Category Archives: The Gospel

Total Substitution

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sub2The message of the Gospel is so different from every man made attempt at religion that it is hard for even Christians to fully grasp its truth. Even for those who read their Bibles diligently there is a tendency to receive the inspired, inerrant, God breathed information through man centered filters, which means that we often fail to see the pristine beauty of a God who rescues us by His work alone. We tend to think ‘there must be something God demands us to bring to the table of redemption.’

Here’s what we know. There is a God and neither you nor I are Him. We therefore need to acknowledge Him as God, the way He has revealed Himself, both through nature and in Scripture, and approach Him on His terms. To act in any other way means that we create an idol and engage in idolatry.

The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God is holy. In fact, saying these words is wholly inadequate. Accessing the immediate presence of God, the angelic host proclaim day and night without ceasing, He is “holy, holy, holy” (Isa 6). Not just “holy” but “holy, holy, holy.”

God is perfect in holiness and therefore His standards are likewise perfectly holy. He demands perfection. Christ said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt 5:48)

What God demands from you is:

1. Perfect obedience to His law – Getting close is just not good enough. No best efforts are allowed.
2. Perfect repentance.
3. Perfect faith.

Do you see the problem here? No man is capable of any of this. Jesus said “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:20) This statement should rock our religious world to its very foundation. Jesus, the kind and Good Shepherd affirms the fact that just as a country’s leader might not negotiate with terrorists, God will never negotiate with sinners. The requirement for entry into God’s presence is perfect righteousness. His standards are perfect and He will never lower them. God is just and He will not violate His character in order to allow a sinful man into His presence.

The sinner’s dilemma is therefore massive and distressing. Every sin we have committed is an act of high treason against God, fully deserving His just and eternal punishment. It is precisely at this point where we recognize our desperate need for a righteousness we do not possess, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ begins to make sense. We hear it and say, “I must have Christ. He alone can save me.”

Greg Francis makes the point very well: “God demands 100% faultless perfect obedience, and if you can’t do that, you better find Someone who can do it for you.” That Someone is the Lord Jesus Christ.

When I say that no man is capable of perfect obedience, repentance and faith, there is one exception to this rule. The Lord Jesus Christ lived a perfectly righteous life – fully pleasing His Father always. There was not a single stain or blemish of sin in His life. And here is where this affects us and is the very essence of the Gospel. Christ did all that He did in obedience to His Father and as our Substitute. What God demands FROM us, Christ provides FOR us. Christ lived for us and He died for us. He lived the life we should have lived, fulfilling all the demands of God in His holy law. He loved God with all His heart, soul, mind and strength. Then He died for us. All the sins of all of those who would ever believe in Him were laid on Him at the cross and He absorbed the full punishment we deserved (Isa 53:4-6; 1 Pet 2:24).

God is holy and He is also love. Once again, what God demanded, Christ has provided. It was love for the world that motivated the Father to send His Son to live and die for us. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Knowing that we could never repent, believe or obey Him perfectly, the Father has given gifts from His heart to all of His people:
1. The perfect obedience of Jesus is given to us (2 Cor 5:21).
2. Repentance is perfected in and through Jesus – remember Jesus was baptized by John with the Baptism of repentance (Matt 3:11).
3. The faith God requires is a gift from Him (Eph 2:8,9; Phil 1:29).

Christ saves His people from their sins (Matt 1:21). Salvation is not achieved by a combined effort of God and man working together. It is God’s work entirely. C. H. Spurgeon declared, “Substitution is the very marrow of the whole Bible, the soul of salvation, the essence of the gospel.” The Bible is therefore a revelation of His rescue plan – God’s work done for us through the means of Christ in total substitution. The Gospel is about Christ’s life for us, His death for us and includes His present day High Priestly ministry at the right hand of the Father where He always lives to make intercession for us (John 17:9: Heb 7:25).

