The Gospel is not our own personal happiness plan.

I love this interview with Scot McKnight. I haven't read McKnight's new book yet, but it's next on my list. I think he's put his finger on one of our key problems. Some snips from the interview:

The point is this is a story about Jesus and we’ve made it into our personal happiness plan. It’s like when we root for our favorite sports team. When I watch the Bears, I root for the Bears because I want them to do well, not because of something I will get out of it. To me some people watch the Bears only to see if their players are going to score fantasy points so their teams can win. That is what I think we have become. We have become fantasy Christians. We see ourselves vested in certain elements so that when those elements do well we feel good. We don’t care about what’s going on in the pages of the Bible except to the degree that it satisfies what we want to get out of the Bible.

Simply Jesus

I've started reading N. T. Wright's Simply Jesus.  I'm into the third chapter, and loving it.

You know, it's really kind of interesting how many books are being written with the avowed purpose of refocusing on Jesus, correcting a trend, in other words, toward focusing on other things and relegating Jesus Christ to the periphery.

There was Jared Wilson's book, You're Jesus is too Safe, and Frank Viola and Len Sweet's The Jesus Manifesto, and more recently Tullian Tchividjian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything.  I'm sure there have been others, but taken together they represent a distinct trend.  Almost a movement!

Speaking of books, the next in my queue is The King Jesus Gospel, by Scot McKnight.  It's been my personal project to read the NT for a deeper understanding of what is meant by that term, "the Gospel."  McKnight has been investigating that same matter, and his conclusion is that we've been so focused on one aspect of the Gospel (individual salvation) that we have done the broader picture is a distinct disservice.

Now back to the matter of re-focusing on Jesus. I think that Jesus is the good news; he embodies it. So you can't go far wrong concerning the Gospel--and you won't over-simplify it--if you begin with Jesus and keep the focus there.

So anyway, back to Simply Jesus.  Here's a clip from the introduction:

Jesus—the Jesus we might discover if we really looked, is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we had ever imagined. We have successfully managed to hide behind other questions and to avoid the huge, world-shaking challenge of Jesus’s central claim and achievement. It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself.

That's good stuff.  I've been struck, in my reading of the Gospels, at how absolutely strange Jesus often seems.  Sure, he's fully human and all that, but he talks like no man has ever talked.  He says things like, "How long am I to bear with this faithless generation?" Those are the words of a man who has come from elsewhere, is a stranger in this world, and is eager to get back home.  Nobody is a stranger in this world like Jesus was.

Well, he was different, this Jesus.  And I'm thankful for this movement to re-focus on the Jesus going on in the church today, and it's something I want to be a part of. It's the most exciting thing going. Either the church is about the indwelling Jesus (for real) or it is nothing more than playing the religious community game.

Re-focusing Fandango

You know, I'm going to try to refocus Fandango on the Gospel, because that's the only thing that really jazzes me anyway.

I'm not much of a blogger these days.  Just figuring out a workflow will be a challenge, but what I hope to do is get two or three posts in per week.  Posts will generally be short and probably often merely link to what other bloggers are saying about, yeah, the Gospel.

That's it.

Along those lines, have you seen Nate's latest?  Nate has just read Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.  I like his comments.  Well, I generally like Nate's blogging a lot.  I'm one of his keenest followers.

The McKnight book looks really interesting.  I think the dude's right on.  The Gospel is not primarily about my opportunity to make a decision for Christ, saving me from my sin.  It is that, but so much more.  C. S. Mann's commentary on Mark states it this way:

The Gospel . . . is the message that God's righteous purposes for Israel have reached both goal and climax in and through the ministry and person of Jesus; the Gospel is the assertion that in and through that ministry and person of Jesus, viewed as messiah and harbinger of a New Age, the reign of God is declared to all people willing to submit to its demands.

You betcha. God is restoring his broken creation.  And in the end his creatures will once again reflect the glory of the creator.  This he does in and through Jesus, his life, his death, his conquest of death, his present work.

Nate's rather long rant is also really good.

