The GOSPEL. Whenever I hear that word I think of… I am not really sure on how to articulate what I think, but I know what immediately jumps into my head is different than what that word initially meant. Sometimes words that are used in particular communities over the years get distorted. When I think of the word "Gospel" I think of church things. I like church, but it is a broken messed up place that I don't always want to be like. When I think of "the Gospel" I think of clean cut theological concepts. I think of "penal substitution," "atonement," "sacrifice," and other things of the like. I think of street evangelists too.
I remember my theology classes in college where we would talk about how it was exactly that Christ saved us. We wanted to make sure that our idea of God was sound. It would not look good for a pastor to not know how to answer a theological question from a common lay person. We needed our theology to make sense.
Well, right now God is wrecking my idea of Him, particularly what Jesus' life purpose was. There are numerous things going on in my head and right now for this blog post, and I am not writing actually for you. I am writing for me. So if this seems all over the place that's why. I need to get out what I am thinking on paper. In reality though I am writing for you, because we need to think through these things.
The first thing is this. The Gospel of Jesus, meaning the "good news" of Jesus, does not start with our need and how God can fix it. The life of Jesus, The Gospel, was not about fixing our needs. God does not begin with our needs. He is obviously zealous and passionate about our well-being. God is madly in love with us, crazy about pursuing us and loves lavishing His riches over us, but our need is not where God starts. When the ancient apostolic writers wrote about The Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all wrote about the life of Jesus the Messiah. The Gospel, the good news, the heart-beat of Christianity is simply, but oh so beautifully the life of Jesus.
The other thing I am rattling my brain about is the life of Jesus himself. We have words and value as to why the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus are important. But have we asked the question as to why all of the Gospel writers wrote about the life of Jesus, what He did, how He interacted with people, how He sovereignly escaped riots, how He healed vast multitudes of people, how He preached the nearness of the kingdom of God, how He told Pilate becoming king was the reason He was born, and so many other moments of His life? It was not like they were writing a biography. They were certainly well qualified, but they all decided to leave out the first thirty years, oops! They were writing for a purpose, and that purpose included more than how he entered and left this earth. They deemed it completely necessary and the best thing they could do under such persecution they were facing to write an account of Jesus Christ the Messiah.
We have trouble valuing the sections in the Bible that we don't see as "practical" to our lives. He love His death because it is the sacrifice for our sins. We love His resurrection because it is our victory over death. And we love His incarnation because He took on our flesh, bridged a gap to us and identified with our suffering. Don't get me wrong all these things are glorious facets of the Gospel, and we could spend ages thinking, weeping and celebrating these events. The question I am trying to get to is do we love the things Jesus has done as it relates to us, or do we love Jesus for simply Himself? The Gospel is the life of Jesus. It is not an explanation of an event God in the flesh did that when grasped and applied gets us into heaven. Part of this is our western mindset that has trouble with leaving things as they are but instead wants to produce a product. The Gospel the New Testament writers were writing about was the life of Jesus, and they deemed it completely necessary to write what they did.
Okay… this is getting long and I realize people don't read long things. So I will take a break and come back at another time to vomit all my other thoughts because they are too much right now.
I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to change your mind on what He is about and who God is. Ask Jesus to speak to you to wreck your idea of who He is. There is something more to be had than what is coming forth from the pulpit today. God's kingdom is not boring it is worth all of our thoughts, awe and affection.
Until next time,
Jordan
Ps. I love the church because she is Jesus' bride. Don't make yourself an enemy of the church. Jesus takes that personally. Love her in her brokenness just as our righteous Lord does.
