Every year, Ben and Joyce Anderson make their way through the Arizona desert to spend a Sunday at Grace Bible Church of Phoenix. Ben serves as the international director of Things to Come Mission, and the visit falls close to the TCM board meeting in Indianapolis each September. But the real reason the Andersons make the trip is the same reason they have been coming for forty years. They came to this church in 1986 — Ben preached his first Sunday-night sermon here, and Joyce was sitting in the audience. They were married that year, deployed to Kenya that same year, and have served as missionaries ever since. Forty years of gospel work. Forty years of gospel family.
On Sunday, Ben Anderson preached from Romans 1:16. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” From that one verse, he drew three simple points. The gospel is something of which we should not be ashamed. The gospel is the power of God. And salvation is for everyone who believes.
I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel
Ben Anderson opened with a story. Jim Elliot was one of five missionaries killed in Ecuador in 1956 trying to make contact with the Huaorani people. They found a sentence in his journal afterwards: “He is no fool who gives that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Elliot had been willing to die for the unreached. The report of those five deaths electrified the American church — within a couple of years, roughly ten thousand new missionaries had volunteered to go and replace them. Among them were Vernon and Darlene Anderson, Ben’s parents, who would become co-founders of Things to Come Mission.
The point of the story was not sentimental. It was diagnostic. Ben asked: are we willing to suffer for the gospel? Every one of us is willing to suffer for something. Mothers suffer for their children. Students suffer for their degrees. Entrepreneurs suffer for their businesses. The question Paul puts to the Roman Christians is not whether we can suffer — it is whether the gospel is the thing for which we are willing to suffer. Paul could have lived a comfortable life. He was a Pharisee, respected in Jerusalem, with social standing and a reliable income. All he had to do was stop talking about Jesus. He couldn’t. As he put it in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.” For Paul, the gospel was a fire in his bones. He spoke because he had to speak.
Ben made the same point with the cross. Jesus was not ashamed of us. He endured the worst kind of death reserved for the worst kind of criminal. The writer of Hebrews says it was for the joy set before him — the joy being you and me. He was not ashamed to hang naked on a Roman cross so that we could be brought into his family. If he was not ashamed of us, we ought not to be ashamed of him. Especially when the cost of speaking up is so much smaller than what he paid.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”
— Hebrews 12:1–3
The Gospel Is the Power of God
Once Paul has said he is not ashamed, he gives the reason. The gospel is the power of God. Ben Anderson answered the question with three pictures — family, city, and country.
Family first. Ben’s grandfather was a drunk. Ben’s father had to find him sleeping in the ditch on the way back from the bar and bring him home. His grandmother’s mental stability collapsed under the strain of raising children in that home. His father rode the freight train from Minneapolis to Spokane at age eleven. Total dysfunction. But a woman from Grace Bible Church of Ashkosh, Wisconsin — a church related to the one in Phoenix — would not stop sharing the gospel with Ben’s parents. They were, in their own words, “American pagans.” She kept at it. Eventually, they came to faith. They gave their lives to missionary service. Ben grew up in a home with two parents who loved him, provided for him, paid for his schooling, and told him what he could become. From his generation, all three of his children believe in Christ. From his grandchildren — twelve and counting — every one who has come to faith age has believed. That is the power of the gospel, multi-generational, transgenerational, transforming a freight-train kid into the patriarch of a missionary dynasty.
City next. Ben was in Seoul a couple of years ago. A hundred years ago, there was no church in Seoul. Today, the largest church in the world is in Seoul. Ben asked several Korean pastors how it happened. Every one of them said the same thing: because of the missionaries. They came. They preached. They suffered. They stayed. There is a cemetery across the Han River reserved just for those missionaries. Korean Christians are 23% of the population. Right next door, Japan is less than 1%. The difference is one generation of missionaries who were not ashamed of the gospel.
Country last. Things to Come Mission has worked in Kenya since 1844 — when the first German Moravian missionary arrived and wrote that he had never met a Christian. Today, Kenya is 82% Christian. In 2015, terrorists attacked a school and killed about two hundred students. None of them recanted Christ. That is the power of the gospel. One country, one generation of faithful missionaries, and a Christ-confessing church strong enough to stand in the face of martyrdom.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'”
— Romans 1:16–17
Salvation Is for Everyone Who Believes
The third point is the heartbeat of the passage. Salvation is not reserved for an inner circle. It is for everyone who believes. Ben quoted 1 Timothy 2:3–4 — “God our Savior… desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” He quoted Paul’s words in Romans 15 that he was called to bring the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith — and the Gentiles, Ben reminded us, represent 99.8% of the world’s population. He quoted Ephesians 1:13 — “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” The order matters. People must hear before they can believe. People must believe before they can be saved.
That puts a burden on us. If there are people who have never heard, it is not because God has hidden himself from them. It is because no one has gone. TCM has missionaries in Nepal now — Ralph and Ren Ferantes, Filipinos who moved to Kathmandu to learn the language and plant churches among a 1.4% Christian population surrounded by some of the largest Hindu temples in the world. They are there because Ben and the TCM team believe that unreached people groups are the unfinished business of the church. Unsaved means someone has not yet believed. Unreached means there is no Christian, no Bible, no church in their community. They will never hear the gospel unless someone brings it.
Ben closed this section with a sobering note. Twenty years ago, when he became executive director of TCM, American churches were not sending missionaries the way they once did. One branch of the Presbyterian Church recently wrote to all fifty-three of its missionary families and gave them one month to come home. They have closed their entire foreign mission. Urbana, once the largest student missions conference in the world, now hosts more mission representatives than college students. We still give. We just don’t go. Ben’s hope is what he called the great reversal — missionaries from former fields (the Philippines, Indonesia, Kenya) now being sent to even less-reached places. The American church has done its job, and now the global church is finishing it.
“For this is good and pleasing before God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.”
— 1 Timothy 2:3–6 (paraphrased; full citation in references)
So What?
Ben closed with a young couple from his most recent missionary training class. Ricky and Rochelle Pas had prayed for years for a child. God gave them one. In gratitude, they promised the Lord they would go wherever he sent them. At the Friday prayer meeting during training, Ricky preached a short message titled “My Turn.” He pointed out that Jesus had his thirty-three years on earth. Then he commissioned Paul to take the gospel far away to the Gentiles. The early TCM founders — Vernon Anderson, Joe Watkins, and the others — did their work, served faithfully, and went to be with the Lord. Now it is Ricky’s turn. Now it is our turn.
That is the question Romans 1:16 leaves us with. We are not ashamed of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God. Salvation is for everyone who believes. As long as we are here, as long as we are healthy, as long as we have mouths to speak and feet to walk and resources to give, it is our turn. We don’t get to retire from the gospel until we are dead. And when we are dead, others will rise to take our place. That is how Jim Elliot’s five deaths produced ten thousand missionaries. That is how a drunk sleeping in a ditch became the grandfather of a missionary family. That is how a country with no Christians became a country where you can hear five churches worshiping at the same time from your front porch. The gospel is powerful. People have believed. Now it is our turn.
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
— Matthew 6:10
Scripture References
- Romans 1:16–17 — Not ashamed of the gospel, the power of God for salvation
- Hebrews 12:1–3 — Running the race, looking to Jesus who endured the cross
- 2 Timothy 1:8–12 — Do not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord; do not be ashamed of suffering for the gospel
- 1 Timothy 2:3–4 — God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth
- Ephesians 1:13–14 — Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you believed
- Acts 13:47 — Appointed as a light for the Gentiles, for salvation to the ends of the earth
- Romans 15:15–16 — Called to bring the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith
- Matthew 6:10 — Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven