Most people think being Gospel centered is stupid -- it is stating the obvious! We all believe the Gospel so why keep talking about it?
There are two problems with this:
#1 Most of us think that the Gospel is something similar to the Four Spiritual Laws. While that is certainly an element of the Gospel -- it is only part of the story. If it is just Jesus died for me so I can be forgiven, then it is silly to keep harping on this. But the Gospel is more. As my friend said so well, "The theme of the NT is simple: Jesus, the Son of God has come, he died on the cross, he was buried, and he rose again from death -- now live in light of that." The Gospel is multi-faceted and each situation calls forth new insight and application.
#2 We have not learned to see the richness of the Gospel -- and I want to give an example.
A number of years ago I was facing a deep inner battle with bitterness toward someone. I had some notion that it was there but I had no idea why or how severe it was. The message of the Gospel called me to not trust my own evaluation, to kill a desire to preserve my good reputation (I mean if people know a pastor is that bitter, they will not respect him), and to seek the help of others.
I laid out my situation to some friends who would be faithful to my soul. Then I told them I wanted and needed their help -- the Gospel opposes all self-sufficiency. In the ten minutes that followed they helped me see the reason I was so angry with this person -- they were always doing things that interrupted my life. They were inconvenient to me. Yes, it took ten minutes -- after three months of trying to figure it out on my own. That is how blind I was to my own heart.
But they pressed beyond that and they applied the Gospel. It would have been so easy to tell me to stop being angry, to tell me to repent of my pride. That is all moralistic and true -- but less than Gospel driven. I knew it all too.
One of them asked a question that burst into my soul -- "The cross was an inconvenience to God, wasn't it?" In an instant i saw the depth of my sin -- that I would treat this person with a harshness which, if God had done to me, I would have perished. I saw my pettiness -- and I imagined how often my actions and words are an interruption in the divine plan -- how often I am inconvenient to God. But he does not lash out -- rather he absorbs my sin and the wrath I deserve into himself.
In that instant my sin fell away from my heart -- I was free. And I was tested shortly after when their actions once again inconvenienced me -- but this time the angry response was gone. I now saw more clearly how God must see my sin.
The Gospel meant I could not trust myself to see the problem, to fix the problem, or to see how the Gospel applied. The fruit was a new vista into the heart of God revealed in the cross and the empty tomb.
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