Scripture:
“Therefore: If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.
All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation-that is: In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself; not counting their trespasses against them, and; entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. For our sake he made Him to be sin (who knew no sin) so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Cor 5:17-21
Observation:
What is the Gospel? It is right here and it is all of a God of Grace’s doing.
Application:
I think that sometimes the Gospel is the most difficult thing to get my head around.
I can (and have) gotten it mixed up with “it’s all about me”, being heaven bound, getting stuff, being set free and not still bound up in sin-all of this about me, me, me. It seems to be the bane of American Christianity for a number of decades. It has been my speed bump to deal with for a long while.
But, while there are significant promises made by God to believers to be cherished, the Gospel isn’t about me. It is about Him and His Glory.
The basis of the Gospel is that the Triune God did something on His own divine prerogative that Man is incapable of doing-being reconciled to God. Man cannot atone for his sin. Man cannot draw near to God by his own effort and decision. Holiness cannot be approached by unholiness—without some change that must happen to man-being made into a new creation.
Before time began, the Triune God conceived a Plan to reconcile fallen Man to Himself. The Son would joyfully submit to the Father to die, to be a sacrifice, a propitiation, to atone for the sins of rebellious Man (Note that this was all before time began). (Note 2: I can’t say this from Scripture but the thought occurs to me that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, must have supported the Father and the Son through the execution of the Plan. Maybe. Sounds good. Sort of lines up with what we know about the Holy Spirit.)
Therefore, from this passage (and others), we can understand what the Gospel is AND why we can rejoice in it every day. The unchangeable God did it to reconcile the World, the Cosmos, to Himself and to have a people, priesthood, a holy nation, for His own possession that we may proclaim the Excellencies of Him who called us. (re: John 3:16 and I Peter 2:9)
So then, we preach the Gospel of reconciliation to: first the face in the mirror because we are so prone to forget it daily; then to each other for the same reason of forgetfulness; then to the next generation and; lastly to the populous. By studying the Gospel we learn to persuade men, not in mere salesmanship, but to the Glory of Him who reconciled us.
Lastly, to emphasize: We must habitually preach the Gospel to ourselves daily because we forget and make it a “so what?” moment. Make this a point of remembrance as was written a couple of Saturday’s ago.
Prayer:
Father, thank You for helping me to emphasize remembering the Gospel. If there was one thing that has made more production in my life it was the Gospel: reviewing every step; searching to uncover other steps relevant to the Gospel; how the Gospel permeates everything that I do and occurs around me; how the creation is subject to the Gospel; and so many things more. I cannot thank you enough for the Gospel and the Cross. AMEN.