What is The Gospel Really?

It has occurred to me recently in reading many online christian blogs that the term "the gospel" is thrown around a lot. Here are just a few of some topics being discussed:

"Live for the gospel"
"Contend for the gospel"
"Being gospel-centered"
"Gospel intentionality"
"Having gospel-centered community"
"Gospel and method"
Gospel "this and that"


I hope we haven't strayed into thinking that the gospel needs something else to go with it.
i.e. "gospel AND community" or "gospel AND method" Rather, those should be understood as "gospel through community" or "gospel by method[s]"

It got me to thinking. I read ABOUT "the gospel" a lot. Almost everyday. It got me to thinking, "What is the gospel really?" This may sound scary for a church boy to be saying but it seems to me that we are talking a lot about the gospel but neglecting to really tell the gospel. It feels like I hear "Preach the gospel!" more than I hear the gospel preached.

It's the same as when people proclaim the inerrency of scripture while neglecting to procliam its sufficiency. We have so many people pushing inerrency, inerrency, inerrency while neglecting to tell us why the scriptures are sufficient for us in both our joy and suffering. Just like we must emphasize inerrency with sufficiency, we must also actually tell what the gospel is in addition to our many blogs, sermons, and books.

This bugged me enough to search out anybody actually telling what the gospel really is, plain and simple, and why it's important rather than just talking about it. I looked high and low and finally found what I was looking for in a John Piper interview on, ironically enough, the Gospel Coalition website. (Once again, thank you Piper)

In it he tells what he sees as the essentials of what the gospel really is.

Here is the link. I think it is very important to watch...

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/resources/video/What-Is-The-Gospel---John-Piper#

B.I.B.L.E.

Apparently the Bible's worldwide status has now been upgraded to "Basic Information Before Leave Earth"

~~~~~~~~~

In my reading this morning God impressed upon me the fact that the book I was holding in my hands was one that could cost me my life if I lived in some other parts of the world. How often do we take the scriptures as granted? I have several different Bibles sitting on my desk and I really only use one of them and even the one I use the most doesn't get cracked open as much as it ought to.

And there lies the crux of it. When I read the Bible am I reading it because I ought to or because I absolutely need to? Because for the underground church in China and many churches in other parts of the world, where if they are caught with a Bible they are put in prison and even killed, they need their Bibles. Isn't it funny that they are risking their lives for the very thing that will get them killed? I don't think it's funny or crazy, just radical. We see it as radical because they wholly depend on the scriptures just to get to tomorrow. They are waking up to a life of persecution while clutching their Bibles, reading it, teaching it, living it. And here I sit. I don't search the scriptures out of a deep need for them because I don't consider God's power in and through them. For the underground churches all over the world, they are not reading their Bibles because they have been guilt tripped that week by a pastor. If they are not searching for God in his word, then they have nothing. And here I sit.

If the Scriptures are just seen as basic information before we die then what's the stinking point? When your best friend as a nine-year old is thrown from a vehicle and dies because he wasn't wearing his seat belt, or your brother doesn't come home from the war, or your mother is raped or... A basic information manual won't be able to address the deep anguish in our hearts in those situations.

I think we gloss over Bible reading the same way we might gloss over a video game or driving a car. It has become so automatic in the church to just "know" that we ought to read the Bible that we have become numb to the fact that clinging to God and His word is a radical thing. When we do read, it is often out of a feeling of obligation or Christian karma where if we would read the Bible then God will be pleased with us. Our Bible reading, when we do read it, has become as routine as driving to church. Most of us take the same route to church every Sunday. Many times I have gotten in the car to go somewhere and upon reaching my destination, pause and think, "I don't remember any of this. How did I get here?" It's because I was on autopilot. When my Bible reading is sporadic or nonexistent, it's usually because I don't consider the true power of God's word for and in my life.

I don't have a three step plan to fix this problem that all begins with the same first letter. I'm not proposing proof-texts to help you fix your lack of Bible reading. I am just confessing to not loving the Bible as much as I really do. I just know that the Bible really is more than just "Basic Information Before Leaving Earth" and that may not seem very radical anymore but I yearn to be a radical...

Who knows what the next post will be about.

-Zach

Easy

Forgive the one word, pseudo-profound Rob Bellism, and my absence.

Pornography is a monster. It rips men away from intimacy with their wives, from themselves, and even their best buddies. Through pornography, Satan is out to rob us of our God-given sexuality and some of the most intimate moments we'll ever share with our wives, or future wives.

Let's not sugar coat this. It's a form of adultery, one that can be kept a secret. No one has to know you watched fake sex on the internet, not even your girlfriend, or your wife. Except you, and of course, God.

I know exactly how it feels, whenever I've watched porn in the past, my prayers just hit the ceiling, or I feel they do, my intimacy with God is obliterated. I'm lying to my friends about it because I don't want them to know my sin, so I feel alone. Oh, and did I mention that I'm lying to my girlfriend about it too? Sort of sounds like I've cheated on her, doesn't it?

If you're a Christian man who has looked at porn, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It feels as though you rolled around in mud, and then you're walking around with this film of dirt on you for the rest of the day. That feeling like you never really got to bed last night, and even when you take a shower, you still don't feel clean.

You would think most Christian men would feel this way.

Well, they don't. And these statistics, sad but true, are the proof of it.

51% of pastors admit that internet porn is a possible temptation.

Ok, sure, no problem, its a possible temptation for everybody. I've been called to the ministry and I'm sure once I get married it'll be a daily battle for me then too. This one isn't so shocking.

37% say it's a current struggle.

This one got me. 37% of our evangelical leaders struggle with pornography, probably because they have no accountability.

In a 2000 Christianity Today survey, 33% of clergy admitted to having visited a sexually explicit website. Over HALF visit them a few times a year, and 18% between a couple of times a month and MORE than ONCE a week.

And this is in 2000. Almost ten years ago. With internet porn on the rise, and how easy it is to access...well, I'll let you do the math on this one, my head hurts already thinking about it.

The Barna Group found that 29% of born again Christians feel that it's morally acceptable to view movies with explicit sexual behavior.

That's not porn, but it's the rated R films with the sex scenes, etc.

Those are some pretty big statistics. Big numbers for people who are supposed to be light bearers and servants.

But the real problem is, pastors and churches aren't talking about it. All Christians want to do is make people feel good and enable this gross misinterpretation of sex.

Why aren't pastors talking about this? I don't know, because it's dirty. Because no one wants to get some mud on their on hands. We'd all rather subscribe to the fake church smiles doctrine than really help people with it.

I'm pretty sure this porn thing is no going away, in fact is growing. The number of pornographic pages on the internet more than doubled from 1.3 million in 2003, to 2.4 million in 2006. It's hard to tell how many there are now. It's just all to easy to access.

Isn't it?

All kidding and satire aside, this fear of sex and discussion of sex in the church has to stop. Someone has to step up and bring this much glazed over topic to light, and save some relationships and families. With porn being so easy to access, and the age of kids seeing porn is getting smaller and smaller (average is age of first exposure is 11, the same age I was), it is no longer something that can be swept under the rug, or the mattress, rather...(rimshot), but someting that should be discussed in families, churches, and with friends, so that we can stop this way in which Satan attacks us. A great site to visit is www.xxxchurch.com, and I highly encourage anyone struggling with porn addiction to visit it...

It helped me out.

-Spencer