Gospel Grid

The gospel of Jesus is at the core of Christianity.

Christianity teaches that you can come to Jesus Christ even if you aren’t good and decent, even if you aren’t wonderful, and even if you don’t have a good record. Anybody, through Christ, can find God. Somebody says, ‘How can that be?’ Let me just put the gospel in a nutshell: because Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and died a perfect death, now God treats you, when you believe in Christ, as if you have done everything Jesus has done and you have suffered everything Jesus has suffered.

That means when you believe in Christ you’re adopted not on the basis of your record, but on his record. You’re adopted into the family and treated as if you’d accomplished everything he’s accomplished. That’s the gospel. Somebody says, ‘It’s too easy. You mean you just receive it?’ Yeah, but you have to receive it through repentance, and that’s what’s not easy at all. The only way to get to that peace is through paying the pain of repentance. This means giving up on your own efforts to find value, worth, significance, and security in yourself, and finding them instead in Jesus alone!

Take a look at the image above. Ideally, a follower of Jesus will continually grow in their awareness of God’s holiness AND grow in their awareness of personal sinfulness. We must learn to see God more as he actually is [Isaiah 6:1-5 & Isaiah 55:8-9], and we must learn to see ourselves more as we actually are [Jeremiah 17:9-10, Romans 3:10-23]. God is more pure, more holy, more majestic, and more worthy to be praised then we can know or imagine. Humans are more deceitful, more self-centered, more focused on being the master of our own lives then we often know or understand.

If we continually embrace both of these truths it can bring about a greater appreciation for what Jesus accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection. Without the cross, this growing chasm will lead to despair. With the cross, we can know God as continually more holy [set apart] and ourselves as more sinful [treasuring something else as ultimate in our lives], but we can then take comfort that Jesus loves us and paid the price to bring us into God’s family. We’ll call this step “maximizing the cross” in our life. This view, if driven by God’s grace, will produce more joy, hope, and thankfulness for all God has done in and through the work of Jesus.

Conversely, we can minimize the cross if we do not grow in our understanding of God’s holiness and our sinfulness. One of the traps on the road to spiritual growth is ceasing to grow in our knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. When this type of spiritual stall occurs it will often lead us away from seeing Jesus as more and more precious, powerful, and loving. Instead our view of Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross will become a stale and static belief that carries little weight in our lives beyond the casual affiliation with a church body.

Adapted from The Gospel-Centered Life, Thune and WalkerThe gospel of Jesus is at the core of Christianity.