What Gospel?

A word from Mike Horton on preaching the Christ-centered gospel:

Scripture is of no use to us if we read it merely as a handbook for daily living without recognizing that its principle purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ and his gospel for the salvation of sinners. All Scripture coalesces in Christ, anticipated in the OT and appearing in the flesh in the NT. In Scripture, God issues commands and threatens judgment for transgressors as well as direction for the lives of his people. Yet the greatest treasure buried in the Scriptures is the good news of the promised Messiah. Everything in the Bible that tells us what to do is “law”, and everything in the Bible that tells us what God has done in Christ to save us is “gospel.” Much like medieval piety, the emphasis in much Christian teaching today is on what we are to do without adequate grounding in the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. “What would Jesus do?” becomes more important than “What has Jesus done?” The gospel, however, is not just something we needed at conversion so we can spend the rest of our Christian life obsessed with performance; it is something we need every day–the only source of our sanctification as well as our justification. The law guides, but only the gospel gives. We are declared righteous–justified–not by anything that happens within us or done by us, but solely by God’s act of crediting us with Christ’s perfect righteousness through faith alone.

Application Thoughts

Knowledge is important in order for application to happen. You can't apply what you don't know! But application is also as important.. James 1:22-25..

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does.

A realization just came to me a few hours before.. application wise.

Loving God: dying to self, love the Word of God, Rom 12:1-2

Loving people/neighbors: forgive others, love (1 Cor 13:1-3), do not judge, preach the gospel

Jesus says that the two greatest commandment was to love God will all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31).

*Wants to love God with understanding*

The Gospel Everyday

An excerpt from a post by Tullian Tchividjian, from http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tullian/2011/03/18/the-gospel-everyday-2/

I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But I’ve come to realize that ” the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths, but more like the hub in a wheel of truth.” In other words, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it. All good theology, in fact, is an exposition of the gospel.

In his letter to the Christians of Colossae, the apostle Paul portrays the gospel as the instrument of all continued growth and spiritual progress, even after a believer’s conversion.

“All over the world,” he writes, “this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth” (Col. 1:6). He means that the gospel is not only growing wider in the world but it’s also growing deeper in Christians.

After meditating on Paul’s words, a friend told me that all our problems in life stem from our failure to apply the gospel. This means I can’t really move forward unless I learn more thoroughly the gospel’s content and how to apply it to all of life. Real change does not and cannot come independently of the gospel. God intends his Good News in Christ to mold and shape us at every point and in every way. It increasingly defines the way we think, feel, and live.

Jonah and the Gospel

One of the best thing that happened to me is that I began to understand the meaning behind the book of Jonah! It's much more than some bible story that parents tell children when they go into sleeping mode.

Tullian Tchividjian explains so in his book, "Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels":

We can’t escape a stark contrast in this story—the tribal heart of Jonah versus the missionary heart of God. These two mindsets involve fundamentally different values. The highest value of a tribal heart is self-preservation. A tribal heart exists solely for itself, and those who nurture it keep asking, “How can I protect myself from those who are different from me?” A tribal heart typically elevates personal and cultural preferences to absolute principles: If everybody were more like me, this world would be a better place.But for a missionary heart, the highest value isn’t self-preservation but self-sacrifice. A missionary-hearted person exists not primarily for himself but for others. It’s a heart willing to be inconvenienced and discomforted for the well-being of others. A tribal mindset is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel demands that we be missionary minded, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for his enemies.

Both these approaches are robustly present in Jonah’s story. Jonah represents the best of a tribal mindset, the absolute best. He’s like the trophy-winner for tribalism. And God—ever-gracious, ever-pursuing, ever-compassionate—carries the trophy for mission-mindedness. Jonah runs from his enemies; God runs toward his enemies.

Jesus says that he is “greater than Jonah.” He is the greater-than-Jonah who succeeded where Jonah failed. For instance, in sending Jonah as his messenger to sinful Nineveh, God showed his boundless grace and faithfulness. But centuries later, God sent another messenger to sinful mankind. Only this messenger went willingly and joyfully because he knew the heart of God. In fact, he was the heart of God. He would be called “the Word” because he himself was God’s message. He was everything God wanted to say to the world—all wrapped up in a person.

Instead of fleeing from God’s call in rebellion and running away from his enemies, this new messenger ran toward his enemies, in full submission to his Father’s will, despite what it would cost him. For “we were enemies” of God (Rom. 5:10)—all of us—so much so that we rejected and crucified his Son.

Fully knowing that this death was his destiny, this new messenger nevertheless pursued God’s rescue mission with a totally engaged heart. “For the joy that was set before him,” the Bible tells us, he “endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2) so that God’s enemies, you and I, could become God’s friends.

Like Jonah thrown overboard, this new messenger would be a sacrifice, with the result that others were saved.

