The Gospel

Many Christians when they hear "gospel" automatically think forgiveness--and no further.  The good news is that I am forgiven--now leave it at that.  Sadly, many Christians have learned only the forgiveness part of the gospel.  These gospel presentations begin with our sinfulness and separation from God, and end with Jesus dying in our place for our penalty of sin.  Everything in this picture is completely true, but it leaves out some super-important pieces of the good news.  It would be like if I read to you the first chapter of a book, and then skipped straight to the last two pages of the book.  For example, if we leave out the fact that we now are in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Christian life is reduced to keeping rules, jumping through hoops, and pretending we're really something; instead of a joyous spiritual life that connection to Jesus produces.  If I think the gospel is only about me and my sin being alleviated, then my Christianity becomes all about my private devotion to God, my inner life, my self, instead of a participation in a community committed to fulfilling the mission of God.  


Didn't Jesus come to earth to die for our sins?  Absolutely! But that's not all He came for.  In addition to coming to die for sin, Jesus came to redeem captives out of slavery into freedom (John 8:32-36), to destroy the authority of the power of darkness (Eph.1:20-23), to show us how to live (Phil. 2:1-5; 1 John 4:9-11), to reveal the Father to us (John 1:18; Rom. 5:8), and to bring us life.  When Jesus tells us about this life he says, "I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).


The life Jesus is telling us about does not just occur when we arrive in heaven after we die, but having a Spirit-empowered relationship with Jesus in the present.  In John 17:21 Jesus proclaimed through his prayer for us that we can actually share in this life now.  Jesus prays, "That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me."


Gerald F. Hawthorne has said,

 Not only is Jesus their Savior because of who he is and because his own complete obedience to the Father's will (cf. Heb 10:5-7), but he is the supreme example for them of what is possible in a human life because of his total dependence upon the Spirit of God.

Obviously we will continually be confessing sin; something Jesus never had to do, but He has granted to us freedom from sin and the power to overcome it's hold, and destructive power in our lives.  That is also some really good gospel news.