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Question 60. How are you righteous before God?
“Only by true faith in Jesus Christ; that is, although my conscience accuse me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart.” – Heidelberg Catechism

It is finished: A reflection on John 19:30

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cross01Matthew Barrett (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Assistant Professor of Christian Studies at California Baptist University, as well as the founder and executive editor of Credo Magazine. Barrett is also Senior Pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church. He is the author and editor of several books, including Salvation by Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration. You can read about Barrett’s other publications at matthewmbarrett.com. He writes:

Looking back upon the first half of the twentieth century, H. Richard Niebuhr famously described liberal Christianity’s understanding of the gospel like this: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” Sadly, such a view is alive and well today in the twenty-first century. The reason we cannot begin to fathom a God who is holy and just, and the reason we are so hostile to a God who executives his wrath and judgment is because we do not truly understand two things: (1) Just how holy God is, and (2) just how sinful we are.

Bad news

Because we do not understand how desperately wicked and depraved we are, nor how offensive and hideous our sin is to a righteous Judge, a God who pours out his wrath through a cross is offensive, foolish, detestable, and sour to our taste buds.

cross-of-christ-0105Unfortunately, many Christians today make the situation much worse. We simply approach the unbeliever and say, “Believe in Jesus and you will be saved.” But for the unbeliever who has absorbed this view, our words make little sense. Be saved? From what? In other words, because they do not first understand the gravity of their sin, they see no need for a Savior who dies for the forgiveness of sins. We often view salvation as receiving eternal life (and rightly so). But we cannot forget that we are saved from something as well, and that is the wrath of God and eternal condemnation.

The entire storyline of Scripture is one that presents us with a massive problem: we are sinners and the judgment of God is coming. As Paul says in his letter to the church at Ephesus, prior to Christ each one of us is “dead” in our “trespasses” and “by nature” we are “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (2:1-2). We have a sin problem. Not only does our sin separate us from God, but we deserve the wrath of God to be brought down upon us for all eternity. The punishment for sin is death (Rom. 3:23). Adam discovered this in the garden, and as children of Adam, all of mankind is by nature under the wrath of God. This is the bad news.

Good news

But what makes Christianity Christianity is that this bad news is not the end of the story. While God would have been perfectly just to leave us in our sin and condemnation, he lovingly and graciously gave his only Son, Christ Jesus, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

What does John mean when he says God gave his only Son? This act of giving takes us back to Isaiah 53. Isaiah, prophesying about the Suffering Servant, the Messiah to come, says, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:4-6). Isaiah goes on to say that this suffering servant is like a “lamb that is led to the slaughter” (53:7).

When we come to the cross and we see the enormous amount of suffering Jesus underwent, we tend to focus solely on his physical suffering: the crown of thorns, the nails, and the crucifix. But as important as all of this is, we cannot miss the main thing: the most excruciating thing about the suffering servant’s cross is that he bore the very wrath of God that was ours. The Lord laid upon Christ our iniquities and Christ took the due penalty for those iniquities. We see this and we hear it when Christ cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34). And then come three beautiful words, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

What is finished? Christ, as he says in the garden of Gethsamani, has drunk the cup of God’s wrath in full (Matt. 26:39), and by doing so, as Hebrews 1:3 reminds us, Christ “made purification for sins.” As our high priest Christ “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11-12; cf. 9:13, 25-26).

Indeed, this is good news.

The Vindication of God and the Vicarious Sufferings of Christ

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Two messages by Paul Washer:

1. The Vindication of God in the Gospel, from the Behold Your God National Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, January 21—23, 2013.

Session 3 — Paul Washer: The Vindication of God in the Gospel from Media Gratiae on Vimeo.

2. The Vicarious Sufferings of Christ

Session 7— Paul Washer: The Vicarious Sufferings of Christ from Media Gratiae on Vimeo.

