Gospel Novice

Today’s Scripture reading from the ESV Bible Reading Schedule took me to Psalm 105. Through this Psalm the Lord moved me to ponder His faithfulness.

7 He is the Lord our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.
8 He remembers his covenant forever,
the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,
9 the covenant that he made with Abraham,
his sworn promise to Isaac,
10 which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant,
11 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan
as your portion for an inheritance.”

One of the strong pillars of the gospel is the faithfulness of our covenant keeping God. Let’s be honest, day after day is filled with struggles and failures for the Christian. The more we grow in Christ the more we realize how far we are from his likeness. But then we are called, once again, to sink the roots of our faith into the good news of the gospel:

We, who were dead in sin, have been given new life through the power of his Spirit.

The Lord has provided an atoning sacrifice for all of our sin - yes, all of it.

The Lord has draped around our forgiven shoulders the prefect righteousness of his Son.

In Christ we now can stand unashamed before our God and can cry out “Abba, Father!” with the assurance that he hears us with unmatched tenderness and care.

We have a myriad of precious promises to trust in as we look at our own hearts and at the path he has laid before us in this life.

He is at work in us.

He is at work around us.

He holds us in his hand and is shaping us into his likeness.

And so much more.

Why are these glorious gospel promises reliable? How is it we can find solid comfort and hope in them? Because God is faithful. Let that truth ring in your ears… God is faithful. Ours is not a shaky, fleeting hope. No! It is hope built upon the very character and purposes of the Lord God Almighty whose judgments are in all the earth and who remembers his covenanents forever.

May the Lord use his Word, even today, to potently remind you of his faithfulness and provide you with comfort, hope and strength for today.

Gospel Blessings,

jc

In a Christian culture saturated with self-esteem counsel and practical theology that subtly makes much of you and little of God, it is refreshing to read the following words from Jon Bloom, Executive Director of Desiring God Ministries, in his April letter to DG supporters:

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ [2 Peter 1:1].

….[W]e ordinary Christians have obtained a faith of equal standing with Peter’s? Absolutely yes! There is nothing ordinary about the faith we’ve received. It has been given to us as a gift from the Lord Jesus, the same Lord who gave Peter his faith.

Peter had no illusion about who he was. He was an ordinary man chosen by an extraordinary Savior to fulfill and extraordinary calling through the power of an extraordinary Spirit. All that had made Peter extraordinary had come to him as a gift of grace from God. Apart from Jesus he was nothing. That’s why when Cornelius fell at his feet and worshiped him, Peter quickly pulled him up and said, “Stand up; I too am a man” (Acts 10:26).

The same amazing Savior has chosen you, cleansed you from all your sin, given you his perfect righteousness, and filled you with his Holy Spirit. “What the Lord has made clean, do not call uncommon” (Acts 10:15). Jesus has made you extraordinary, more than you know. Jesus has called you by name, appointed you to faithfully steward a particular calling, has a unique name for you that only he knows, and has prepared a place in his eternal kingdom especially for you. Peter considers you a peer, his sibling in God’s family.

Praise the Lord that we, the utterly unworthy, find our identity, life, hope and calling in the unsurpassed worth and power of the Lord Jesus! Gospel blessings as you serve our Lord today.

Edward Donnelly, of Reformed Theological College in Belfast, Ireland writes the following in his foreward to the book, The Cross He Bore-Meditations on the Suffering of the Redeemer:

We are too apt to hurry past the cross, to undervalue, in spite of ourselves, the supreme mystery of the ages by a shallow assumption that we know it all. We don’t and never will. But we need to take time to learn as much as we can. We need to ‘behold’, to ’survey’, to ’stand and stare’.

The author of the above mentioned book, Frederick S. Leahy (1922-2006), continues the theme in his introduction:

As the cross is central in God’s decrees, and in the actual redemption of his people, so it should be central in the thinking and experience of the individual Christian. It is my conviction, and at times my sad experience, that as the cross goes out of focus in the Christian’s life, coldness and backsliding set in…. If our meditation on the cross be meager, can our love for the Saviour be great?

May contemplation of the cross increase our awareness of the depths of our sin, the terror of God’s wrath, the extremity of Christ’s sacrifice, and the wonder of God’s grace and love. The Suffering Savior is our Substitute and “we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

It is a treat when the first line of a book grabs you. This happened to me as I broke open the pages of The Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson. In a modern church culture where the gospel is woefully tarnished for lack of use and believer’s lives are suffering as a consequence, it is encouraging to read the following right out of the gate:

When I first became involved in teaching God’s Word, I tended to assume that one of the great needs of Christians is to be instructed in the ‘deeper truths’ of the gospel. It was not long before experience (of my own life) and observation (of others’ lives) taught me how mistaken I had been. I began to see that in fact the ‘deeper truths’ (if there are such things) are really the old basic truths of the gospel. Far from being luxuries, they are necessities for Christian living (p.1, emphasis added).

