From the Heart of the Pastor

As we continue to think about those essential attributes of a healthy church, the third through the fifth of these marks all focus on a similar theme.  That theme is nothing other than the gospel itself.  We must know the gospel, experience the gospel, and share the gospel.  Obviously, the first of these steps is knowing the gospel or understanding the gospel.  A healthy church has a biblical understanding of the good news.  We use that term gospel or good news so much; we are in danger of misusing the term or worse forgetting its meaning altogether.  Forgetting the gospel is unthinkable for the believer because is it the very core of our belief and being.  In fact the gospel as the good news of God’s redemption and saving work is the very focus of the entire universe.
          The story of the gospel starts with God.  God is the creator.  He is good and holy, sovereign and powerful, loving and merciful.  In the beginning he created the heavens and the earth.  If we have spent any time in church life we know this truth, but we often misunderstand why God created the universe.  Simply put, it was and is for his glory.  He created the world perfect and without sin.  God said his creation was good meaning it could not be improved upon.
          As this story of redemption continues, we encounter a road block.  Man is the problem.  Man was made in God’s image reflecting the glory of the creator, but sin entered the world and with it death.  Because of our sin we have a broken relationship of separation from the God who created us to glorify him.  This is a key reality.  We are broken.  In fact, the bible says man in his sinfulness is not only a slave to sin, but he is dead in his sin.
          Good News!  God has provided a redeeming solution to this problem of sin and separation from the beauty and love of God.  He is the solution in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ.  See, Jesus did what Adam had failed to do and what you failed to do.  He was perfectly obedient to the Father, even unto death.  In that death Jesus paid the penalty of death for sin, for all who would come to him in saving faith and repentance.  Jesus drank fully the cup of wrath due me for my rebellion.  This is a love story of the highest order.  The hero is our redeemer, God himself in the flesh, fully God and fully man.
          Finally, this amazing story – this amazing grace - demands a response.  That response is our faith and repentance otherwise known as conversion that we will examine more closely next time.
          A biblical understanding of the good news is at the heart of the mission of the church.  Are we communicating clearly that the sovereign of the universe has supplied the remedy for death?  Or are we presenting Jesus as a band-aid or an additive to an otherwise pretty good life?  Is Jesus the icing on the cake of your life, or is he the cake and the icing and the plate the cake rests upon?  If people don’t understand sin, they can’t understand the good news of the gospel.  Let’s affirm our biblical understanding of the grand, glorious, and great gospel of a risen Lord victorious over death.
 
In Christ,
Blain Craig

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