God is the Gospel

Reading John Piper's God is the Gospel, which I downloaded to my Nookie (yes, that's what my disrespecting friends keep calling it).  Anyway, wow.  It looks like a really good book.  Here's a snip:

The critical question for our generation--and for every generation--is this: If you could have heaven,  with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there.

You can see where he's going with this.  If God himself is not the highest pleasure, the greatest gift, in your own mind, then you will seek your satisfaction in something else.  And Piper follows up with the following word for preachers:

And the question for Christian leaders is: Do we preach and teach and lead in such a way that people are prepared to hear that question [above] and answer with a resounding No?

Yeah, questions worth asking.  I'm going to try to come around here a little more often and share more from this book.  

From Christ Died for the Sins of Christians Too:

I used to tell my students at an evangelical Christian college that they had never heard real preaching, with the exception of a few sound evangelistic appeals. Their weekly diet in the congregation was often a moral exhortation to be like Jesus, or Paul, or Daniel, or some other super saint in the Bible. They were constantly peppered with the question, “What are you doing for Jesus?” The preaching was not, as it should have been, a proclamation of God’s grace to them because of the finished and atoning death of Christ-God’s grace for them as Christians. That emphasis is desperately needed. But the only way we can recover this message is by ceasing to read the Scriptures as a recipe book for Christian living, and instead find within the Scriptures Christ who died for us and who is the answer to our unchristian living. We must have that kind of renewal (a renewal, which not surprisingly, was important to the reformers, as well), and it can only come if we realize that the gospel is for Christians, too.

The Gospel is a Story

The Gospel is not just a series of facts to which we yield our assent but a dramatic narrative that re-plots our identity. - Michael Horton

So I'm reading and journaling through the Gospel of Mark slowly. Very slowly. I don't know how long I've been doing this, but I just finished chapter 1.

Here's something I'm beginning to realize. The gospel is, at least in one significant sense, a story. The gospel is not a set of theological propositions. The gospel may have many aspects, but any time you boil it down to mere theological propositions, it is no longer the gospel. The propositions may be important, they may be helpful, and they may be true and weighty, but they are not the gospel. They are, I would say (snidely), transliterations of the gospel into sem-speak. Most people I know who have been in seminary, training to be preachers, speak sem-speak. They act like they've got a fish on the line every time they open their mouth, but really it's just a textbook.

I'm not suggesting the gospel is only a story and nothing more. But the four documents in the NT that are specifically known as "Gospels" are narratives about who Jesus was and what he did and what he said. I'm not dismissing theological education at all, only suggesting that if Jesus thought sem-speak was the best way to communicate the riches of the gospel, well, that's how he would have talked.

But I was going to say, in the Gospel of Mark you run across this word gospel right away, in verse one, and you realize that Mark is calling the whole narrative, this story you are about to read, the gospel. Then again, you soon find out that Jesus, when he starts his ministry, is preaching something that he refers to as the gospel, and it's not the same as the story Mark is telling.

Jesus is announcing good news about the availability of the Kingdom of God. So that's the gospel too. A crazy announcement about the Kingdom of God. But it's an announcement that happens within the context of the story called "gospel," and it is an announcement that ramifies considerably as the story unfolds. In other words, all stories start somewhere, and that's where Jesus starts. It's his "point of entry" into something that will--at its center--have the words and deeds of Jesus. His story.

So you see we're back to a story again. A story about what Jesus did and said. And accomplished. What I'm trying to get away from as I read Mark is the tendency to separate each passage into a life-lesson or even a glorious message of encouragement, but to see it as a piece of the whole, which is a narrative. A story.

Now every part of this story has implications for life, and I'm not dismissing that, only sometimes I think we stray far and wide in the realm of "application," leaving the story behind. Some of the best preaching I've ever heard has been nothing more than a humble retelling of the gospel story.

And here's the clincher: I think when we leave the story behind, we leave the subject of the story behind. In a sense we leave reality behind, and go off into our own heads. We leave behind the living Jesus in favor of preaching-opportunities, injunctions, advice, corrective measures, critiques of "the world," imperatives, "Daily Bread" type encouragement, and a whole host of other things.

And we find ourselves sifting through all these derivative things, endlessly.

