There’s a lot of talk about “Cross-centeredness”…as if the death of Christ is more important than the life of Christ.
Christ’s death is not the center of the gospel any more than his life is the center of the gospel. One without the other fails to bring about redemption.
It is one thing to affirm the gospel; It is something altogether different to experience it’s power where the rubber meets the road.
Reflecting on Colossians 1.6, Tullian Tchividjian, in his book Jesus + Nothing = Everything, offers this poignant perspective about the present practicality of the gospel:
The gospel represents both the nature of Christian growth and the basis for it. Whatever progress we make in our Christian lives – whatever going onward, whatever pressing forward – the direction will always be deeper into the gospel, not apart from it, not aside from it. Growth in the Christian life is the process of receiving Christ’s “It is finished” into new and deeper parts of our being every day, and it happens as the Holy Spirit daily carries God’s good word of justification into our regions of unbelief – what one writer calls our “un-evangelized territories”.
How I wish – and pray – more people would realize this. Too many pulpits – conservative and heterodox alike – proclaim alternatives to the gospel – counterfeit gospels, really. They do this because it sells. The masses are in need of a remedy only an increasing application of the gospel is able to supply, but they clamor for placebos – spiritual sugar pills.
May I always be mindful of Paul’s words:
To reach people in our day, the gospel will have to be distinguished from moralism, because moralism is what most people outside the church think Christianity is all about – rules and standards and behavior and cleaning yourself up. Millions of people, both inside and outside the church, believe that the essential message of Christianity is: “If you behave, then you belong.” From a human standpoint, that’s why most people reject Christianity.
GRACE & PEACE 