Tiffany and I had a really cool email conversation about the question, "What is the Gospel?" Instead of simply sharing with you what we came to, I thought it might be more interesting to open up that question to the WitBrev community at large and see what came together. No one is expecting anyone else to have the answer to this question perfectly ironed out, but I would be interested in hearing all of your working definitions. So:
What is the Gospel?
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10 comments:
Dictionary.com says
Gospel - the teachings of Jesus and the apostles; the Christian revelation.
I really don't know what you're trying to hint at... or what kind of response you want. But with such a weird question without a frame of reference, it sounds pretty pretentious.
the gospel says 'come just as you are'. it is the message of the kingdom of heaven. the gospel is anything but pretense to the meek, the broken, the poor in spirit. rather it is their hope, their saving grace, that all is not as it should be in this world but they live for another.
and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Matt-
But how do you articulate the Christian revelation?
My roommate says that your use of Dictionary.com is pretentious.
i'm cabe's roommate and i approve of this message.
(paid for by people who back up cabe's last comment and affirm the validity of his original question)
um, is it really pretentious to offer the sermon I preached last week as a response to thsi question? I mean, since I have been known to quote myself and all, I figure I can get away with this. Besides, a good chunk of the sermon is Tim Keller stuff, so it is really kind of like linking to one of his sermons, except, you know, it's my voice and all:
http://cdomaha.com/podcastfiles/2.11.07FinalSermon.mp3
Walker
i don't think it's all that pretentious...and you can't go wrong with some fine connections to TK. Here's my contribution to the conversation, which could also be pretentious seeing as i'm the newbie and all i'm doing in this moment is adding a link to a Tim Keller article called The Centrality of the Gospel, which was incredibly helpful to me. He says it more clearly and concisely that i can at this point. Here it is...
http://www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/centrality.pdf
I think that the frequency with which we have all used the word "pretentious" is sort of pretentious.
A few unorganized thoughts:
The Gospel is for everyone. The hardest thing to wrap my mind around though is that the Gospel is for me.
The Gospel doesn't destroy people or cultures or groups or religions, it fulfills them.
The Gospel is Jesus, or Yeshua, "Yahweh Saves".
The Gospel is a feast to welcomes us home and to celebrate a great romance. It is also the way we came home, and it is the romance too.
Or, to borrow from the pastor at the church we visited last Sunday, the gospel is the fact that we worship a God who "sits high, but lives low."
I know this post is a few months old, but I just stumbled across it and thought I would chime in.
To sum up the Gospel story... The good news is that God is our holy Creator and righteous Judge. He created us to worship Him and enjoy Him forever, BUT we have all sinned, both in Adam as our representative, and in our own individual actions. We therefore deserve the judgment of death (spiritual separation from God in hell). We are in fact, already spiritually dead, completely helpless in our sinful state and in need of God to impart spiritual life to us and rescue us from the penalty of sin. God sent His Son Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, to be punished in our place. He died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty of our sins. God’s forgiveness and the gift of eternal life are neither earned nor deserved, but rather it is available to men by God's grace alone, through faith alone. If we would have Christ's perfect righteousness credited to us, and the penalty of our sins accounted to Him, then we must respond by turning from our sin and trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
That is the Gospel message in a "nutshell" and those that respond to that good news in repentance and faith then live the rest of their lives in the light of that truth.
In Christ,
Eric
http://www.xanga.com/Eek_71/663583554/preaching-the-gospel-to-myself.html
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