As for me, I'm just trying to "hear" the story again, fresh.

Tim Keller: "The Gospel is not advice."

Keller, in the second chapter of King's Cross, makes the point several times that the Gospel is not advice but news. He must feel it is necessary to make this point because our churches are so flooded with advice instead of news.

Two weeks ago I went to a church in which the preacher talked about removing the obstacles from our lives that keep us from serving in the church. In that same church, at the start of communion, as the ushers passed out the little quarter-swallows of grape juice and tiny flakes of “bread,” an elder of the church talked to us about how God had spoken to him during his quiet time about . . . the need to have a quiet time. The elder then tried earnestly to impress upon us the importance of having our own special quiet time each day. No one ever seemed to think that maybe communion might be precisely the time to stop thinking about what we should do, and start thinking at last about what Jesus has done for us. In other words, rather than talking about quiet times, actually being quiet.

What I mean to say is, we're flooded with advice. So far, my on-again/off-again search for a new church home has been pretty disappointing on this score. No news, lots of advice. Either it's we should defend the faith and return America to its Christian roots, or we should be more generous, or we should examine our lives to see if we are pleasing to God, or we should remove the obstacles to service because the church needs us, or . . . well, you get the pictures.

I have no mind to be a church basher or a professional critic, but I will say this. By and large, people in the church accept this sorry status quo because they like it that way. I get the feeling that if a church service was focused on the announcement that Jesus Christ is Lord of all creation, they would walk away feeling they haven't been helped or strengthened in any way. I have seen Christians move happily from one system of advice to another with great enthusiasm. Seven steps to this, four steps to that, now let's everybody do this, now that, and each new set of principles is of course most definitely “life-changing.” And they hop on each of these bandwagons without the slightest sense that there all this seems deeply divergent from the New Testament model of discipleship.

In an interesting article about accountability groups, Tullian Tchividjian says this:

Paul understood that Gospel-driven change is rooted in remembrance. What Paul did for the Colossians is what we all need our Christian brothers and sisters to do for us as well: remind me first of what’s been done, not what I must do.

Tullian also quotes Sinclair Ferguson:

Historically speaking, whenever the piety of a particular group is focused on OUR spirituality, that piety will eventually exhaust itself on its own resources. Only when our piety forgets about us and focuses on Jesus Christ will our piety be nourished by the ongoing resources the Spirit brings to us from the source of all true piety, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even the first disciples did not understand the this-changes-everything nature of the good news, and none foresaw the cross as anything but a horrible defeat and failure. To understand the nature of the victory Christ won on our behalf is at least one part of discipleship, and it is one task of the church to teach exactly that understanding and its implications for all of life.

[One book that might serve as a helpful reminder here: Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old Fashioned Way]

Saturday Morning Musings

From the Gospel of Luke:

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.” (Luke 13:10-21 ESV)

Note:

1. Jesus healed (in an instant) a person who had been afflicted for eighteen years by a crippling disability.
2. It was the kind of world where such an act might be minimalized, even objected too, by jealous and power-hungry men. 
3. Jesus, with but a few words, put the objectors to shame.
4. People rejoiced.

Now note this.  When Jesus healed the crippled woman, as momentous as that may have seemed, I think Jesus saw it as a mustard seed.  That is, what that act would germinate into was going to be bigger by far than one woman relieved of her terrible pain.

Similarly, the putting to shame of the religious police . . . a mustard seed.  Right away people are rejoicing.  Not only because of the healed woman, but because of the shamed religious busybodies.  

Think about this: when people gaze on Jesus, the rejoicing that follows is but the early signs of a great and spreading kingdom-tree in which many will be able to make their home.

Similarly, even so apparently prominent a deed as this, witnessed by many, from a world-perspective is quite unknown, like leaven in bread.  And yet it is bread that will one day feed millions.

What am I getting at? The thought that is stirring in me is that out kingdom-deeds are mostly (at least by any system of measure we are used to) small, local, even quite secret. On the one hand, the more we try to claim some leadership spotlight, the more we pine for "influence," the more in danger we are of becoming like the objectors. And on the other hand, why are we so dissatisfied with planting seeds? Why do we not trust in the leaven?

