“Christ Died for Our Sins” proclaimed the framed bronze artwork that hung in our home throughout my childhood and youth. It is a quote from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians and sums up the version of the Christian gospel that dominated my induction into life and religion.
Lots of hymns carried the same message: “Mercy there was great, and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty. At Calvary.”
Every person is a sinner by nature and choice. God demands death for sin, but Jesus was sent by God as savior of the world and died in our place. We receive this news by faith, experience a spiritual rebirth, and rejoice in the promise of forgiveness and life after death in heaven. The key prayer in this scenario is the Sinner’s Prayer: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Those that never hear this gospel or refuse to embrace it (by faith and baptism) are doomed to eternal separation from God, in that place of torment as some believe.
This is the gospel message. Or it is one gospel message. I heard it, accepted it, embraced it and was baptized into it at the age of almost ten years old. I have preached some version of this gospel many times.
But it was another gospel that got my attention a few years later, when I read In His Steps and heard about Detrick Bonhoeffer and the cost of discipleship. This stream of gospel appeal picks up the call, not so much to believe in Jesus, but more urgently to follow Jesus, to pattern our lives after Jesus, to embrace Jesus as Lord of life as well as savior from sin.
This meant not only to pray The Lord’s Prayer but also to live it, envisioning God’s will being done on earth as in heaven, praying for our daily needs and helping others secure their daily needs, practicing confession and forgiveness, and resisting every form of evil.
This stream of gospel thought picks up the social dimension of biblical religion, especially that of the Hebrew prophets: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Or, in the words of Jesus, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and visit the prisoner (to name three of the six in the famous story told by Jesus).
This commitment to follow Jesus is what energized my teenage soul and disposed me to discount the world and all its temptations and distractions and give my all to Jesus as Lord and Master. We sang the song “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” and later, I memorized the “Moses” piece by Ken Medema wherein God invites Moses to “give it up, let it go, throw it down” (in reference to what he held I his hand—his shepherd’s staff).
This gospel echoed the words of Jesus, as quoted by Mark’s gospel, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come. Repent and believe the good news.”
This conviction about following Jesus and embracing the rule of God carried me through high school and college, but seminary brought me into the history of Christian thought and, with it, yet a third gospel: namely, that God’s good news is the renewal of all things, the transformation of all creation from the clutches of violence and decay, and the redemption of all humanity from the power of death, disease, and destruction.
This bigger version of good news, what we might call the cosmic gospel, did not and does not necessarily cancel either of the two gospels described above. Instead, it gathers them into its expansive vision of God’s purposes in creation and history, a purpose unhindered by the stubbornness of humanity, including you and me, a purpose set, as the apostle writes it, from the foundations of the world.
It is the larger, deeper purpose of God that is signaled by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It is God’s sign, God’s promise, God’s prediction that what God did to the dead body of Jesus God will do to every other piece of the created order, including you and me, regardless of our record as moral or immoral people.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” John the apostle wrote in the document we now call The Revelation, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…. There will be no more death, for the old order of things pas passed away…. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”
Three gospels, forming concentric circles of good news, framing the history of both people and planets by the overarching plan of God. This is what we mean by the Christian understanding of history, the Christian worldview, the Christian gospel. Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift!
“Christ Died for Our Sins” proclaimed the framed bronze artwork that hung in our home throughout my childhood and youth. It is a quote from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians and sums up the version of the Christian gospel that dominated my induction into life and religion.
Lots of hymns carried the same message: “Mercy there was great, and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty. At Calvary.”
Every person is a sinner by nature and choice. God demands death for sin, but Jesus was sent by God as savior of the world and died in our place. We receive this news by faith, experience a spiritual rebirth, and rejoice in the promise of forgiveness and life after death in heaven. The key prayer in this scenario is the Sinner’s Prayer: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Those that never hear this gospel or refuse to embrace it (by faith and baptism) are doomed to eternal separation from God, in that place of torment as some believe.
This is the gospel message. Or it is one gospel message. I heard it, accepted it, embraced it and was baptized into it at the age of almost ten years old. I have preached some version of this gospel many times.
But it was another gospel that got my attention a few years later, when I read In His Steps and heard about Detrick Bonhoeffer and the cost of discipleship. This stream of gospel appeal picks up the call, not so much to believe in Jesus, but more urgently to follow Jesus, to pattern our lives after Jesus, to embrace Jesus as Lord of life as well as savior from sin.
This meant not only to pray The Lord’s Prayer but also to live it, envisioning God’s will being done on earth as in heaven, praying for our daily needs and helping others secure their daily needs, practicing confession and forgiveness, and resisting every form of evil.
This stream of gospel thought picks up the social dimension of biblical religion, especially that of the Hebrew prophets: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Or, in the words of Jesus, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and visit the prisoner (to name three of the six in the famous story told by Jesus).
This commitment to follow Jesus is what energized my teenage soul and disposed me to discount the world and all its temptations and distractions and give my all to Jesus as Lord and Master. We sang the song “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” and later, I memorized the “Moses” piece by Ken Medema wherein God invites Moses to “give it up, let it go, throw it down” (in reference to what he held I his hand—his shepherd’s staff).
This gospel echoed the words of Jesus, as quoted by Mark’s gospel, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come. Repent and believe the good news.”
This conviction about following Jesus and embracing the rule of God carried me through high school and college, but seminary brought me into the history of Christian thought and, with it, yet a third gospel: namely, that God’s good news is the renewal of all things, the transformation of all creation from the clutches of violence and decay, and the redemption of all humanity from the power of death, disease, and destruction.
This bigger version of good news, what we might call the cosmic gospel, did not and does not necessarily cancel either of the two gospels described above. Instead, it gathers them into its expansive vision of God’s purposes in creation and history, a purpose unhindered by the stubbornness of humanity, including you and me, a purpose set, as the apostle writes it, from the foundations of the world.
It is the larger, deeper purpose of God that is signaled by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It is God’s sign, God’s promise, God’s prediction that what God did to the dead body of Jesus God will do to every other piece of the created order, including you and me, regardless of our record as moral or immoral people.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” John the apostle wrote in the document we now call The Revelation, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…. There will be no more death, for the old order of things pas passed away…. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”
Three gospels, forming concentric circles of good news, framing the history of both people and planets by the overarching plan of God. This is what we mean by the Christian understanding of history, the Christian worldview, the Christian gospel. Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift!
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