foundation as a wise builder and Someone else is building on it, but each one should build with care For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid which is Jesus Christ Now that is as clear as you can get but it also implies that there were those who were trying to lay some other foundation. And for most of my early Christian life, I understood the doctrine of justification by faith alone to be the chief article upon which the church stands or falls. And that is a very Protestant mindset. It's just not biblical. And just because I call myself Protestant doesn't mean that I am blind or that I place my tradition. above the authority of Scripture, which would be antithetical to the Protestant tradition, paradoxically, ironically. So the very fact that one considers him or herself a Protestant means that we are willing to challenge these things, we are willing to look at them, we are willing to hold up any of our presuppositions to the light of Scripture and see if it still stands. I think if Luther was with us today and was sitting right here next to me, he would agree. He would be nodding his head. He might even take the microphone and say, I agree. So this is very important. There were those who were trying to lay another foundation other than Jesus Christ. So now Paul said, you can't do that. Even if you attempt to, it's a fool's errand. It isn't going to work. Now, there are materials upon which we build on that foundation. And this is where the doctrine of justification by faith alone comes in. For he goes on to say in verse 12, if anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved, even though it is only escaping through the flames. Don't you know, he says in verse 16, that you yourselves are God's temple, and that God's spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. Now there's a lot there, and I don't have time to go into all of it. But I do want to make the clear comment that Paul is very clear that we are to build using gold silver and costly stones and there's no question in my mind that the doctrine of justification by faith alone and Christ alone is indeed gold. It is a costly material And there are lots of people trying to build the church using wood, hay, and straw. And their work will be burned up. There are those today who would try to revert back to a Judaized form of Christianity in which sacred buildings are the temple. the church building itself is the temple. And Paul is saying here, don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple? So there's two things at work here. Who is the foundation? Jesus Christ himself. And who are you as the church? You are God's temple. Those two points right there, the the key difference between being a actual apostolic New Testament Church and being just some tradition some tradition built on Wood and hay and straw and Something that God's going to frankly he says here God's going to destroy and Because if you see that Jesus Christ is something other than at the heart of the gospel, is Jesus himself, and if you see the church being a building or an organization or an institution rather than God's people gathered in the spirit of God dwelling in their midst, then you are destroying God's temple. Paul's really clear here that God doesn't put up with that. And yet, today, there is all kinds of preaching. that speaks of the foundation or the heart of the gospel or the core of the gospel being something other than Jesus himself. And they speak of the church as if it's some entity, some organization, some institution that exists above and beyond the people themselves, the gathering of God's people themselves. So I want to call you to consider these things and to be mindful of the fact that the Lord is calling his people out. And he's like the good shepherd calls his sheep by name and brings them out of a community sheep pen. So he's calling his people today to come out of a lot of traditionalism and a lot of Judaized Christianity. And it's so subtle and it's so prevalent that we must rely upon the guidance of the spirit through the scriptures to help us be awake to it so we can respond. Let me close with just one quick reading here, which I think will really help further clarify what I'm saying here today, briefly. This is from Gordon Fee's book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, page 5. He says, a final introductory word concerns the long debate in scholarship as to what constitutes the heart of Paul's theology. The traditional view fostered by the Reformers and perpetuated by generations of Protestants is that justification by faith is the key to that theology. This view emphasizes Christ's historical saving act on our behalf and our realization of it through faith. The inadequacy of this view is that it focuses on one metaphor of salvation, justification, to the exclusion of others. Such a focus fails to throw the net broadly enough to capture all of Paul's theological concerns. This is such important stuff here. In response to this, others found as the center Paul's mystical experience of being in Christ. This view shifted the focus from Christ's historical work and its appropriation by the believer to the believer's, especially Paul's, ongoing experience of Christ. See, both of those deflect our attention and focus away from Christ himself. Fee goes on to say, while in some ways this view served as a corrective to the traditional one, most contemporary Pauline scholars have recognized that both these approaches are somewhat limiting. The frequent result, however, has been to emphasize the diversity and contingency of Paul's letters to such an extent that many scholars, reflecting contemporary postmodernism, despair of ever finding a genuine center to Pauline theology, or even of finding coherence in his theology at all. He goes on to say that the core of Paul's theology is the eschatological reality of Christ's coming, meaning that he will say it this way. It would seem far better for us to isolate the essential elements of Paul's theology that lie at the heart of the matters around which all others concern cluster. In my view, at least four elements are essential. The church as an eschatological community, that is, a community living in the beginning of the end times, made up of the new covenant people of God, the eschatological framework of his new people's existence and thinking, Third, the formation of God's new people by the eschatological salvation accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ. And four, the focus of this people on Jesus as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God. I think that says it all, right there. I know that some of this may be a little new to some of you. And if you're used to drinking milk only and you're not being taught thoroughly, some of this may even seem stunning to you and a little overwhelming to you. But beloved, we have to consider these things. We have to be willing to step back and look at our faith, to consider what it is we believe and why we believe it. I mean, the ability to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in our life and to be able to be spiritually mature, healthy adults in Christ is what's at stake. So that's why, those were two reasons, those are the two reasons I'm so insistent upon these type of things. So, well we'll leave it there. What I've told you today is that at the heart of the gospel is not the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as important as that doctrine is, and as integral as it is to the gospel. At the heart of the gospel is Jesus himself. And that you, The people gathered are the temple of God, and God's Spirit dwells in and among you, not the building, no matter how sacred we might think it is with its sanctuary and its altar. I mean, even the most independent Baptist church will oftentimes refer to their stage as an altar, and we have altar calls. That's just the subtle Judaizing of our thinking. You are the temple. You are God's temple. And we must never be found guilty to be conspiring with those who would destroy God's temple by thinking of the temple as being anything else. So Christ is at the center. You are the temple of God. And the risen Christ is with us always. What glorious good news indeed. Amen.