We had our first membership class at church last week, and it was really, really helpful. We covered a lot of material, but it isn’t really hard to sum it up: the gospel. The gospel is the central focus. It’s central in our own lives. It’s central to community. And it’s central to ministry.
This diagram presents the message in a way I’d never seen before:
And it basically covers the three essential areas of content in the gospel:
- God is holy, absolutely separate from evil.
- People are not.
- The cross is the bridge between the depth of our sin and the height of God’s holiness.
When we first become Christians, we are at the point of the diagram. We understand the basics of those three truths. But… and this is the really helpful part for me …as we continue in our faith, our understanding of God’s holiness increases and our sense of our own depravity deepens. In our experience we see the gap grow wider and wider.
What should happen when this disparity becomes more clear is a magnification of the cross and the work of Christ in the eyes of the believer. The power of the cross grows in our understanding and we give more glory to Jesus for what he’s accomplished for us. So the gospel is not something that we get down when we become Christians and then outgrow. It is central to the everyday walk of faith.
