Results tagged “The Gospel”

Sigh. Well, here I am again, a long time since my last Quiet Time entry. I'll spare you the excuses, suffice to say the Spirit has been prompting me, I've just been ignoring it for too long. Last night's midweek lesson pushed me over the edge to where I couldn't any more.

1 Corinthians 9:2 - "If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord." Reading this in the ESV struck me - "... you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord." he says. Paul got validation of his identity in the Lord from those he had impacted for Christ.

1 Corinthians 9:15-18 - Paul in the preceding verses lays out a defense of ministers of the gospel being compensated. It is in no way wrong for a man to reap a material benefit from his work for the Gospel. But in these verses he states that, though he has the right to, he refuses to do so. He will not let it be said that he preaches for profit. His reward is in presenting the gospel freely.

What is the lesson here? Ministers, if you could not earn a living by preaching, would you still preach, even as you worked another job? Is your reward not in the paycheck but in the presentation of the gospel itself? It's easy to say as a layman, but it's a question that ought to be asked. For me and others like me, do I live for this world (paychecks and achievements) or is my reward in the gospel as well?

Paul thrived on the gospel and sharing it, frankly I don't. That tells me that the gospel isn't nearly real enough to me, it's too conceptual or theoretical. It's too nice. The reality of the gospel is that the God who created gravity and put boundaries around the oceans came down to rescue me because he wanted me. I couldn't - and, frankly, wouldn't - have made my way to him, so he came down. I was desperately broken and utterly depraved, but despite that, having me with him was important enough for him to humble himself and come and rescue me. That's the gospel that's compelling and one that must be shared. I need to think on it more so that it becomes irresistible, like it was to Paul. Take a look at what he says next:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

The gospel was so compelling to him, so important to share, that what he was became secondary, in fact trivial. We are so concerned about who we are, but Paul didn't care at all what he was, as long as he could share the gospel. If it meant getting the gospel out to more people, he'd become anything it took.

I want it to be that real to me, so real that it changes everything, that it changes even who I am.

Galatians 2:1-2 - Paul in chapter 1 insists that the Gospel he preaches came not from men but from Jesus, yet here he says that he went to Jerusalem to present his Gospel to the leaders there, "in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain". Even though he was confident in what Jesus had given Him, knowing that Jesus had spoken also to them (and first), he wanted to be sure that they were in agreement.

Galatians 2:4-9 - He who once a zealot for the law, to the point of punishing law breakers with death, now just as zealously defends the Gospel of freedom and refuses to allow those who would claim we must still submit to the law any ground.

Galatians 2:11-14 - The church needs men of boldness like Paul, who for the sake of the purity of the Gospel will stand up, publicly, to leaders whose "conduct [is] not in step with the truth of the gospel". Paul paid a price for his convictions as do those today who dare to call false gospel false. Of course, Paul's standing for the Gospel ultimately cost him his life at the hands of those outside the church, but I imagine that day he ruffled a few feathers among the brothers that day.

Galatians 2:20 - "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." I struggled with this before becoming a Christian and I've since heard others express the same struggle. The commitment to Christ is complete and total surrender. From the outside, it seems as if you will loose your very identity, becoming some religious clone of every other Christian, robotically living the same life as any other disciple. As this verse says, we are no longer ourselves, but Jesus in the flesh. It's scary and it sounds boring.

But while there is truth to those ideas, that I die and succumb to Christ, that does not produce like Jesus like duplicates in the way that a photocopier does. The beauty of God's creation in humanity is that His will and Jesus can be expressed in a huge number of ways. We are still individual expressions of the will of the Father, when we surrender to Him and live out Jesus instead of us, the real us He created is revealed. on two disciples are alike, just like no two sinners are and none of us are a complete expression of who He is. Only when we come together as the church to we begin to fully experience and express Him.

Far from being boring, when we let go and surrender to Jesus, only then we are able to live up to our potential, becoming, finally, all that He created us to be.