Righteousness Achieved For Us

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sproul2_0This excerpt is from R.C. Sproul’s The Truth of the Cross. Original Source: http://www.ligonier.org/blog/jesus-died-he-lived/

We must see that the righteousness of Christ that is transferred to us is the righteousness He achieved by living under the Law for thirty-three years without once sinning. Jesus had to live a life of obedience before His death could mean anything. He had to acquire, if you will, merit at the bar of justice. Without His life of sinless obedience, Jesus’ atonement would have had no value at all. We need to see the crucial significance of this truth; we need to see that not only did Jesus die for us, He lived for us.

Roman Catholics call this concept a legal fiction, and they recoil from it because they believe it casts a shadow on the integrity of God by positing that God declares to be just people who are not just. In response, the Reformers conceded that this concept would be a legal fiction if imputation were fictional. In that case, the Protestant view of justification would be a lie. But the point of the Gospel is that “imputation is real—God really laid our sins on Christ and really transferred the righteousness of Christ to us. We really possess the righteousness of Jesus Christ by imputation. He is our Savior, not merely because He died, but because He lived a sinless life before He died, as only the Son of God could do.

Theologians like to employ Latin phrases, and one of my favorites is one that Martin Luther used to capture this concept. The essence of our salvation is found in this phrase: Simul Justus et pecator. The word simul is the word from which we get the English word simultaneous; it means simply “at the same time.” Justus is the word for “just.” We all know what et means; we hear it in the famous words of Julius Caesar in the Shakespeare tragedy: “Et tu, Brute?” (“You, too, Brutus?”) Etmeans “also” or “and.” From the word pecator we get such English words aspeccadillo (“a little sin”) and impeccable (“without sin”); it is simply the Latin word for “sinner.” So Luther’s phrase, Simul Justus et pecator, means “At the same time just and sinner.”

simuljustusetpeccator2This is the glory of the Protestant doctrine of justification. The person who is in Christ is at the very same instant a sinner and just. If I could be justified only by actually becoming just and having no sin in me, I would never see the kingdom of God. The point of the gospel is that the minute a person embraces Jesus Christ, all that Christ has done is applied to that person. All that He is becomes ours, including His righteousness. Luther was saying that at the very instant I believe, I am just by virtue of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It’s Christ’s righteousness that makes me just. His death has taken care of my punishment and His life has taken care of my reward. So my justice is completely tied up in Christ.

In Protestantism, we speak of this as the doctrine of justification by faith alone, for according to the New Testament, the only means by which the righteousness and the merit of Christ can come into our accounts and be applied to us is by faith. We can’t earn it. We can’t deserve it. We can’t merit it. We can only trust in it and cling to it.

Just so we are clear

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visionThe word “saved” is banded about all the time in our culture. We talk about a goalkeeper making a “save,” but we do not mean by this that the goalkeeper provided atonement for the other players on his team. What we are referring to, of course, is simply that he “saved” the team from conceding a goal. In the same way, we say that a boxer was “saved” by the bell, but we do not mean that the boxer entered into heavenly bliss through his relationship with the bell. We mean that the bell which signified the end of the round, rang at the time when defeat looked inevitable, right at the moment the opponent was about to knock him out. The bell “saved” the boxer from certain defeat.

The point I am making is that when we use the term “saved,” we are referring to the concept of being saved from someone or something – to be rescued from an impending calamity.

So what does the Bible mean when it says that Christ “saves” us. What does He save us from? A low self esteem? A boring, purposeless life? Financial debt? Physical disease? It may be a surprise to discover that Christ made provision for all of man’s needs through His death on the cross. The word “salvation” in both Hebrew and Greek means “wholeness, deliverance, healing, restoration, soundness and protection…” The main aspect of the salvation He provided is to be saved or delivered from the wrath of Almighty God.

It was Jesus who declared that the wrath of God abides on the unbeliever (John 3:36). Christ therefore came into the world to “save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15), and if a person will repent and believe the Gospel, Christ will save them from the Father’s wrath. As the Scripture declares, “…Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10), “for God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us…” (1 Thess. 5:9, 10)

All this was the Father’s idea. He sent His Son to save sinners from His own wrath – a wrath that is sure to come on those who do not receive His provision of grace in Christ. In other words, the Gospel or “good news” is that God saves us… from God!