Sunday Meditation

Read through any three or four Psalms in one sitting, not so much looking for personal inspiration or encouragement, but simply to hear the voice of the Psalmist. He is surrounded by enemies. He is often confounded, because it seems at times that God--the God who parted the sea or made water pour from a rock--is no longer in control. Sometimes the Psalmist cries out for vengeance. Other times for mercy. His world is a world of conflict. It is a world enmeshed in debilitating confusion and complexity. The Psalmist is often quite desperate, and the only place to turn is toward God. In the midst of all his troubles, and despite his doubts, he always remembers and trusts in the promises of God.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness. (Psalm 17:15 ESV)

In his letter to the Ephesian church, the Apostle Paul says that the "eternal purpose" of God was realized in Christ Jesus, and that as a result we have "bold access" to God (Eph. 3:11-12). Or to put it another way, such access, "bold access" (i.e., "I shall behold your face in righteousness"), was the eternal purpose of God, and this purpose was realized (made real) in Christ Jesus. That is the Gospel in a nutshell.

I cannot read the Psalms apart from this knowledge. The knowledge, the understanding, that it is Christ who will someday fulfill all the longing of the Psalmist for order, justice, peace. For an end to tears, to hate, to doubt, and to trouble.

This longing, arising out of desperate circumstances, voiced by Psalmists, poets, and Blues singers through the ages, is the human condition, and to voice it is to say the most honest thing we can at times. For an example, listen:



But such expression is not the last word. It is an important beginning, but it is not all there is. Sometimes you feel lost and helpless, like a "motherless child," but then there is Jesus. He fulfills the eternal purpose of God. He is bread. He is new wine. He is the promise of a family. In the midst of all the sheer confusion he gets our attention by saying outrageous things like this:

Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. (John 14:19 ESV)

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:51 ESV)

Or this:

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1-8 ESV)

That is the most powerful "nevertheless" in the English language. God will give justice. God will put right. God is better by far than any corrupt judge, and furthermore, in Christ Jesus he has fulfilled his purpose to give us bold access.

How's that? Because in Christ God's justice was "speedily" fulfilled. That work is finished. You, believer, have been delivered from wrath, "speedily," at the Cross. What is left but to go to Him, the righteous judge, boldly and in thanks? This is the Gospel of Christ.

And yet, nevertheless, how bold will he find us when he comes? Or will he find us still trying to earn bold access, dividing our trust between Christ (a little) and our own strategies (a little more than a little).

What can be greater than "bold access" to God? No one can bar us from that door. No one can stand against that access, for God has set aside everything that once blocked the way (our sin), doing so by the blood of Jesus, and confirming his triumph by his resurrection life. "Because I live, you too shall live."

As Nate says so well here, and Tullian here, the Gospel is not some check-off on a sort of eternal W-4 form. It is meant to be grasped, ingested, and lived. Because the world is in deep trouble without it.

Quotatious

"Just what does it take to get into heaven anyway? According to one author, the majority of Protestants and evangelicals believe that you get to heaven by being good.... What else would we expect after a generation of churches teaching how to raise drug–free kids, how to have better marriages, how to stay out of debt, how to vote—everything but the Gospel. If our spiritual lives were Jesus-shaped instead of church-shaped, maybe we would realize that the only thing that qualifies us for heaven is death and resurrection. Try preaching that Sunday after Sunday and see how quickly you can shrink your church." Jeff Dunn at Internet Monk

And another...

Recovering the Real Lost Gospel, by Darrell Bock [HT: Scot McKnight]

More Ruminating on Hebrews 2

At Hebrews 2:1 we find the first imperative of the letter.

Therefore, pay closer attention to what you've heard, lest you drift away from it.

Now, you've probably heard or read that in the Bible the imperatives (what we should do) always follow from indicatives (about God and what God has done). In this case, there are indicatives about Jesus, stated just prior to this passage, from which follow this imperative. In chapter one the author shows (indicates) the supremacy of Christ. Christ is enthroned on high. Christ is eternal. Christ is greater than angels. And then comes the "therefore":

pay closer attention to what you've heard.

