The Gospel in Ten Words (2 page)

The tragedy is that
most people in this situation know something is wrong but they think the fault
lies with themselves. After all, they are constantly hearing they are not
working hard enough. They are told they have got to pray more, give more, fast
more, bear more fruit, and while you’re at it, how about showing a little more
enthusiasm for our latest program? Some Christians are nearly sweating blood
for Jesus, and all it’s doing is making them sick and tired.

If this is you, the problem is not your effort or desire, it’s
your gospel. It’s contaminated. You’re drinking from a poisoned well, and it’s
making you ill.

The gospel is good news. This is what the word “gospel” literally
means:
good news.
By definition, any gospel that leaves you fearful of
an angry and judgmental God is no gospel at all. It is not good news. Any
gospel that leaves you insecure and uncertain, forever wondering,
Am I
accepted? Am I forgiven?
is not good news. Any gospel that demands you sign
up for a lifetime of progressive sanctification and yet offers no guarantee
that you will ever make it, is not good news. Any gospel that forces cripples
to jump through hoops of religious performance is no gospel at all.

The number one reason why many Christians are joyless and tired is
because they have never heard the gospel. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s
true
—
the
gospel is almost never preached. Visit any church or switch on the Christian TV
channel and chances are you will hear anything and everything
but
the
undiluted gospel of the kingdom. Don’t blame the preachers. Many of them are
doing the best they can, but they can’t give what they haven’t got, and they
can’t preach what they haven’t heard.

I know of what I speak. I led a church for many years, and every
Easter, Christmas, and special invite Sunday I preached the gospel without even
knowing what it was. Or rather, I preached what I thought was the gospel but
was actually an inferior imitation. My motives were pure, and I had a genuine
desire to save the lost, but I was often puzzled why the few people I led to
the Lord weren’t more joyful. They were earnest (like me), but they weren’t
exactly bouncing off the ceilings with great joy. Perhaps the angel was wrong
about that.

I now realize I was selling a watered-down version of the gospel.
I was like the inheritance lawyer handing out windfalls then asking for the
money back in taxes and fees. I sold the grace of God on credit. “Buy now, pay
later. Sign up today
,
the first month’s free. But once you’ve settled in we need to talk
about personal responsibility, discipleship, and the true cost of following
Jesus.” I had the right jargon but the wrong theology. It was love with a hook
and grace with a price tag.

What madness I preached.

What is
the gospel? When asked this question people typically respond with a variety of
answers. “The gospel is the word of God
—
it’s the scriptures.” “It’s the
story of the Savior as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” “It’s the
red-letter teachings of Jesus.” “It’s God’s holy law.” “It’s an invitation to
turn from sin and escape hell.” “It’s something to believe in no matter what.”
Although these are common responses, none of them is the gospel.

The scriptures are the gospel truth but they are not
the
gospel
.
The Bible contains the good news but it also contains much that is not the
good news. Unless you know how to tell the difference you’re going to be
confused when you read it.

The accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are called gospels
but they are not
the
gospel. Collectively, these four books contain more
than 60,000 words but, as we shall see, the gospel can be summarized in a
single sentence, even just a word.

The red letters of Jesus are not the gospel.
Everything Jesus said
was good but not everything he said was good news. Neither was it all meant for
you. Jesus preached the law to those who lived under the law on the far side of
the cross. We are not under the law but grace (Romans 6:14). We are living
under a completely different covenant to the Jews of Jesus’ day. Words meant
for them are not necessarily meant for you.

The law is not the gospel. The law is good and has its proper
purpose but it is bad news not good news. The purpose of the law is to reveal
sin and condemn the self-righteous. The bad news of the law silences every
mouth and reveals our need for a Savior. The law diagnoses the problem but does
nothing to treat it.

The exhortation to “turn from sin” is not the good news. It is not
even news. It is an ancient works-oriented message that will leave you
sin-focused and introspective. It is the message of Moses and John the Baptist.
It is the message of most of the Old Testament. It is not the gospel of grace
we find in the New Testament epistles.