Once again, it's been over a month since my last QT entry (and, yes, since my last time sitting down with the Bible. Sigh. I'm diving into Galatians and then back to the OT, perhaps for the minor prophets, I'm not sure yet. I'm open to your OT suggestions.

Galatians 1:1 - Paul pauses, briefly, to point out (or remind them) that he is an apostle, not because men decided he should be, but because Jesus himself had come to him and mad him one.

Galatians 1:3 - Paul reminds us of several things in this short greeting. 1) This age is evil. (So don't be surprised when men do evil things.) 2) Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from said evil. (Amen!) and 3) That was God's idea and desire. (Amen again!)

Galatians 1:6-9 - I think this passage ought to give us more pause than it seems to. Paul says if anyone preaches a different gospel than what was originally given, they should be cursed. To that many would say "Amen!", yet we see many gospels in what is broadly seen as Christianity today. We see a gospel of prosperity, that God want's you to have stuff, we see a gospel of works where we must perform to get into or stay in God's favor, we see the self help gospel and more. if we agree that there is but one true gospel and that those who preach another ought to be cursed, then we should be sobered and consider hard the gospel that we preach. Is it the gospel or another? Or is it the Gospel plus our own pet convictions and doctrines?

So, should we be timid in proclaiming it, lest we get it wrong? No, the fact that it is so precious and so frequently mis-preached means that, while being careful to preach only what is from Christ, we ought to, in fact we must, proclaim it constantly in order to keep it fresh in our minds and the minds of those around us that any gospel that is false me be immediately seen as such.

Galatians 1:11-24 - Paul says that he did not stop to consult any man, even the leaders in Jerusalem, before he started preaching the Gospel. So, it wasn't Man's, it was straight from Christ, through Paul, to the people. There was no need to consult with the leaders, to craft a position or draw up a statement. The Gospel needed no polish or spin then, nor does it today.

When we "get" the gospel for what it really is -- the power to save, the most thrilling news there could be, the declaration that God's Son died for us and then came back to life! to be the risen Lord and supreme King of the universe, not just the entry fee for heaven but the currency for all of life -- we revel in the new creation it unleashes in its wake at every turn. We never get tired of hearing it. It's the new song that never gets old. "Play it again, play it again!" we will cry.

Jared Wilson, Gospel Driven Church

Jared Wilson warns preachers not to be tempted to drift from proclaiming the gospel, out of fear it will grow old or stale.

I think the same warning applies to regular Joe Christians - don't think that you 'got' the gospel and can take some time to study something else for a few seasons. Don't think you can leave the gospel lie and look at some 'other' aspect of God the father or the Son. And don't pester your minister to do it either. Rather, look at those other things through the lens of the gospel, for the gospel permeates everything that the father is and does.

When we look at obedience without the gospel we get legalism. When we look at grace without the gospel, we get permissive religion. When we look at service without the gospel, we are simply another charity.

The gospel is what makes Christianity distinct from any other system of beliefs or method of thinking or religious philosophy. Our world, and we ourselves, are fundamentally broken and Jesus fixed it. We were in hot water with our creator, but Jesus has patched things up for for us. Other systems are about finding the way for you to help yourself, the gospel doesn't even pretend that you can help yourself, it simply steps in and rescues you, no questions asked.

When we approach everything as disciples of Jesus from the stand point that we are flawed, broken and limited and He has done for us what we could never do ourselves, we see everything of God - grace, love, faith, obedience, etc - differently.

His grace is an astounding gift, undeserved.
His love is astounding in it's depth, determination, lack of conditions, decisiveness and completeness.
Our faith is the only appropriate response, clearly insufficient but yet enough.
Our brokenness is insurmountable, yet utterly vanquished.
Our efforts at obedience are wholly inadequate, but absolutely necessary in view of what we've been given.

As Jared says, when we see the gospel, it makes everything new, and continues to do so, as long as we don't give up on gazing at it.