Sadly though, the Church of today doesn’t usually make reference to any of this. The usual modern “Gospel” message being preached is “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Though the message is heard almost everywhere around us, when I turn to the New Testament, I cannot find Jesus or a single Apostle preaching this kind of message. Certainly God is a God of love. The Bible speaks of this on almost every page. There’s no doubt about that. But God is also a holy God who will never compromise His holiness.

The Apostles, as God’s fully authorized representatives, didn’t merely “invite” sinners to repent. That’s because the Gospel is not merely an invitation that can be accepted or declined with impunity. The Apostles were sent to summon people to surrender to the righteous claims of a Holy God by commanding that they repent and believe the Gospel or face eternal, terrible consequences. The Apostle Paul declared that God “commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.” (Acts 17:30, 31). We cannot dismiss the fact that God hates sin and punishes sinners with eternal torment. How can we begin a Gospel presentation by telling people on their way to hell that God has a wonderful plan for their lives? Unless repentance takes place, the “wonderful plan” is hell itself!

The big issue in the Gospel is therefore righteousness, rather than happiness. Happiness is important, but it’s the by-product of righteousness – right standing with God. “For the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 14:17). Note the order in the verse, first righteousness, then peace, and then joy, in the Holy Spirit. There’s no real peace or joy without first obtaining righteousness.

Once the world sees the perfect standard by which they will be judged, they will begin to fear God and hunger and thirst after the righteousness that is found in Jesus Christ alone. And that’s where the Good News comes in – for it is the Lord Jesus Christ who meets our need for righteousness as He has secured salvation as a free and gracious gift for all those who will believe (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5; 5:17; 6:23; Phil. 3:9). Christ is the Lord our righteousness (Jer. 23:6; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21).

God is a God of love, and it is in the cross that we see God’s love for the world. How can we point to the cross without making reference to sin? How can we refer to sin without the Law? One man wrote, “The biblical way to express God’s love to a sinner is to show him how great his sin is, and then give him the incredible grace of God found in Christ.” I wholeheartedly agree. People will much more likely run to obtain the salvation, shelter, and mercy of God found in Christ alone when they are aware of the terrible wrath that is presently abiding on them. To appreciate the good news, sinners need to know the bad news that their sin is not just a minor blemish, but in reality, cosmic treason against a Holy and Righteous God. In hearing of the remedy found in Christ, this becomes to them an expression of love and concern for their eternal welfare, rather than merely helps towards finding a better lifestyle on this earth.

The Gospel is God’s Gospel (Rom. 1:1) and we have no right to seek to “improve” it. That’s impossible anyway. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16) The power of God is in the Gospel of God. Let’s not dilute it with man-made imitations but lets go preach the real thing and see the Almighty, Omnipotent power of God awaken His elect from spiritual death. (John 6:37-45, 65; Eph. 1:3-5, 11; 2:1-4; Acts 13:48; 2 Thess. 2:13, 14).

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. – Romans 5:8-9

Gospel Scandal

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Jr, writes:

Wanting Grace for Us, but Not for Them
All of us, both within and without the church, face the temptation of being legalists when dealing with others’ sins against us, and antinomians when dealing with our sins against others. We want those we have perceived to have wronged us to pay for what they have done, while reminding our own tender consciences that we all deserve a little grace.

Witnessing to Our Enemies
The two propensities come to a head at one and the same time as we seek to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the walking dead all about us. The first objection, typically, comes from the antinomian side. The sacrifice of witnessing to our enemies is that we know we will be hated for pointing out the reality of their sin. We will be pilloried as narrow, bigoted, judgmental, medieval. We will run smack into Romans 1. The unbeliever, in his unrighteousness unrighteously suppresses his knowledge of his unrighteousness. He, in short, doesn’t want to hear it. The irony, of course, is that what we are trying to tell them is just what they need to deal with their guilt. We would be wise to remember that when we fall under the onslaught of their wrath. They want to hide from their sin, while we are trying to tell them how to make it go away.