Nor is the good news defined as the absence of bad news. Some
evangelists think scaring the hell out of people is a good way to win disciples
for Jesus, but fear is an appalling basis for any relationship. Jesus is not
interested in shotgun weddings. Paul, the greatest church planter in the Bible,
preached the gospel without ever mentioning hell by name.

Finally, the gospel is not an article of faith. It is not
something that magically springs to life if you believe in it hard enough. It
is not the fruit of wishful thinking. Neither is it prophecy. It is not
something that will only become real in the future.

The good news is not the good book,
the good law, or the good words of the
good Teacher. Neither is it good advice, good instruction, or good wishes. The
good news is
news
—it is the announcement of the glad tidings of a happy
God. The gospel is today’s news, and it is unquestionably good.

The gospel is the
glad and merry news that God is good, he loves you, and he will happily give up
everything he has so he can have you. Contrary to popular belief, God is not
mad at you. He is not even in a bad mood. The good news declares that God is
happy, he is for you, and he wants to share his life with you forever
.
[2]

Jesus is proof of this. The veracity of the gospel is evidenced in
his death and resurrection. On the cross God showed that he loved us while we
were sinners and that he would rather die than live without us. And through the
resurrection he proved that nothing
—
not even death
—
can
separate us from the love that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Through
our representative Jesus our heavenly Father has joined himself to us,
promising never to leave nor forsake us. We stand secure, not on our feeble promises
to him, but on his unconditional and unbreakable promises to us.

And that’s it: God loves you and wants to be with you. It’s simple
but it’s the biggest truth in the universe. We will spend eternity discovering
in a billion different ways the limitless expressions of his unending love.
Indeed, this is what we were made for
—
to receive and respond to his
divine love. This is the fundamental law of our existence and the reason for
our being. This is the best news you ever heard.

The gospel
is so simple that it’s hard for our grown-up minds to grasp.
It can’t be
that good. There must be a catch.
Before I understood the simplicity of the
gospel, my mind was
like
an ashtray—full of “buts.”
God
loves you but … Jesus died for you but …
 As I understood it,
God’s gifts always come with a price tag. Only they don’t. They can’t. Don’t
you see? Grace must be free or it’s not grace. Don’t let anyone charge you for
what God has freely given.

The
gospel that Jesus preached begins like this: “For God so loved that he gave …”
The gospel is first and foremost a declaration of love backed up with a gift.
It’s the announcement of a love-gift and the gift is Jesus. Right here is where
many miss it. They take the greatest gift in the universe, put it inside a
little box called “my salvation,” and then put that box in the cupboard of
their past.

“The
gospel? Oh that’s for sinners. I’ve heard it. I’m saved. I have no further use
for it.”

The
angel would disagree with you. The angel said the gospel is for all people,
saint and sinner alike. Salvation is one of the many benefits of the gospel,
but there is more to this gift than salvation. Jesus is not only the Savior, he
is
God with us.
Our minds can barely begin to unpack the significance of
this revelation.
God is with us
. He is not up there but down here. He is
not against us but for us. If he has already given us his Son, what will he
withhold from us? Wow! This is Grand Canyon theology. This is the gospel that
takes your breath away leaving you speechless in marveling adoration.
He
will never leave or abandon us.
What relief! What peace! This is green
pastures beside still waters. This is home. This is our rest.

The
gospel is bigger and better than you think. The goodness of the good news is
directly proportional to the goodness of God and the newsiness of the good news
is proportional to the level of revelation we have about him. Since God is
infinitely good and infinitely big, and since there is always more for us to
discover about him, there is always more to the good news than we can ever
think or imagine. The gospel is simple but it gets bigger and better on closer
examination until your mind is fried and you are floored with gratitude at the
loving-kindness of a good God.