Otherwise:

you might drift away.

I like to ask the simple questions when I read the Scriptures. Like: what does he mean by "what we've heard"? And: how is it we can drift away from what we've heard?

Answer to the first question (methinks): the message we heard about Jesus. It is uniquely important.

Answer to the second question: I'm not sure. But I'm put in mind of something Jesus said (through the apostle John) to the church at Sardis(in The Revelation):

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. (Revelation 3:1-3 ESV)

Note again, the indicative (about Jesus) comes first (as in all the letters to the seven churches), and then the imperative. The imperative here is essentially the same as in Hebrews:

Remember, then, what you received and heard.

See? As in the Letter to the Hebrews, behavior . . . walking the walk . . . begins with remembering a message, and not drifting away from that message. The whole Bible unpacks that message for us, but at it's core there stands One who holds stars in the palm of His hand. Imagine that.

Ruminating on Scripture: Hebrews 2

So I've been reading The Letter to the Hebrews lately. Well, the first few chapters, over and over. Sometimes, when you read through something, you just know you're not getting everything you could out of the passage. You're not seeing the stitches on the ball, as it were.

Me, I'm a little rusty when it comes to Bible reading. I know I'm not supposed to admit this, but I haven't been "in the Word" lately. Since it's the richest reading material I know, that just shouldn't be. My bad.

So I've begun reading Hebrews. I figure I'll just keep reading the first few chapters until I get it. Of course the first chapter of Hebrews amounts to an over-the-top hymn of praise for Jesus. I'm not going to repeat all that, because you can read it yourself, and it's pretty straightforward. Where the question comes in for me is at the start of chapter two:

Therefore [i.e., given everything he's just said about Jesus] we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. (Hebrews 2:1-4 ESV)

When I read this, I get that tingly feeling like when I read a wonderful poem, or hear a beautiful song. The author seems to be opening the door on something spacious and beautiful. He calls it, "so great a salvation."

That phrase, those four words, kind of stir my blood. What is he talking about there? Now, I'm a Christian, and I can tell you what "salvation" means, but just now I want to know what it means in the context of the letter in hand, the letter to the Hebrews. What does the author of this letter mean by "salvation"?

One thing I see in the passage above is that neglecting this great salvation is set against paying close attention to what we've heard. We've heard something, but it's something we need to pay close attention to, for to neglect it, to pay no attention, or to live as if we'd never heard it, would be to neglect "so great a salvation." Do you see? Whatever salvation means, it is very closely associated with "what we have heard."

You might think that's a pretty routine insight, but it does something for me. There is something I've heard, and having heard it, it won my heart. It affected me. But there's also a possibility, perhaps a strong tendency, to forget what I've heard, or to pay less attention to it, or to neglect it. That would be to neglect my salvation.

There's something to chew on here. A message can save you. But a message can also go unheeded. In this context, the message is clearly about Jesus, or perhaps from Jesus. I wonder how it is we who have once paid great heed to that message, can soon enough come to a place where a friend might have to say, you'd better stop neglecting that message, the one you once heeded so well. Stop neglecting your salvation.

I'm still not sure I fully understand this, but I think the passage to follow will surely help. However, that's for another ruminative post.

Contraconditional Love

David Powlinson:

The Gospel is better than unconditional love. The Gospel says, “God accepts you just as Christ is. God has ‘contraconditional’ love for you.” Christ bears the curse you deserve. Christ is fully pleasing to the Father and gives you His own perfect goodness. Christ reigns in power, making you the Father’s child and coming close to you to begin to change what is unacceptable to God about you. God never accepts me “as I am.” He accepts me “as I am in Jesus Christ.” The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God’s love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul’s lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people—what the Bible calls “fear of the Lord” and “faith”—to look outside themselves.

Salvation from futile thoughts and darkened hearts

In the second part of Romans 1, beginning at verse 18, Paul paints a picture a poisoned-by-sin humanity sliding inevitably (it would seem) toward death. It's the kind of passage that tends to be discreetly overlooked in the typical Evangelical preaching cycle.

