The Gospel

Hello family, friends and anyone else that may read this blog!

I am beyond words excited for this post!! I am going to talk about THE GOSPEL.

If that scares anyone I pray that you consider continuing to read but don't by any means feel pushed to read, but I hope that you do. I am going to share my experience with the Gospel and also inform great truths from Matt Chandler about the Gospel. He came and spoke to us this week about the power of the Gospel and how it should still relate to us now as believers and then gave compelling truths of what the Gospel is and how to give the fullness of the Gospel to non-believers. This post may take some time to read because of the truth that is packed into it and the length as well. So with that said, I am going to get right to it.

We as an Institute Class got the awesome opportunity to have Matt Chandler be our teacher this week. His topic was The Gospel. He was with us for three days and it was jammed packed with preaching from the Bible about what the fullness of The Gospel is.

If anyone is reading this and they have absolutely no idea what I am talking about then read this paragraph. The Gospel is the good news, John 3:16-17 and Romans 6:23. The Bible is a book written by the one true God to tell of His creation (us), man’s sin(Fall), calling His people and their history (Israel/Jews), the redemption of mankind through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, through death on a cross then the resurrection of life after three days (Gospel), and then the spreading of the hope and salvation of sins we can receive from the faith of Jesus through the letters written to explain Christ following living (disciple). That is the very very short version of the Gospel and now you are ready to go more in detail with me rewriting what Matt Chandler taught us this week.

These are the small take a ways I have from the incredible truth revealing 9 hours of Matt speaking. This by no means is everything that he talked about but what I would like to share with you these things because they have affected me in some way.

Matt Chandler took two approaches/views to teaching us about the Gospel.
1. A view that was up close and he related it to like a walk in the park.
= God - Man - Christ - Response
2. A view that was further back and he related it to being in the air looking at a town
= Creation - Fall - Reconciliation - Consummation
So now I am going to go back to the first viewpoint of the Gospel. It was so much fun to listen to Matt share about the fullness of God. I didn’t realize how unaware I was of the fullness of who God is. He took us to the passage of Romans 11:33-36 and walked verse by verse about the character of God.

BUT before he did this I was blown away by this truth - God Likes Us. I understand that God Loves Me and that is why He sent His Son to be the Savior for my sins and I was taught the song - Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so…Yes Jesus Love me and so on But I thought I had to be good, I thought I was becoming that person God and Jesus would love one day. The sanctification process is us going through refinement to be more like Christ and we don’t understand that during that time we are still liked and loved by God because of who Christ is Ephesians 2:1-10. God likes us now and wants a relationship with who we are now. The Gospel is not us cleaning our self up and then telling God we are good enough, because of what we did, for Him to save us. NO, we are liked now.

Okay back to God and Romans 11:33-36. Matt walked us through and I loved it but don’t have enough time or space or length for your attention span to write about all the verses in detail. So, because of that I will rewrite the truth that hit home the most for me when Matt spoke about God. God is for God. Okay, I did know this but not the fullness of it what so ever. God is for God. Wow, even with me writing it right now I am amazed by those three words and four-word phrase. God is for God. Psalm 23:1-3 “…For His name’s sake.” 1 Corinthians 10:31 “…do all for the glory of God.” And once I start to wrap my small brain around this truth I begin to see how it affects me.
1. Glad obedience to the Lord - this is because He doesn’t take things away from me rather He is leading me to the fullness of pleasure. If I know my boundaries of pleasure that are ones that give fullness than I will enjoy them - the boundaries push me to seek God and His Glory. That is when I have true obedience and pleasure in life.
2. I get over myself. I am such a selfish being. All humans are it is the sin that is in us to get what we want, when we want it and through any means to get it by. This is a frustrating process because you automatically wake up expecting the day to be about you in some way. This hit me so hard as a type A personality who literally plans my full day out. When I understand that God is for God and the fullness of that I see how I am so selfish and insufficient outside of God’s will and it leads me to die to self. This is then when I start to understand that freedom in life is through God being for God. It isn’t about me it is about God.

