Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
Why does addiction have such a vise-grip on human beings? There are alcoholics longing for deliverance, drug addicts, people in the grip of hatred, lust, pornography, gambling, a sexual slavery that they hate. They are sorely tempted to feel, yes to believe, that reconciliation with the righteousness of God is impossible, at least for them. They weep their eyes out in despair.
Hardly a day goes by but what we hear of some “amazing” new medical discovery, some new pill that will help arthritics, cancer, or heart disease patients. Huge amounts of time and money are spent on these researches. Many owe their very lives to this increase of knowledge.
Is there a corresponding increase of knowledge in what the pure, true gospel is—that alone can bring deliverance to addicts? Such increase of knowledge is impossible for any people or church that feels “rich and increased with goods” in their understanding of the gospel, only those who sense their spiritual poverty can begin to learn. There is a “truth of the gospel” that is refreshingly different than the perversion that Paul says is “another gospel” of Babylon (Gal. 2:5; 1:6-9; Rev. 14:8; 18:1-4). There is no “power” in Babylon’s “gospel,” but there is in the truth (Rom. 1:16).
“The truth of the gospel” is identical to what God said is “the truth about Me” that Job’s friends had perverted with their false gospel (Job 42:7, Good News Bible). That “truth about [God]” is the truth of what His Son accomplished on His cross, for Paul says, “I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; ... the world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world” (Gal 6:14, GNB). “Through [that] death” Christ paralyzed “him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and releas[ed] those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb 2:14, 15; the Greek word translated “destroy” means to disarm or to paralyze).
Somewhere there is some “most precious” Good News either awaiting discovery or awaiting our faith to believe it!
—Robert J. Wieland
From the “Dial Daily Bread” Archive: September 29, 1998.
Copyright © 2019 by “Dial Daily Bread.”