Matt Chandler on what happens when the Gospel is assumed and not preached. Excellent.

Don't just assume, well, yeah, of course Jesus. Now, you need to ...

Via Jared, at The Gospel Driven Church

Matt Chandler on the Gospel vs. moralism. Excellent.

Via. Jared at The Thinklings.

Romans 1:8 - Imagine the news of the faith of a single church being reported all over the world and being rejoiced about in every church. In our fractured Christianity today, one group has a success and those within it rejoice, but most of the rest don't even hear. Of those that do, some dismiss it because they aren't doing it right or whatever. Back in the heydays of the ICOC, when we still thought we were 'The Church', I can remember news of things like the multi-racial church in Johannesburg or the success of the Moscow church and having the feeling that he describes here. Of course, no one rejoiced with us and we wouldn't have rejoiced with anyone else either.

Romans 1:15 - He's eager to preach the gospel to them. I think we tend to think that 'preaching the gospel' means evangelism, preaching to those who don't know. But Paul is writing to a church, people who not only knew Jesus but who had already been converted. And Paul was eager to share the Gospel with them.

The Gospel isn't only for those who've never heard, it's needed for all of us. We shouldn't tire of hearing it nor should preachers tire of preaching it.

Romans 1:18-23 - Although I think Paul is speaking here of men who worship things other than God, I can't help thinking of Darwin and his deliberate exclusion of God from creation. Now, I'm not a young earth proponent, nor do I claim that evolution is non existent. In fact, I suspect that there's a lot more truth in Darwin's theories than most evangelicals would like to allow. (And I find a God who can create a system like evolution, where species adapt to changing conditions yet the adaptations do not unravel the system, perhaps more compelling and awe inspiring than the creation of the Earth as we know it in one swoop. But I digress.) What stuck me in these past few weeks where the anniversary of Darwin's birth was celebrated, and the story of his developing his theories was revealed, was how he seemed to set out, laser focused almost, to remove God from the story of creation. "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

My study of Ecclesiastes was very productive. I decided that i needed to return to the New Testament, but since I had spent a lot of time in the gospels before Ecclesiastes, I decided to return to one of the epistles. Galatians kept popping in my head, so here I am.

Galatians 1:6 - After a short greeting, Paul dives right in, challenging them on "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ". No sensitive consideration of their viewpoint or feelings.

Galatians 1:9 - Paul does not mince words - if anyone is preaching a different gospel, let him be cursed. We tolerate a lot of different gospels, don't we? By 'tolerate' I don't necessarily mean accept, but we treat them as if they are valid gospels. We accept them as alternate teachings too easily, I think. We don't have to berate and rebuke at every turn, but there is a way to stand firm when we see a 'gospel' that is not the gospel. I don't get the impression that Paul was much concerned about who might be offended here by calling their teachings false.

Galatians 1:15-19 - Paul seems to go out of his way to drive home the point that the gospel he preaches is not his own nor that of the other apostles. He received it directly from God (see verse 1 as well). He wasn't claiming to have a different teaching than the others, only to say that it was from God. If you refuse it, you are refusing not Paul or 'the church' but God. He seems to be nailing this down to make it clear that what he was about to write was not debatable or a matter of opinion.

In our age of so many churches and denominations, on one hand there is a lot of legitimate value in the vast variety of understandings. Still, there is a need to stand for the one and only gospel of Christ. The challenge is how to do both. When we claim to have all understanding, as my family of churches, and the larger CoC tribe before them once did (and sometime still do), we block out any knowledge but our own. We not only prevent our own growth, we alienate others who need to be taught by what we do understand.

However, the other extreme is to never confront anyone when they are clearly far away from the gospel. I think I tend to fall into this trap, it's the easy way, and it sounds and feels righteous. No confrontation, being nice and 'respectful'. But respect does not demand silence, but to speak firmly demands respect and discernment.