THE GOSPEL TRULY KNOWN
02/07/24 17:29
Our life in God is far more generous and fulfilling than many of us have known. We do not need to live in an austerity mode when God has included us in His Communion by his love and generosity in the person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel that we preach needs to reflect this reality. We can do without ‘poverty versions’ of the gospel that are really ‘no gospel at all’. Why live in scarcity when we can live in what Paul calls ‘the riches of Christ’?
In the Mediation of Christ Thomas Torrance wrote,
“How, then, is the Gospel to be preached in a genuinely evangelical way? Surely in such a way that full and central place is given to the vicarious humanity of Jesus as the all-sufficient human response to the saving love of God which he has freely and unconditionally provided for us.
GODS STEPS TO YOU
“We preach and teach the Gospel evangelically, then, in such a way as this: God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very Being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself.
MADE YOU HIS OWN
“Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.
IN YOUR PLACE
“From beginning to end what Jesus Christ has done for you he has done not only as God but as man. He has acted in your place in the whole range of your human life and activity, including your personal decisions, and your responses to God's love, and even your acts of faith.
HIS REST FOR HUMAN RESTLESSNESS
“He has believed for you, fulfilled your human response to God, even made your personal decision for you, so that he acknowledges you before God as one who has already responded to God in him, who has already believed in God through him, and whose personal decision is already implicated in Christ's self-offering to the Father, in all of which he has been fully and completely accepted by the Father, so that in Jesus Christ you are already accepted by him. Therefore, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.” P 94.
We cannot be priests of Christ’s kingdom in ‘another gospel’. Outlined here is the difference a gospel and non-Gospel; between workers and slaves and the sons of God living in the inheritance Jesus has one for them.