What exactly is the Gospel? In the 70’s there was a musical called Godspell. While it gave us a caricature of the life of Christ from a 1970’s hippie perspective and offered some pretty decent music, it missed the point of what the Gospel is about. The Gospel is the good news. Good news presupposes something bad. A patient might receive a bad report from a doctor regarding a mass and the possibility of cancer. Exploratory surgery might clarify the x ray and provide good news that the mass was benign and not malignant. The Good News of forgiveness, reconciliation, and imputed righteousness follows the bad news that man is bound by sin and under the condemnation and wrath of God.
Often times, Christians view the Gospel as important and valuable to the one who doesn’t trust in Christ. While it is true that those who are under sin’s bondage and power, and God’s judgment, are in desperate need of the Good News, it is the point of this post to show the Christian his need of the Gospel. Romans 1:17 states that “the gospel is the power and wisdom of God”. As I meditated on this Scripture I realized I had missed something vital. Let me start by saying that the traditional understanding of the gospel is that it is the power and wisdom of God to save a soul from judgment, destroy Satan’s authority over sin’s claim on us, reconcile God’s justice and mercy, and grant the believer a priceless and assured hope.
Let us ask ourselves what we so often ask God for? When we are struggling with a besetting sin what is our request of God? When we seek to be useful in His hands in witnessing what do we earnestly pray for? When we are confused about the direction of our lives or struggle with the loss of employment or health what do we seek? The answer to all of these questions is power and/or wisdom? We want God to give us power to live above the pull of the sin we find daily in our hearts. We ask for power to speak convincingly of forgiveness and reconciliation. We ask for wisdom to know what we should do in our lives. We request both strength to endure hardship and the wisdom to know how we should respond to trial. If this be so, brothers and sisters, why look any further? God has given us the answers to our prayers and the deepest desires of our heart in the Gospel, Christ crucified for our sins, Christ risen from the dead, Christ seated as King of kings and Lord or lords and interceding for us without fail, Christ granting us His righteousness and obedient life. Why is it that we seem to think we need to get past the Gospel, that the Gospel is only of elementary and initial importance? I felt this way for many years, myself, after watching people come to Christ at churches, thinking that they then needed to mine the wisdom of the rest of God’s word and discover its liberating truths. While the Bible is a veritable plethora of precious metals, we must always, regardless of situation, come to terms with the desperateness of our hearts, our weak resolve, and our foibles. We must return again to the Gospel, what God has done for us and empowered us to do. Our hearts constantly return to the worship of self, a trust of our own goodness, our own righteousness, a spiritual superiority or inferiority. Is this not the main subject of the book of Galatians, “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” and “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you.” Our hearts not only turn to the pleasures of sin for a season, but also suffer from stubbornness and hardness of heart and will. Let us hear the familiar Gospel call, the antidote to the wickedness and obduracy of heart, and cry out to God for His assured sovereign mercies and kindnesses through the gospel of Christ.
May I also suggest that the Gospel not only provides us with a living, true, and vibrant relationship with God but also the only means with which we can truly worship God. I think we have realized this to some degree. Often times, evangelical churches make a point of concluding the message with a gospel presentation and then an altar call. May I make some additional suggestions? I would like to encourage us to not only conclude the sermon with a presentation of the message of salvation but to make it always and in every way, the topic of each sermon for both the lost and saved within the covenant community. Since we are about worshiping God (and nothing glorifies Him more than the beauty of His acts of salvation), especially on the Lord’s Day as we gather together, let us proclaim redemption as the backdrop of every preacher’s message. Though I would argue that teaching is not the primary purpose of the preacher on the Lord's day service but rather a leadership in worship through the written Word and the gospel it declares, teaching can definitely be used especially as it declares the utter depravity of man and the exceeding righteousness of God, Christ’s offer of forgiveness, imputed righteousness, and power of the resurrection through the Spirit. But let us not stop here. There are many other ways we can and must include the Gospel into the service, as is right according to Scripture. The Gospel is proclaimed in Baptism as it signals the work of Christ sovereignly in unregenerate man, in the reading of Scripture (both responsively and by a reader) as redemption abounds in all sixty six books, in the singing of the Psalms (an almost lost but beautiful art of singing Scripture), true hymns and spiritual songs which are resplendent with the complete Gospel message, and finally and of equal importance, the Lord’s Supper, which clearly sets out Christ's sacrifice for us in a unique, tangible, and participatory way by the covenant community of worshipers coming together to not only declare that truth but demonstrate and adorn that sublime doctrine.
Let us embrace the Gospel (“which things the angels desire to look into”)
as God has established it, in our lives as well as our worship of Him, the King of grace!
A discussion of truth, spiritual issues, and how they play out in our lives.