I can understand that. It's not a pretty picture, and one might even suggest it is too bleak, too unremitting. But Paul is diagnosing a condition that has been brought on by the rejection of God. Rejecting his truth, they turn to their own hearts and minds for understanding. But here's the problem: their thoughts are "futile," and their hearts are "darkened." In this condition they pursue their own way, but it all leads (as Paul will note in a later chapter) to death. Paul sums up the condition in verse 32 here, at the end of a long litany of sin.  The people are:

foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Paul's word for all this is "unrighteousness," and my word for it, drawing from a theme I find running throughout Romans, is futility. It leads to death. It produces no life, no harvest, no good fruit. Without the merciful intervention of the rejected God, it will end in justified judgement and wrath from that same God.

You can't understand salvation Biblically if you don't get the seriousness of humanity's situation. But it is not a hopeless situation. By way of contrast, look at what Paul says in the first half of the chapter about the gospel:

• He says that the gospel's purpose is to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of the name of Jesus, everywhere in the world (v.5)
• He says that those who belong to Jesus are called to be saints (v.7)
• He  expects that the preaching of the gospel in Rome will reap a harvest (v.13)
• He says that the gospel is the power of salvation for those who believe (v.16)
• And he says that in the gospel is revealed the righteousness of God (v.17)

Note the contrast between unrighteousness and futility, on the one hand, and faith in the gospel and a harvest of righteousness on the other.  From the former one would need to be saved (since "futility" implies you can't save yourself), and salvation, Paul says, is for those who believe the gospel.  The end result, the fruit, is righteousness, or as Paul says, "the obedience of faith."

So the key to this transformation from unrighteousness to righteousness, for Paul, is the preaching of the gospel, and the reception and believing of the gospel by those who hear it.  And it is clearly a continual need, even after the initial motion of believing, for does not Paul desire to reap of harvest among the Roman believers by preaching the gospel to them?  The obedience of faith is, apparently, something one grows toward, and the growth is engendered (watered?) by the continued reception of and trusting in the gospel.  By this means does growth in godliness continue.

The Gospel in Romans 1

So I'm going to be ensconced in Romans 1 all month. I don't know how frequently I'll blog about it, but pretty often I suspect. This is not a methodical dissection, but day-by-day listening to Paul and considering his words.

The greeting in Romans 1 is very rich. I've read this chapter four or five times in the last few days and a couple of things keep jumping out at me. First, Paul is hanging everything on the gospel. He lives for it, because he believes that through it the world will be transformed.

And second, apart from the gospel, we have sin leading to death, a portrait not only of the deeply entrenched sinfulness of our hearts, but of futility. When I read through the whole letter a couple of days ago I saw this theme recurring: on the one hand, talk of fruitfulness and harvest, on the other, futility and death. Very stark contrasts.

We see that contrast in chapter 1. More on this later, I suspect, but for now I just want to collect some of what Paul says about the gospel here.

• Paul is "set apart for the gospel" (v.1)
• the gospel was "promised in the holy Scriptures" (v.2)
• the gospel concerns God's son, "Jesus Christ our Lord" (v.3,4)
• Paul serves God "in the gospel of his Son" (v.9)
• Paul is eager to preach the gospel to the Christians in Rome (v.15)
• the gospel is "the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes" (v.16)
• in the gospel "the righteousness of God is revealed" (v.17)

That's it for this morning. There's pleny here to keep us busy all month!

The Gospel Drama

Here are a couple of things I want to keep in mind as I read through Romans.

1. Octavius Winslow: "Search the Scriptures, my reader, with a view of seeing and knowing more of your Redeemer, compared with whom nothing else is worth knowing or making known."  [Thanks to the Foolish Galatian for this quote.] To know more of my Redeemer, then, is my highest priority.
2. Michael Horton defines the Gospel as the good news that "God has fulfilled his promise to the patriarchs and prophets in his son's death and resurrection." This is the epic drama that lies behind all correct doctrinal teaching, all true worship, all true living by faith and doing of justice and mercy, etc. [Thanks to Tim Chester for this one.]