The second problem, however, arises when we get to the promise of God. As we preach, “Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” they will find “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” to be almost as incredulous as “Repent.” In fact I’ve often heard this objection — “What a minute. You’re telling me that if Adolph Hitler had simply said just before his death, “Jesus, forgive me” he would have entered into heaven at his death? That’s all it takes, just saying you’re sorry?”

The Scandal of the Gospel
Of course that’s not all it takes. Though our repentance is never the ground of our peace with God — that is, God doesn’t forgive us simply because repenting is such a wonderful thing it covers our sins, it is necessary and necessary that it be genuine. Saying something and meaning it, because we are sinners, often means two different things. Second, the ground is not in our repentance, but His provision. “All it took” was for God to put on humanity, to live a perfect life, and to suffer the wrath of the Father due to all those who would believe. The passion of Christ is not a small thing.

The scandal, in fact, is less that we who are sinners should get off scot free, but that God should pay such a high cost for our redemption. Had Hitler repented at the last moment he would indeed now be enjoying the blessings of eternity. Not, however, because his sins would have gone unpunished, but because his sins would have been punished on Christ. And such are we.

The Gospel is for Evil People
I wonder if perhaps those outside the kingdom would be less tempted to think of the gospel as a cheap get out of jail free card if we were more faithful in grasping that we are Hitler, and Jesus suffered for us. The gospel is not for good people who fall a bit short, but for evil people. Jesus did not come to rescue the beautiful princess. He came to rescue the ugly hag that killed Him, because He laid His life down. Perhaps the gospel would scandalize the world less if it scandalized the church more.

This post was first published on rcsprouljr.com.

Gospel Centered?

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In an article entitled but the pathway of the Christian life.

“Gospel-centered preaching.” “Gospel-centered parenting.” “Gospel-centered discipleship.” The back of my business card says “gospel-centered publishing.” This descriptive mantra is tagged on to just about anything and everything in the Christian world these days.

What’s it all about?

Before articulating what it might mean to be Gospel-centered, we all better be on the same page as to what the Gospel actually is.

I don’t mean Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

What I mean by “Gospel” in this article is the outrageous news of what has been done for us by God in Jesus. The Gospel is the front page of the newspaper, not the back-page advice column; news of what has happened, not advice on how to live.

Specifically, the Gospel is the startling news that what God demands from us, He provides for us. How? In His own Son. The Gospel is the message that Jesus Christ delights to switch places with guilty rebels. The one Person who walked this earth who deserved heaven endured the wrath of hell so that those who deserve the wrath of hell can have heaven for free.
And the Gospel is not only personal, but cosmic. Christ’s death and resurrection doesn’t only provide forgiveness for me. It also means that in the middle of history, God has begun to undo death, ruin, decay and darkness. The universe itself is going to be washed clean and made new. Eden will be restored.
But to be part of this, we too must die. Grace requires death. We must die to our bookkeeping way of existence that builds our identity on anything other than Jesus. We must relinquish, give up on ourselves, throw in the towel. And out of this death — letting God love us in, not after getting over, our messiness — resurrection life quietly blossoms.

Gospel-Centered Worldview

What does it mean, then, to be “Gospel-centered”?

As far as I can tell the phrase is used in two basic ways. One is to view all of life in light of the Gospel. We’ll call this a Gospel-centered worldview. The other is to view Christian progress as dependent on the Gospel. We’ll call this Gospel-centered growth. The first looks out; the second looks in. Take Gospel-centered worldview first.

One way to get at this is to consider what is meant when we call someone “self-centered.” We don’t mean that all they think about directly is themselves. They also think about what to eat, what to wear, how to conclude an email, and a thousand other things each day. But Self informs all these other decisions. A self-centered person passes all they do and think through the filter of Self. Self trumps everything else and orders all other loves accordingly.