What is
the gospel? It is the revelation of God’s love through Jesus Christ. Whatever
your need, your answer is found in Christ alone. He is the Love who loves us
and the Grace who helps us in our time of need. If you are a sinner in need of
redemption, see Jesus. If you are a saint struggling with sin, see Jesus. If
you are oppressed by poverty, you don’t need a sermon outlining seven steps to
prosperity
—
you need
a revelation of Jesus, who became poor for our sakes so that we might be rich (2
Corinthians
8:9). If you are facing a storm and don’t know the way
forward, you need a revelation of the One who silenced the tempest with a word.
If you are looking for a solution to one of the world’s many problems, Jesus
has it.
Since Jesus is the author of life, he is the first and last word
on any and every subject.

When I started pastoring I saw needs everywhere, and I tailored my
preaching to suit. If there was sin in the camp I preached on repentance and
why you should do it. Then I preached on holiness and how to attain it. I was a
Whack-A-Mole preacher. Whenever a problem popped up, I would thump it with my
Bible. Foolishly, I thought my homiletic skills combined with my profound
understanding of scripture would solve everyone’s problems. In truth, it was a
recipe for powerless preaching, carnal Christianity, and boring church. (If you
were there, forgive me.)

Then I discovered a profound truth. You can know the Bible from
cover to cover and not know the gospel. Read the written word through any lens
other than the Living Word and you’ll end up with a counterfeit gospel and
lifeless religion. When the scales fell from my eyes, my first reaction was
shock
—
how had I
missed this?
—
followed
by unbridled joy
—
God,
you’re even better than I thought!
I began to see Jesus on every
single page of my Bible.
It’s all about him!
I burned all my sermon
notes and started again. I began to preach Jesus and nothing else. In this
regard I was channeling Spurgeon who said this in 1891:

I
sometimes wonder that you do not get tired of my preaching, because I do
nothing but hammer away on this one nail.
I have driven it in up to the head, and I
have gone round to the other side to clinch it; but still I keep at it.
With me it is, year after year, “None but Jesus! None but
Jesus!” Oh, you great saints, if you have outgrown the need of a sinner’s trust
in the Lord Jesus, you have outgrown your sins, but you have also outgrown your
grace, and your saintship has ruined you.
[3]

I
was saved for thirty-four years before I began to see the gospel in all its liberating
glory. I was well on my way to becoming a ruined saint, encaged by my own and
other people’s expectations. But the windows of my soul were opened, and I
breathed again the fresh air of heaven. I will never go back into that cage.

The gospel is good
news for the prisoner, both saved and unsaved. If you are feeling the
deadweight yoke of sin or huffing-puffing piety, the gospel will set you free.
Just like that. There is power in the gospel like you cannot imagine. I’ve seen
decades-old burdens and ancient wounds broken in a moment. I’ve seen dead
sinners raised to new life and decrepit saints given fresh legs. It’s like the
Holy Spirit is waiting for us to say “Yes” to grace and when we do,
Pow!
—freedom
comes and we are changed.

In
contrast with the dead religion of man, the living gospel of grace is totally
supernatural.

But
here’s the important part. The one thing that can stop you from walking in the
love and grace of God
is
your own dismissive incredulity and unbelief. I am not talking about atheism;
unbelief comes in subtler shades. In the church unbelief is manifested in the
faithless language of debt and obligation. It’s asking God to do what he’s
already done. It’s trying to impersonate Jesus. It’s bringing sacrifices and offerings
he has not asked for.

This is not the way you receive a gift.

The
gospel is true whether you believe it or not, but it won’t do you any good
unless you believe it. No one is going to force you to leave the jungle. The
sole condition for receiving God’s gift of grace is you have to want it. The
sinner must drop his guns and the saint must put down her offerings so that
both may come with empty hands and faith-filled hearts to the table of his blessings.

The
only thing that can render worthless the exceeding riches of God’s grace is
unbelief. Unbelief prays, “God, please do this, and that, and the other thing,”
but faith looks to the finished work of the cross and says, “Lord, you have
done it all.” Unbelief gives—“Lord, look at what I’ve done/built/brought for
you”—but faith receives—“Look at what you have done for us.” Unbelief toils and
accomplishes nothing; faith understands that everything comes to us by grace
for free. Unbelief tries but faith trusts.