Thoughts on The Gospel

Dear Friends,

One of my professors (Jerry Bridges) once let us listen to a cassette tape recording (2001) of best-selling Christian authors at a Christian Booksellers Conference. They were asked the question: “What is the Gospel?” The answers given by every one of the best-selling authors who were interviewed varied from lacking at best, to tongue-tied and scrambling for an answer, to completely heretical.

Yet, the Gospel is the one message every believer should know through and through, since everything in the Christian life flows out of the Gospel! Therefore, today, I pass along some insights or descriptions of the Gospel that are very much “spot on” and in line with the biblical Gospel, because to the extent that we get the Gospel wrong, we weaken it’s saving and life-transforming power and can lead people astray. If the Gospel (the one given in the New Testament) “IS the power of God for the salvation of all who believe” a different Gospel (Galatians 1:6-7) does not carry with it the power of God and will not produce the same result. With that in mind, I hope you will find these “thoughts” on the Gospel helpful. Enjoy.

“The gospel is not just the ABC’s, but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on… We never get beyond the gospel to something deeper; we only go deeper into the Gospel” (See Rom 12:1–2; Phil 1:6; 3:13–14).”
Tim Keller

“The gospel does not tell us what we must do, it tells us what Christ did for us.”

“The gospel is the royal announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again according to the Scriptures, has been enthroned as the true Lord of the world.”
N.T. Wright

“Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, use words,” is like saying, “Feed the poor, and if necessary, use food.”

“God’s great purpose was not to rescue people out of the world, but to rescue the world itself, people included, from its state of corruption and decay… Jesus was announcing that a whole new world was being born and he was teaching people how to live within that whole new world.”
N.T. Wright

“The gospel is that Jesus Christ has amassed a perfect record and when we believe in Him, He gives it to us. He lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died in our place, so that when we believe, our sins are pardoned and we are “counted righteous in His sight.” Then we are completely accepted and loved by the only One in the universe whose opinions really count. We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
Tim Keller

“Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives… Many have a theoretical commitment to [the doctrine of justification by faith] but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.”
Richard Lovelace

“It is ignorance of the extent of our sinfulness that can delude men into thinking their justification is by their own personal righteousness. For if they were more acquainted with their sinfulness, they would quickly discern such an imperfection in the best of their duties, such a frequency of sinful irregularities in their minds, and disorders in their affections, that they would see such an unsuitableness in all that they are and do as would abate their confidence in placing any trust in their own righteousness for their justification.”
John Owen

“The obedience of Christ to the law and God’s crediting of it to us, is as necessary for our justification before God as his crediting to us his suffering of the penalty of the law on the cross… The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the whole law for us. He did not just undergo the penalty of it due unto our sins on the cross, but also yielded that perfect obedience which it did require… Therefore, it is evident that to be justified before God is required that we not only be freed from the damning sentence of the law, which we are by the pardon of sin, but moreover, that we have a righteousness answering the obedience that the law requires, which our acceptance before God, through the riches of his grace… do depend. This we do not have in and of ourselves, nor can we attain unto it by our own efforts, as has been proved. Therefore, the perfect obedience and righteousness of Christ must be imputed unto us, or in the sight of God we can never be justified.”
John Owen

“Christ is not only our PARDON through his death on the cross, he is also our PERFECTION by his life of flawless obedience to all God’s commands. What God demanded of us, Christ supplied for us. It is ours but to receive by faith the gift that Jesus secured for us by his life of flawless obedience and his death for sin.”
J. F. E.

I hope these have been helpful. Ponder what is said in each and compare it to the Gospel found in the N.T. epistles. And if you have any questions, please pass them along!

Living in His All-sufficient Grace, Pastor Jeff