The Gospel, then, is a story, a drama, with God as the prime mover, revealing the righteousness of God (in fact, the only righteousness in the universe) through the ministry, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus. On our side, it is the drama of transformation, a kind of travail as in childbirth, as something glorious is brought forth from something fallen and paltry and ridden with sin. As the ESV Study Bible puts it:

[Paul's gospel] included not just a call to initial saving faith but Paul's entire message about Jesus Christ and how Christ's saving activity transforms all of life and all of history.

The gospel, again, is this story, this unfolding drama. The drama of the Christian life is the receiving of this good news, trusting it, and the transformation of life that results. This is the drama of God played out in the life of man, individually and collectively.

This transformation, clearly, is from unrighteousness to righteousness, and it is witnessed in the lives of the faithful. Faith then is our part in the drama. The unrighteous, having been served by God in Christ, accept and receive this gift, and this accepting and receiving, this faith, plays out in the midst of a perversely skewed creation: that is our part, our role, in the great drama. Like all drama, it is not without conflict, set-backs, and even tragedy. But in the midst of it all, the fact of what God has done remains unshakable. The news is good, indeed. He has entered into our situation, and accomplished what no other could. With excellent reason then Paul, as an apostle of God in Christ, can declare to the Romans, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Fearfully Made, and Fearfully Marred

A friend of mine had this as her recent "status update":

I was humbled and asked myself why Holiness would choose dirt, why Royalty would choose poverty, why the Great Provider would choose lack, and ultimately, why God would choose my ugly heart as His dwelling place.

Then one of her friends responded:

Because it's beautiful just like you you are fearfully and wonderfully made..don't you eva forget it girl

I don't know the commenter and don't want to intrude on a FB conversation with theological scolding or something, but I've got to say, God did not choose to dwell in my friend's heart because she is fearfully and wonderfully made. If so, since we are all fearfully and wonderfully made from the start, there would have never been a problem with his living in us. And there would never have been a need for the cross.

Ah well, this is typical "encouragement" in the Christian world. To tell people how wonderful they are. On a perhaps somewhat related note, David Wayne has a thoughtful post called Words of Comfort for the Dying. In this post David is recounting a dialog from a book called Hammer of God. A man on his death bed, who has spent his life trying to cultivate a clean heart before God, is still plagued by the memory of his sin. David writes,

Johannes was trying to cultivate a right heart, a clean heart, before God, but that this is a work. This is a subtle but important point to make especially given the fact that it is common in our day to exhort one another to cultivate a clean "heart" before God. But even this is detour as the emphasis is on our work of cultivation, and it causes us to trust in a clean heart as the basis of our acceptance before God, rather than trusting in Christ.

But Johannes has a friend, Katrina, who is willing to share the Gospel truth with the dying man. Johannes asks her:

"But why, then, have I not received a clean heart?"
"That you might learn to love Jesus," said the woman as calmly as before.

My friend's status update demonstrated an understanding of all this, but her friend rushing in to "encourage" her with talk of how wonderful she is misses the crucial point. Does the dying man need to be told how wonderful he is, or does he need to be told that while he was a sinner, and in the full knowledge of his sin, Christ died for him. How much better than that can encouragement get?

Last comment. Isn't this the problem that the people of God face and have always faced: the seeking of an alternative message that will downplay the supposed "negativity" of the Gospel. But we are all dying men and women, and we need a real reason for hope, not falsely encouraging fluff. Positive thinking will no longer do.

And that's the real reason Christmas is a joyous day. Happy Christmas!

This one rocks, in a Gospel-centered kind of way...

Tulian Tchividjian on What is a Gospel-centered Church?

The Central Strategy in the Fight for Joy

From When I Don't Desire God (p. 91), by John Piper:

Hearing the word of the cross, and preaching it to ourselves, is the central strategy for sinners in the fight for joy. Nothing works without this. Here is where we start. And here is where we stay. We never outgrow the gospel. Here we see the glory of Christ more clearly than anywhere else. Indeed the gospel is "the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God" (2 Cor. 4:4). If seeing Christ is the key to savoring Christ--and it is!--then here is where we must linger. The word of the cross is the revelation of the glory of Christ.