From there we talked about man. Matt took us to Romans 1:21-32 and walked verse by verse through this passage to explain the sinfulness of man and the outcome for it and the response that God has for it. Matt explained how through these verses we understand 3 very important aspects of man’s character.
1. We prefer the creation over the Creator.
2. We believe we are smarter than God and in essence believe we are better than God.
3. We fail to acknowledge God as the giver of all things.
Also Matt explained how God response was letting men decide for themselves what is right even though He wanted them to seek Him. And our rejection of God lead to the men and women removing Him from their lives, and falling into some deep sin. Homosexuality, Murder, Malice, Arrogance, Disobedience to Parents, Untrustworthy and others. All together man is sinful and each of us have sins that display the three points up above and ultimately we are separated from God because of our choice to seek freedom and satisfaction else where from God. Our sin separates and fractures the relationship God desires with us.

Because of our sin God has two different responses that we can choose from for our personal lives and how we want to be punished for our sin. Remember God is for God so because we as sinners have defiled His name there is punishment for that act of defiance.
(This order is not significant and don’t look into it further than me just talking about one and then the other, both are important to understand God better)
1. Hell
2. Christ
Hell, is the total reject of God. Luke 16:19-31. Hell will not be a fun place Matthew 18:8-9 and there are two ways to view Hell as Matt taught us. Internal Torment and The Degree that God Sees Sin as Offensive to Him. Hell is the absence of God and we know this from the beginning of this post that God is everything Romans 11:33-36.

Christ Jesus
• Jesus is the Son of God = Matthew 1:21-23, Mark 1:1, Luke 1:34-35 & 3:22, John 1:1
• Jesus is the Son of man = Matthew 1:1, Luke 1:31-32, John 1:14
• Jesus is a gift of grace from God = Romans 6:23 & John 3:16-17 & Ephesians 2:4-8 & Romans 3:21-26
• Jesus is perfect = Hebrews 4:15 & 1 John 3:5
• Jesus is the sacrifice of our sin = Romans 8:1-3 & 1 John 4:9-10 & 1 John 2:2 & Ephesians 5:2 & Romans 3:21-26
• Jesus is our way of salvation through faith alone = Colossians 1:19-23 & Philippians 3:7-12 & Hebrew 5:9 & Romans 3:28
• Jesus is our righteousness = Romans 5:18-21 & Philippians 3:7-12

Okay, That is so awesome!!!! I love that we are given as a gift - salvation from the punishment of our sins. WOW!! I don’t do anything physical for it and I don’t have to act a certain way, all I am called to do is have Faith in who Christ Jesus is. That is it - Galatians 2:16.
This faith is the very thing we do to die to our sinful character. Remember we as sinners prefer creation over the Creator, think we are smarter than God hence better and hence don’t need Him in our lives, and we fail to acknowledge Him as the giver of all things. In short, SELFISH and PRIDEFULL and NEARSIGHTED and ARROGENT and ________ (Insert your sin that makes you rule and not God, for me it is CONTROLING.) So Faith is us contradicting our sinful character and allowing Christ to be the bridge to bring our relationship right again with God. With Jesus we experience true freedom.

This is so powerful and I hope you understand a little better the power or that an aspect of the Gospel has resonated in your heart to exam more in your own personal walk with the Lord or make this now apart of your life for the first time.

I want to tell of the great new of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, our Savior, our Righteousness, our Sacrifice, and our Gift from God. Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Telling the Gospel even to believers is needed. We so easily forget what it is we are doing with our lives. We start to fall into making it about us, so being reminded of the Gospel is an essential part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I now need to make sure my grader knows my answers for the assignment question for this week.
What are three things that I think someone needs to know about salvation?
1. God likes us
2. God is for God
3. Faith alone in Christ is the redemption of all sin

I talked about these three things throughout the blog post and it is bolded and under it is more information of why I think it is important to know.

Thank you for reading if you did and I hope and pray that God spoke to you, not any of my words written. Don’t be afraid to ask God to reveal areas in your life that you are not living in faith and rather in sin. It is a humbling experience.