A brilliant post from Joe Thorn:

There is more in God’s word than the gospel. God has given us his law to show us the way, uncover our corruption and condemnation, and point us to our need of redemption. There are commands to be obeyed, there is wisdom to learn and practice, and affections to feel and be moved by. But, the law itself is unable to create within us new hearts, or empower us to obey its demands. So let me say it this way: The gospel is the main thing, it is not the only thing. However, it is the only thing that brings life, power, and transformation. The gospel isn’t everything, but it does connect to everything, and preachers and teachers in the church must be able to show that connection lest we allow the church to drift (or even be led) into various kinds of hopeless, powerless legalism.

Read the whole thing.

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“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.”
(Romans 1:16)

This has always been one of those verses that calls for a particular pause in my life. I know the God I believe in, and I am overwhelmingly thankful for my new life in Christ. And yet there is often a conviction in not responding to others in a way that truly reflects the joy that has welled up in my heart. I mean, the power of God saved me! Spending a bit of time in this text, however, has been most encouraging.

Not ashamed

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel”. What a peculiar statement to start with. After Paul’s lengthy introduction in Romans 1, that is what he says: I am not ashamed. Why would Paul say he is not ashamed? We generally don’t defend a position this way unless there are accusations from those who may not like what we have to say. If we take a look at Romans 1:14, we see that the gospel is for the Greeks, the Barbarians, the Jews, the Gentiles. These are the philosophical and learned, the social outcasts, the religious elite, and the worldly. Sound familiar with our culture today? Paul may have been addressing the Romans, but God is surely addressing us. In verse 16, the God of grace reminds us that the gospel is not one to be ashamed of regardless of how others respond!

Some mocked… some believed.

In Acts 17:32, we are given an account of Paul’s message with two completely different responses: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ So Paul went out from their midst. But some men joined him and believed…”

Some mocked, some joined Paul and believed. Same message, two completely difference responses. Paul was faithful to the gospel message. He wasn’t ashamed.

Why was Paul not ashamed? Because he just didn’t care what others would think of him? No. Was it because he felt obligated to preach the gospel? That’s not what the text says. Paul wasn’t ashamed of the gospel because “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes”! It is a regenerating power, a transformational power, a resurrecting power. It is the power that changed Paul and every other believer. God’s power is the means of salvation.

It’s not about you or me

Proclaiming the gospel boldly has nothing to do with our personality nor is it related to how fascinating our particular life story is. The story of the 6-year-old child conversion is just as amazing as the 40-year-old man that was saved after a life of drug abuse. Why? Because the gospel is about the power of God. It is about the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and what He has accomplished. It is not about our message. It’s about God’s message—the message of his sovereign grace and power to save sinners. And that is a message to never be ashamed of.

The implications of this perspective are far reaching as our message will never change, regardless of the responses we receive. Some of us will want to to change the message in order to reap a certain response. Don’t. Let us remain faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some will mock. Let them. Others, however, will receive the words of eternal life. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in “accountability groups” where there has been little to no attention given to the gospel whatsoever. There’s no reminder of what Christ has done for our sin—“cleansing us from its guilt and power”—and the resources that are already ours by virtue of our union with him. These groups produce a “do more, try harder” moralism that robs us of the joy and freedom Jesus paid dearly to secure for us.

….

Christian growth…does not happen first by behaving better, but believing better—believing in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners. I need my family and friends to remind me of this all the time.

The bottom line is this, Christian: because of Christ’s work on your behalf, God does not dwell on your sin the way you do. So, relax and rejoice…and you’ll actually start to get better. The irony, of course, is that it’s only when we stop obsessing over our own need to be holy and focus instead on the beauty of Christ’s holiness, that we actually become more holy!

Read the rest.

The gospel is for all of life, not just the point of conversion. We are saved through the gospel, we are sustained through the gospel, and we are kept eternally secure in the the gospel. The good news is about Jesus’ efforts, not ours. And when he said, “It is finished,” you better believe he meant it. It would do us a whole lot of good if we preached this message to ourselves, and each other, daily. Never forget it.

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A simple animation. A simple song. A simple speech.

I love this video because it reminds me of the simplicity of the gospel. The animation reminds me of a child-like joy and simplicity that is found in the gospel. The song, The Gospel Song, is beautiful. It is only four lines long, but they are strong and powerful. They capture the essence of God’s character, His radical love for us in His becoming incarnate, living the life we were supposed to live, and dying the death we were supposed to die, all so we might live and, ultimately, glorify Him!  In the video (1:20), John Piper summarizes the gospel  truth in a few words. Nothing elaborate, but so worshipful.

