The Gospel - Pt 2

But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. (2 Timothy 1:12-14 ESV).

Yesterday we looked at three questions to ask of every written or spoken message concerning the gospel to determine its truth and validity. The principle is that “grace is no longer amazing if we add anything to it.” Of course, I am not suggesting that every song, every sermon, and every book is going to answer each question in equal measure. But pay attention. As you listen and read, you will pick up what the apostle Paul called “the pattern of sound words” (v. 13). Every cohesive worldview has a pattern to it, a pattern you will see in the big picture and small details. For Christians, there’s a consistency and a pattern of sound gospel words that we should tune our ears to hear, and note when we find it absent. The true work of interpretation is allowing Scripture to answer each of these three questions over and over again until the truth of the gospel works down into our core. If we sketch out some of the contours of the biblical gospel, the answers to our questions become quite clear:  We are saved by grace through faith in the wrath-absorbing death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and justified in his resurrection as a substitute for us, the rebel law-breakers.  We are saved from a holy God, from his righteous wrath poured out eternally on every sinner who has disgraced his glory.  We are saved to have peace with God, to be holy, to be gathered among God’s people who live and love, and who magnify God by treasuring Christ and enjoying him above everything in this world and the next. The gospel is profoundly beautiful and worthy of eternal study and celebration, but it’s also not complicated. The challenge we always face is gospel drift, a gospel that imperceptibly glides into language that makes the answer to these three vital questions clouded and obscure. It requires attentiveness so that we do not float into a “hunch gospel” that uses a bunch of Christian jargon, all aiming at self-actualizing goals and satisfying felt needs, but at the same time failing to explain the core themes of God’s wrath or the essential purpose of Christ’s substitutionary blood. In other words, the natural drift of our thoughts is always being “led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:3). Tomorrow we will begin to look at some of those “drifts.” Today, stay the course. It is Jesus alone, saving us from our earned death, to the glory of God.