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"What is the Gospel?"
By Pastor Matt Campbell
A Gospel Living Meditation based on Mark Dever’s book The Gospel and Personal Evangelism.
[All quotations are from the chapter “What is the Gospel?” (emphasis added).]
As we continue to strive together toward creating an atmosphere of evangelism among the people of Colonial we have a significant step to make together today. One of the admonitions that Pastor Matt Kliewer gave us last week was to intentionally plan to "Stop Not Evangelizing." This step today will begin to help us all to "Stop Not Evangelizing" in a most significant way.
Today we need to ask and answer the question "What is the Gospel?"
Not "What does the gospel mean to you?" or "what does the gospel mean to me," but simply "What is the gospel?"
Answering this question may seem easy, simple, and common sense for many of you. But this first step is of utmost importance as seek to create an atmosphere of evangelism, because the way you answer this question will directly influence your "success" in your personal evangelism.
The gospel is good news. But what exactly is the good news?
It may surprise some of you that when people talk about the gospel, they may have a very different definition of it than you. The real story of the gospel, the real message of the gospel has been lost. The "gospel" that permeates our culture and even many churches is a powerless gospel for it is not the gospel at all.
So what is the gospel? What is the good news?
Has an answer formulated in your mind?
Is the good news of the gospel that if I go to church I will be okay, and you can be okay too?
Is the gospel the true and simple fact that God is love?
Is the good news that Jesus is or wants to be your friend?
Is the gospel story that you should live rightly: love your wife, honor your husband, be pure, work hard, keep the golden rule, obey the ten commandments, give to charities and your church, pray, read your bible, and serve at the rescue mission?
"As startling as this may be to those who think this way, the biblical gospel is not fundamentally about our love or our power. To be a Christian is not merely to live in love, or live by the power of positive thinking, or to do anything that we can do ourselves. The gospel calls for a more radical response than any of these things allow for. The gospel is not simply an additive that comes to make our already good lives better. No! The gospel is a message of wonderful good news that comes to those who realize their just desperation before God."
The gospel is good news to those who realize that they really are not okay. They realize they have a serious problem called sin that has permeated everything in their lives. They are cursed by it, and are so messed up by it that they actually need to be given a new life.
The gospel is good news to those who realize that God in his righteous love is like a father who deeply loves his son but must punish him for his reckless disobedience.
The gospel is good news to those who realize that God came in the flesh not simply to be their friend and to forgive and forget their sin, but Jesus came in flesh with the intention of dying on the cross for their sin. Jesus Christ is not simply our friend; he is our redeemer and reconciler so that we can have peace with God.
And what is the response by someone who comes to these realizations about themselves and about God:
"God calls us to repent of our sins and to rely on Christ alone. . . . The response to this [good] news is believing and repenting. . . . Real Christianity is . . . . in some radical sense, an about-face. . . . We change the way we act, because we change what we believe."
So what is the gospel? What is the good news that we are suppose to evangelize our neighborhoods with?
Mark Dever is his book that we are considering summarizes it like this:
"The good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in his image to know him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. In his great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law [of God] and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust in him. [Jesus] rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ's sacrifice and that God's wrath against us had been exhausted. [God] now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God. Now that's good news!"
But here is where you as an individual need to make the step for yourself. Here is where we all begin to move towards creating an atmosphere of evangelism here at Colonial. You need to answer the question, "What is the Gospel?" You need to think through the good news of the story of Christ and put it into your own words. You need to think about it and how this good news has changed your life. You need to talk about it. You need to rejoice together by rehearsing the good news of the gospel in your life. You need to once again let the good news of the gospel permeate your mind. You need to create a gospel atmosphere in your life.
Practically speaking this is how you create a gospel atmosphere in your own life:
Think the gospel, sing the gospel, write the gospel, memorize the gospel, speak the gospel, email the gospel, Facebook the gospel, Twitter the gospel, blog the gospel, live the gospel, text the gospel, read the gospel, meditate on the gospel, give the gospel, pray the gospel, know the gospel . . . . Tell your story through the gospel.
As we allow the grace of God to work in our lives to create this gospel atmosphere, Jesus Christ will be lifted up. For we will remember our own helplessness in sin; we will remember the pain and bondage that Jesus delivered us from; we will remember that the gospel is not about us, but we are simply messengers of the greatest news ever told. Let us strive together to create a gospel atmosphere among us, to rightly understand and communicate the gospel, so that Jesus Christ may be highly exalted.
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