This post is a follow-up message from Pastor Ben's sermon entitled "Battle-Ready". [Watch video]

For years, I believed that Jesus died on the cross. But I also believed that if I was a good boy I’d make it to heaven. If I wasn’t, well then. I believed a distorted gospel. At the age of 22, I was set straight by the true gospel. Grace is what captured my heart and mind. For the first time, I realized that I could never be good enough and that Christ’s death was sufficient for the debt of all my sin—past, present and future. To know that God freely gave me eternal life changed everything.

For one thing, I felt a huge crushing weight lifted from my chest. My sin condemned me every day, and I felt it. Now I could breathe free. But what I remember most about those early days as a brand new believer was that I could see. I remember having my eyes opened. I saw everything and everyone in a different light. I was once blind, but now I could see. It was all so clear.

This was all the work the gospel. The gospel sets people free and removes the blinders. We are in a spiritual battle against an enemy who blinds people with darkness. But we are “to stand firm…having shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” If we are to stand firm in the gospel, we’d better get it right.

We need the proper shoes for battle. We need the right shoes for the job. You don’t wear football cleats to go bowling. You don’t wear bowling shoes in combat. And for us, to stand in battle we must stand on the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Easy enough, but we must remember that in this battle the enemy will attack the gospel itself. Why? Because if people can be kept from truly believing in Christ they will be lost forever. Satan has two strategies to keep people from believing in Christ: Blind and distort.

He blinds people to the truth of the Gospel. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). How he does it, I don’t know, but somehow, he is able to spiritually blind people to the simple truth of salvation by grace through faith.

He distorts the truth of the Gospel. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:6-7). There is not a different gospel, there is only one: Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). You can be saved by grace through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). Anything else is a distortion of the truth. When the gospel is added to, taken away form, or distorted in any way, it is deadly and serious.

How serious? Paul continues, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). What angel would distort the gospel?  “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

This is what we are up against in the spiritual battle for the gospel. An enemy who blinds and distorts. I was blinded. I believed a distortion.

But I was given sight. The distortion was corrected. How? By the simple and faithful presentation of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. When Saul of Tarsus was blinded on the road to Damascus, Jesus gave him the mission “to open their eyes (the Gentiles) so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 18).

Our mission is the same. We are to correct distortions so that eyes may be opened. And it’s going to be a battle. But God has given the “Gospel of Peace” in which we can stand firm. I was duped, but the gospel gave me sight and set me free. It will for others as well. But we’d better get it right!