In a similar way, to be Gospel-centered does not mean that social action, marital and sexual matters, ethical issues, political agendas, our jobs, our diet, and all the rest of daily life are irrelevant. Rather, it means all of life is viewed in light of the Gospel. Everything passes through the filter of the Gospel. What Jesus has done and is doing to restore the universe trumps everything else and orders all other loves accordingly.

Gospel-Centered Growth

There’s another way that the phrase Gospel-centered is used, which is even more common. Here we narrow in to issues specifically related to Christian formation and discipleship, such as Bible-reading, book-writing, preaching and teaching. Generally what is meant when we speak of “Gospel-centered discipleship” or “Gospel-centered preaching” is that such activities are done in the light of two core realities: our ongoing struggle with sin and our ongoing need for grace.
The twisted fallenness of the human heart manifests itself in our constant self-atonement strategies. The natural, default mode of the human heart (including the Christian heart) is restless heart-wandering, looking for something to latch on to for significance, to know we matter, to feel OK about ourselves. This tendency is often profoundly subtle and extremely difficult to root out. We are sinners. We are sick.

However, the far-reaching grace of the Gospel calms our hearts and nestles us into the freedom of not needing to constantly measure up in any way since Jesus measured up on our behalf. In Christ, we matter. Clothed in His righteousness, we are OK. And this sweet calm is the soil in which true godliness flourishes.

Gospel-centeredness, then, funnels the Gospel out to unbelievers but also in to our own hearts. It is an acknowledgment that the Good News about God’s grace in Christ is the supreme resource — for believers just as much for unbelievers. In other words, the Gospel is a home, not a hotel. It is not only the gateway into the Christian life, but the pathway of the Christian life.
This is why Paul constantly reminds people — reminds Christian people — of the Gospel (e.g., Romans 1:16–17; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 15:3–4; Galatians 1:6). We move forward in discipleship not mainly through pep talks and stern warnings. We move forward when we hear afresh the strangeness of grace, relaxing our hearts and loosening our clenched hold on a litany of lesser things — financial security, the perfect spouse, career advancement, sexual pleasure, human approval, and so on.

An Example: Gospel-Centered Dating

Let’s take all this closer to home. Given all this, what might be meant by “Gospel-centered dating”?
This would simply mean an approach to dating that remembers the fierce works-righteousness orientation of the human heart and the way we tend to build our identity on anything other than Jesus.
Gospel-centered dating wouldn’t be dating that tries to share the Gospel with as many dates as possible. It would be dating that refuses to build a sense of worth on whom we’re dating, what they think of us, and the happiness they can provide if the relationship works out long-term. It would be letting Jesus be the One who saves us — not only from judgment before God in the future, but judgment before our dates in the present.

Dating can be truly enjoyed if we go into every evening out with a heart-sense of the Gospel. If we know we are accepted and approved in Jesus, acceptance and approval by the person sitting across the table loses its ominous significance. If we know God delights in us with invincible favor and love, dates that go poorly will disappoint us but not crush us. If we know that no matter what happens in a relationship we will always have Christ, and He is everything, then we are freed from having our mood dictated by dating success. And even if dates go well with someone early on, it’s only a matter of time before a boyfriend or girlfriend (or spouse) will disappoint us and let us down. There’s only One who never lets us down.

A Gospel-centered life, in other words, is the only life that can truly be enjoyed. Nothing can threaten our sense of worth and identity. Christ himself is our mighty and radiant friend.

Keep the Reality

There’s one more thing to be said. The label “Gospel-centered” is neither here nor there. There’s nothing sacred about it. But the heart of what is being recovered, both in terms of worldview and in terms of growth, is vital for calm and sanity amid the ups and downs of life in a fallen world.

Every generation must rediscover the Gospel for itself. “Gospel-centered” happens to be the label attached to this generation’s recovery of grace. When we tire of the label, get a new one. But keep the reality.

We will be broken, messy sinners until Jesus comes again and gives us final cleansing. Till then, true shalom and fruitfulness can only be found through waking up each day, shoving back the clamoring anxieties, and defibrillating our hearts with a love that comes only to those — but to all of those — who open themselves up to it.