{"id":16549,"date":"2022-12-16T10:12:22","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T17:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcommandment.org\/?p=16549"},"modified":"2023-04-18T14:52:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T20:52:23","slug":"we-must-be-saved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newcommandment.org\/we-must-be-saved\/","title":{"rendered":"A Men’s Ministry Men Want to Know (Part 7) – In Order to Do God’s Good Works, We Must be Saved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previous posts in this series have been incorporated into Part 2 of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men<\/a>.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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As we have seen in 2 Timothy 3:12-17, our “passage for getting there,” we have to first be saved through faith in Christ Jesus in order to do the good works God wants us to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,<\/span>\u00a0while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse,\u00a0deceiving and being deceived.<\/span>\u00a0But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,<\/span>\u00a0and how from infancy\u00a0you have known the Holy Scriptures,\u00a0which are able to make you wise\u00a0for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus<\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0All Scripture is God-breathed\u00a0and is useful for teaching,\u00a0rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,<\/span>\u00a0so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.\u201d 2 Timothy 3:12-17<\/span><\/p>\n

But this prerequisite that we must be saved in order to do God’s good works raises the question…<\/p>\n

Why Jesus?<\/h3>\n

Several years ago I was sharing my faith with a social worker in my community when he responded by saying, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a Christian because I don\u2019t want to spend the rest of my life, not to mention eternity, in meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had a point. In his mind, all Christians do is attend meetings that have no purpose or practical outcome.<\/p>\n

Of course, Christians attend meetings because we are followers of Jesus. We worship God and his Son, Jesus Christ, in meetings. We make close friends and fellowship together in our meetings. We also learn about how to follow Jesus better by meeting together.<\/p>\n

No man wants to spend eternity attending a meeting<\/h3>\n

My social worker friend didn\u2019t understand the purpose of our meetings because he didn\u2019t understand the importance of Jesus. No one had answered his underlying question: Why Jesus?<\/p>\n

That simple question \u2014 Why Jesus? \u2014 is one of the most important questions every men\u2019s ministry must answer clearly, passionately, persuasively, and persistently.<\/p>\n

Why? Because men have plenty of things to do other than just attend meetings.<\/p>\n

But if they know their lives depend on meeting together, and if they know there are going to be concrete and positive outcomes as a result of it, not only in their own lives, but also in the lives of the people they know and love all around them, then they will not only be there, they will drag their loved ones and friends to the meeting along with them.<\/p>\n

So why Jesus? Why, two thousand years after he walked the face of this earth, do we still meet together to worship him and learn how to follow him?<\/p>\n

Why Jesus? Because Jesus accurately diagnoses men\u2019s problems<\/h3>\n

Consider this: the further away American culture has gotten from Jesus, the more aimless, destructive, and depraved American men have become. For the first time in two thousand years Christianity is facing, not just a post-Jesus Western civilization, but an anti-Jesus, pagan civilization.<\/p>\n

But ironically, the best apologetic for Jesus is the increasing absence of Jesus\u00a0from\u00a0our culture. Why? Because, without Jesus permeating Western culture as he has to varying degrees over the past two millennia, we are witnessing the greatest social experiment in the history of the world: what happens to men in a Jesus-less culture.<\/p>\n

In Jesus-less America, men are losing their ability to\u00a0control their sexual lust<\/a>. They are losing their\u00a0desire to marry<\/a>. They are losing any commitment to\u00a0raise their own children<\/a>. They are losing any\u00a0transcendent purpose in life<\/a>. They are losing their\u00a0passion for education<\/a>. They are losing their\u00a0work ethic<\/a>. They are losing their ability to\u00a0keep the law and stay out of prison<\/a>. They are losing their\u00a0resistance to drugs and alcohol<\/a>. And finally, in a Jesus-less culture, men are\u00a0losing their self respect<\/a>, because they\u00a0no longer know who they are, why they are here, or where they are going<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One cannot have a positive outcome to a problem until one knows the reason for the problem. Here is Jesus\u2019 diagnosis for men\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

Every man has an evil nature he cannot tame\u2026without Jesus.1<\/a>\u00a0He lives in an evil world he cannot overcome\u2026without Jesus.2<\/a>\u00a0He has an evil enemy he cannot defeat\u2026without Jesus.3<\/a>\u00a0And he faces a holy God he doesn\u2019t know and cannot please\u2026without Jesus.4<\/a><\/p>\n

What, then, is the root cause of men\u2019s problems?\u00a0The root cause of men\u2019s problems is that they don\u2019t know or care about Jesus.<\/p>\n

Why Jesus? Because without Jesus men cannot escape slavery to sin<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s face it, we men love sin. Or to put it in ordinary secular language: we men love evil. We love illicit sex. We love porn. We love exalting ourselves at the expense of others. We love living off of someone else\u2019s dime. We love lying when we can get away with it. We love going our own selfish way, even if it means abandoning our wives and kids. We love cursing. We love road rage. We love warfare. We love beating people up and watching people beat each other up. We love getting even. We love putting others down. We love climbing the ladder and stepping on everyone else in the process. We love clicks. We love getting high. We love avarice. We love gluttony. We love being noticed. We love having a nicer car and living in a nicer home than our neighbors.<\/p>\n

We may think these things are just temptations. But we are only tempted by the things we love. Dog food does not tempt us. Baby back ribs do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. Men have a chronic temptation to descend into barbarism, or \u201ctoxic masculinity,\u201d as some call it. In response to this overwhelming temptation, human culture has devised two polar opposite and contradictory solutions, which I call \u201cThe Bikini\u201d and \u201cThe Burka.\u201d<\/p>\n