I pray that you are reminded that simplicity in our faith is not bad.  Sometimes, I think it is necessary and refreshing for our souls. The Gospel is such that a child can understand it in an instant and a scholar can search the depths of it for a lifetime. As we all grow in our passion for the Gospel, searching the depths of its truth, let’s never ignore the beautiful simplicity of it!

Holy God, in love, became
Perfect Man to bear my blame
On the cross He took my sin
By His death I live again

* “The Gospel Song” Lyrics by Drew Jones. Music by Bob Kauflin.

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And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
(Ephesians 2:1-7)

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Earlier this month, one of my co-workers publicly declared her life as Christ’s through baptism.

Pretty exciting, right? I had asked her to come to church with me back in May, not really thinking much of it. She came, the Lord changed her heart, and now she just got baptized.

At our church, when you get baptized, you’re asked to share a little testimonial about how you came to this place in your life. She came to me last week and asked if I would read her testimonial and see if it sounded alright. Being a grammar-lover, I happily obliged.

After reading her testimonial, it struck me how much bigger God is than I ever give Him credit for, so I wanted to share a part of it with you.

Here’s a part of the testimonial:

“I was at the end of my rope, literally and figuratively. I was suicidal, planning ways to end it so my kids would have the least amount of pain. After a particularly grueling Saturday ‘planning session’ night, I fell into a deep sleep. I awoke Sunday morning with a random thought in my head: ‘I wonder if Rachel would mind if I asked her if I could go to church with her?’

Less than two hours later, she sent me a text asking, ‘Wanna go to church with me next Sunday?’

My plan: To say one last good-bye to God. I was done. I knew I would never enter His kingdom as my sins were far too great.”

Obviously this story has a happy ending, and she is now a believer and active member of our church.

What struck me was how unaware I was of God’s moving. I sent her a text message, really not thinking anything would come of it. If she came, great, if not, oh well. I tried. Christ was completely removed from the picture. I wasn’t trusting that He would change her heart, I was just doing what I thought was the right thing to do.

Looking back with her perspective added, Christ’s hand was all over this situation. Sending that text message was divinely inspired. The timing was dead on—a feat that I couldn’t accomplish on my own and appears too intricate to write off as coincidence.

Beyond that, the pain my co-worker was going through was far more than I could’ve ever known. The thought to invite her had been tugging at me for a while, but I knew she had lost faith in the church a long time ago, due to past experiences. To me, it was just a case of a believer asking a non-believer to church. In her eyes, it was a follower of Christ throwing her a lifeline.

I write this to not only encourage you to invite your unbelieving friends and family to church, but to also show how much work God is doing outside of our limited awareness.

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From Joshua Harris’ blog:

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The following is an update from his wife, almost one year after his death.

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As I was contemplating what I should write about for my first post here, I was reminded of the name of this blog—The Gospel for OC. Thus, I want to share a quote with you that lays out the beauty of what Christ’s sacrifice accomplished for us.

“…we maintain, that of what description soever any man’s works may be, he is regarded as righteous before God simply on the footing of gratuitous mercy; because God, without any respect to works, freely adopts him in Christ, by imputing the righteousness of Christ to him, as if it were his own. This we call the righteousness of faith: that is, when a man, made void and empty of all confidence in works, feels convinced that the only ground of his acceptance with God is a righteousness which is wanting to himself, and is borrowed from Christ.”

- John Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church

Only on the grounds of “gratuitous mercy” can one stand. You can’t be good enough to merit acceptance nor can you be bad enough to not be accepted. Our justification is based solely on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to our behalf. This is why Paul says in Philippians 3, “…whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” If acceptance were by merit, the apostle Paul, above anyone else, would have reason to boast. “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;  as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:4-6)

For so long, Paul was the Pharisee of Pharisees—utterly blameless in his strivings. Surely, he tithed of all his possessions. Surely, he fasted. Surely, he kept the Sabbath day holy unto the LORD. But once his eyes were truly opened to spiritual truth, he was made void and empty of all confidence in his own works of righteousness. Indeed, he was convinced that the only ground of his acceptance with God was a righteousness that was wanting in himself and borrowed from Christ.

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

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