He goes on later in the chapter to state:

As we understand and appreciate the mercies of God we will live more fully for Christ (p.5).

As we find our minds expanded by the grace of God, our hearts should be correspondingly enlarged with love for him for all that he has done for us in Christ. This is turn should lead us to a richer experience of his love for us (p.7).

It is out of this richer experience of his love for us that we in turn are enabled & inspired to love others. Growth in our understanding of the gospel is key to our growth in Chrisitan living. Doctrine and godliness go hand in hand (Titus 1:1). As Ferguson so aptly puts it:

The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life (p.2).

May the Lord create in our understanding rich gospel soil from which will grow abundant fruit for other’s good and his glory. Gospel blessings!

Why choose such a title for my blog? Hmm… Self deprecation? False humility? Insecurity due to the lack of a seminary degree? Well, if you’re curious, I actually came across this title, or better yet this concept, when listening to Tim Keller speak at the 2006 Desiring God conference. His title was The Gospel in a Postmodern World and his second point, called Gospel Realization, was a salient moment in my Christian life.

For a number of years prior the Lord had been working on me and my wife. It all started with two sermons from CJ Mahaney entitled The Main Thing. This got us thinking and talking about the potentially significant ramifications of a perpetual focus on the gospel. At that time I was studying Ephesians and one of my main rescources was “The Doctor,” D. Martin Lloyd-Jones. I kept coming across the same idea, a kind of Christ centrality that had before evaded me. There was also at that time quite a bit of Spurgeon around (as is often the case) and almost everything he ever said or wrote drips with Christ centeredness. The questions started to rise and the concepts began to form, but all was still very foggy.

At that point the Lord brought my good friend, John, along (see his Gospel Driven Blog). The Lord used him to bring into more clarity the vital need for the truth of the gospel to break in not only on the lost, but on the believer as well. This revolutionized my and my wife’s lives. The Lord began to reveal the sweetness, the joy, the wonder of the gospel to us. We knew all of these truth intelectually, but were rarely struck by them personally. We had, as so many do, looked at the gospel as a first grade class which we now “knew” and should move on from, rather than looking at it as water - desperately needing a fresh drink if we’re to keep running the race, or as Mary Poppins’ carpet bag (excuse the crude comparison, but it works!). You know, the one she set on the table and proceeded to pull out standing lamps and plants and wall mirrors to the kid’s amazement!? The truth of the gospel had no bottom! We were infinately far from even begining to discover its wondrous depths!

And that brings me back to Keller. In his message at the DG 06 conference he hit the proverbial nail on the head when he stated,

If you think you really understand the gospel, you don’t. If you think you really haven’t even begun to understand the gospel, you do…. [W]hat we need is a lifelong process of of more and more deeply realizing the wonder of the gospel…. Religion is ‘I obey therefore I’m accepted,’ the gospel is ‘I’m accepted because of what Jesus Christ has done for me, therefore I obey.’

The clarity with which he spoke about the gospel was the final push into what has undoubtedly become the driving perspective and passion of our lives. I highly, highly recommend you listen to Keller’s message (linked above) and tune in especially to that second point (although the whole message is wonderful).

Once someone begins, by grace, to grasp gospel centrality there is personal revolution. Once a group of people begin to grasp it there is revival. As Keller put it, “A revival is when the wonder of the gospel is recaptured.”

When I pridefully think I ‘get’ the gospel, I am reminded, “No, you don’t! You don’t even begin to get it!” So, I am a gospel novice. Praise the Lord that He continues to reveal more and more facets of the gospel diamond as the days go by and praise Him that He has given us an eternity to explore greater depths still.

May the Lord embrace us with the transforming reality of His full and wondrous grace.

Gospel Blessings!

jason

I came across the following on Gospel Muse (please see my blog roll). These very insightful quotes are from Mike Bullmore:

“One of the greatest challenges, yet one of the most important tasks, of pastoral ministry is to help people actually see the connections between the gospel and the thinking and behavior that make up their everyday lives. We know well the centrality of the gospel message but in order for it to have a functional centrality it must be clearly, carefully and consistently connected to the real issues—issues of thought and conduct—of people’s lives. This kind of ministry is most greatly needed.“

…and the second:

“A local church is healthy to the degree that:

1) Its pastor-teachers are able - accurately, effectively, and broadly - to bring the gospel to bear specifically into the real lives of the people; and

2) Its people have a deep personal understanding of and deep personal appreciation for the gospel so as to be able to live in the good of the gospel daily.

I call this the functional centrality of the gospel.”

May the Lord continue to shape leaders for His church with this kind of perspective.