Letter 7/8

July 8, 2010
Pastor Steve Mathewson
  

I keep hearing something that greatly encourages me about our church! What I keep hearing is people talking about the gospel. I hear people talk about it in our Adult Bridge groups, thanks to the fine lessons that Rick Schwartz, our pastoral intern, has been teaching. I hear our teens talking about it. A couple nights ago, four of our teens taught a lesson on what the gospel is. I heard one of our musicians talk recently about how important it is to make sure that the songs we sing on Sunday communicate the gospel. So what’s the big deal?

Let me suggest that reviewing and discussing and proclaiming the gospel is usually underrated! The gospel is the good news that God has provided salvation for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So why review, discuss, and proclaim what we’ve heard about and know already? Bob Kauflin, the author of Worship Matters, says: “Because we forget. We lose track of who God is and what he’s done.”

So, we must be clear on the gospel and regularly review what it is and how we can communicate it clearly to the world around us. The place to start is the Apostle Paul’s summary in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. If I am reading Paul correctly, then there are two key elements to the gospel or “good news” of Jesus Christ. The first is that “Christ died for our sins,” and the second is that “he was raised on the third day.” Each one of these elements happened “according to the Scriptures” and was witnessed in history. Jesus’ burial is the witness to his death. The number of people who saw Jesus after his resurrection is the witness to that great event.

How, then, do you present this good news to someone outside the faith? A fine little book by Greg Gilbert – What is the Gospel? – offers a fine approach based on Romans 1-4. I like Gilbert’s approach because it is biblical, simple, thorough, and memorable! He suggests building your presentation of the gospel around four words: God, man, Christ, and response.

• GOD is the righteous Creator to whom all people are accountable.
• MAN’s problem is rebellion against God who is obligated to punish the guilty.
• CHRIST died for our sins and was raised to give us a right standing before God!
• Our RESPONSE to receive this salvation is repentance and faith in Christ.

To clarify, repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. Repentance is turning away from sin. “Even if repentance doesn’t mean an immediate end to our sinning, it does mean that we will no longer live at peace with our sin” (Gilbert, 81). Faith, or belief, is trust or reliance. 

A similar way to outline our presentation of the gospel is to use the categories of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. I have shared this approach with you before, and it’s the main one I like to use. It follows the Bible’s story line. The first three categories line up with “God-Man-Christ” in Gilbert’s outline. Then, I add Restoration to talk about how the story of the Bible ends – how our salvation results in a transformed life in the new heaven and earth. Finally, I talk about how we access this salvation provided by Christ’s death and resurrection. This is Gilbert’s “Response” category.

I look forward to our worship service this Sunday when we can celebrate the gospel and praise the God whose love and grace prompted him to create it! We’ll continue our study of James with a message from James 3:1-18 on “Controlling the Most Dangerous Animal in the World.” It is an appropriate response to the gospel! Let’s be more passionate about the gospel than we are about politics, sports (will LeBron James play basketball in Chicago next year?), the stock market, or our summer vacation plans. I’ll see you on Sunday!