This new messenger, like Jonah, would spend three days in utter darkness. But unlike Jonah, he would emerge with wholehearted determination to pursue his enemies with life-giving love. He went on this mission because he wanted to—not because he had to.

When God’s mercy was shown to Jonah and to his enemies, Jonah was intensely angered. But this new messenger was the happy extension of God’s grace toward his enemies—not angry and embittered, but “anointed . . . with the oil of gladness” (Heb. 1:9). Jonah is all about self-protection; this new messenger is all about joyful self-sacrifice. So Jesus and his Good News, rescue of sinners, is all over this story of Jonah.

A Tale of Two Corners: Knowledge and Maturity

Taken from Kevin DeYoung's blog at:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung

In this corner you have our friend Mr. Bookworm. He’s not quite thirty years old. He’s very intelligent. He’s read Calvin, Edwards, Luther, and Bavinck. He knows Warfield and Hodge, Piper and Carson too. Since coming to the Lord in college, Mr. Bookworm has been on fire for learning. He listens to a dozen sermons each week on his iPod. He has a better grasp of current theological debates than most pastors. He loves Chrstian conferences, the good meaty ones. Mr. Bookworm knows all about hermeneutics, propitiation, covenant theology, the regulative principle, and the ordo salutis. He’s even teaching himself a little Greek. Hebrew and Latin are around the corner. Ugaritic, if he’s got time.

Mr. Bookworm is smart, serious about his faith, and genuinely wants to serve the Lord. But he’s twentysomething and not all that mature. In terms of knowledge, he’s playing in the Major Leagues, but as far as wisdom he’s batting below .200 in A ball. He doesn’t have gross sins, just some annoying ones. On the truth-grace scale, he’s all truth. He’s obnoxious, bordering on abrasive. He lacks all sense of proportion. He can’t see that a debate over presuppositional v. evidentialist apologetics is not as serious as Athanasius v. Arianism. Everything is a first-order issue because there are no other kinds of issues.

To make matters worse, Mr. Bookworm talks too much. He sees every conversation as a forensics match waiting to happen. He’s opinionated. He doesn’t ask questions. People are scared of him and he doesn’t know why. Except for those in complete agreement with him, Mr. Bookworm doesn’t have many friends. He’s not trying to be rude or arrogant. In fact, push come to shove he can be a winsome fellow. The problem is he has all this knowledge and doesn’t know how to use it wisely or winsomely.

In the other corner is Mr. Simple-Faith. He’s been a Christian for 40 years. He prays and reads his Bible every day. He’s raised four godly children. He’s been married for over 30 years. He’s quiet, sincere, and well-respected by everyone. But he’s not a huge reader. He never has been. He reads two or three books a year, one of them might be a Christian book, usually something popular and pretty lightweight. Mr. Simple-Faith has decent theological instincts. He knows the Bible is all true, Jesus is the only way to God, hell is real, and we can’t earn our way to heaven. He’s orthodox, but beyond the basics he’s pretty ignorant and, frankly, not very interested.

So who would you rather have as an elder in your church? Mr. Bookworm is more impressive, but Mr. Simple-Faith is probably going to make better decisions and be better received by the members of the congregation. Personally, I’d rather have maturity outpacing knowledge instead of the other way around.

Learning to Drive the Right Ride

It should go without saying that the goal is to have both. A mature Christian with little theological knowledge is not living up to his potential. A knowledgeable Christian without maturity has potential he doesn’t know how to use.

A theologically astute, immature Christian is like a five year old flying an Apache helicopter. Here’s this massive weapon; it can destroy arguments and defend against heresy. It can soar to the heavens and take in glorious sights no one at sea-level will ever witness. This theological helicopter is good for search and rescue, just as good for seek and destroy. Every congregational army would be thrilled with such a vehicle. It’s fast. It’s furious. It’s impressive. But it’s also dangerous. And with a five-year old behind the wheel (or whatever they have in choppers), some people are going to get hurt. It’s not wrong for a little kid to have a helicopter, but it would be nice if he grew up and took some flying lessons before taking the thing out for a spin.

On the other hand, a mature Christian content with the barest theological knowledge is like a 45-year old riding a tricycle. If I had to choose, I’d go with the trike-riding middle-aged man, but only because he’s a little safer than the five-year old fighter pilot. In a perfect world, the 45-year old would learn to ride something for grown-ups. Sure he can get around on the tricycle. But he can’t go very fast or very far. He’s limited in terms of what he can see and experience. He can’t do much to beat back enemies or scale new heights. He’s steady, but not the best he can be.

The goal in Christian discipleship is that we don’t have to choose between kids flying helicopters and adults riding little bikes. We want the most mature pilots flying the most intricate machinery. Our aim is for Mr. Knowledge to grow into Mr. Head-and-Heart and for Mr. Simple-Faith to learn to be Mr. Deep-Truth.