I know you’re a church leader, but do you truly know the gospel?

We love to be black-and-white don’t we? We love to be super clear on where we stand on complex issues. We know exactly what the Bible says about… [fill in the gap.]

We can talk intelligently, with rehearsed answers and memorised verses about all manner of social, ethical, and philosophical ideas. We know how to reduce complexity to a snappy soundbite.

We think this boldness on issues and our uniqueness in a relativistic world comes from the gospel’s influence in our lives.

But the world doesn’t need to hear ‘gospel-influenced’ answers if they don’t first hear – with the same levels of clarity, passion, conviction, and purpose – what the gospel itself is.

Does the gospel play second-fiddle to our pet hot topics?

A question surfaces then: If the gospel feels more like background, and doesn’t come up with the same passion or clarity as other topics, then are we truly crystal clear on what the gospel itself really is?

The gospel:

• Jesus came,
• He lived,
• He died,
• He rose,
• He ascended,
• and He is coming back.

It’s too easy to frame the gospel in ‘us’ terms, but the gospel is the celebration and proclamation of Jesus. This is His world, we are His people, and His name is the name above all names. It’s all about Him.

The gospel is all about Him.

Good Friday is all about Him.

Easter is all about Him.

We do feature and we’re scuppered without it, but it’s His story, and we are involved – wonderfully and graciously – in the radiance of that. It’s like this:

• Jesus came – God Incarnate – revealing the fullness of God to a broken world and ushering in a New Creation
• Jesus lived – a perfect and sinless life – fully keeping God’s law where we simply can’t
• Jesus died – the Sacrificial Lamb – a just human sacrifice for a human problem, and an eternal divine sacrifice to reach every human across space and time
• Jesus rose – resurrected not resuscitated – defeating death itself, revealing His victory and power, leading the way and carving the path for us to follow
• Jesus ascended – into Heaven to sit at God’s right hand – he is the ultimate King and Lord of the universe right now
• Jesus is coming back – He will return – to wipe every tear, defeat every injustice, and to establish the ultimate Creation world when Heaven and Earth finally meet, and the Spiritual and the Physical truly mix.

If you want to share the gospel, try and talk more about who Jesus is and what He has done, than you do about who we are and what we get from it. Believe me the world is inspired by Jesus, and they’ve seen too many self-help schemes to be interested without Him.

Those six things Jesus did represent the different movements or acts in the gospel story. We need to hold them together – as one narrative – carefully balancing each piece in tension as a whole. This is the story that moves mountains, heals the sick, and raises the dead. It’s the story at the centre of history and the foundation for every molecule of the universe. This story is the gravity of the ages. It’s powerful and rich and full because it’s truly His story.

I believe that you can trace every issue in a church, every difference in denomination, and certainly every ‘heresy’ to a misbalance in this story. Heavily leaning on one piece, while casually downplaying others, will inevitably create issues.

Heavily legalistic churches, for instance, often overemphasise the ‘Jesus lived’ bit, focusing on His behaviour and thus the requirement for ours. Prosperity churches will often focus heavily on the ‘victory’ aspects of the resurrection and ascension, subtly downplaying Jesus’ death. Closer to home (and maybe close to the bone) classically evangelical churches tend to focus in on the death and miss out on the fullness of the resurrection. Think about it – can you articulate why Jesus rose from the dead for you, just as well as you can why Jesus died on the cross for you?

This is not the right time to be fuzzy on who Jesus is. The gospel is the heartbeat of our lives and the cornerstone of our ministry. Are we fuzzy on the gospel as youth workers?

[The rest below is a fitting extract from Rebooted]

The Gospel and Youth Work

Have you ever heard someone who cannot tell a joke try desperately to put the moving parts together? They cram the punchline somewhere into the setup and end lamely with “but it’s funny! Why aren’t you laughing…” My favourite is when a friend of mine tried her hand at a classic:

“Hey Tim, a horse walked into the bar, and he had a long face. And the barman said… … … darn it!”

The gospel is a little like that! It is the good news, yet so many Christians cannot articulate the basic moving parts of it. That Jesus came, lived, died, rose, ascended is the most incredible event in all of history. Why does the question ‘what is the gospel’ get met with so many abstractions and so much fuzziness?

I often hear youth leaders at events telling young people that Jesus died for them. Brilliant! Please keep telling your young people that. However, the obvious question that arises from such a radical idea is why? Why did Jesus die for me?

The answer I often hear is because He loves you. And then they leave it there. Yes, but no, but yes, but no, but — ! Yes, it’s absolutely true that Jesus loves us, and loves us unconditionally, fully and completely! Yes, it’s true that His love drew Him to the cross, but love, in isolation, was not the reason He died. The punchline has been swallowed in the setup.

Let me put it this way: I love my wife, but killing myself is not really a very constructive expression of that love. There needs to be a reason that my love would express itself in that way… like pushing her out of the way of a car; or more heroically, diving in front of a speeding bullet. The reason my love would express itself in death would be to save her from it.

Fine, Jesus loved us so He died to save us. Is that enough? Well no. Save us from what? Why? When? Who? How does dying save us from anything anyway? And if he’s dead, how does it really matter to me? And did he stay dead? What did the resurrection actually accomplish other than proving he was God?

Jesus paid a substitutionary price for our sin and separation from God, being both the eternal sacrifice as divine and the just penalty as human. He died in our place, paying our debt. Then He rose again, defeating the powers and chains of death itself, unlocking the doors of eternity. This is the gospel.

Consider that,

The greatest sin ever committed was humanity nailing Jesus to the cross.

The greatest pain ever experienced was for Jesus to die in the absence of His father.

The greatest injustice ever was Jesus becoming the guilty one in our place. An injustice God transformed into the supreme act of righteousness.

The greatest act of love, mercy, grace, and beauty was Jesus surrendering himself to death for our sake.

The greatest victory ever achieved was the Holy Spirit raising Jesus up to life and promising to do the same for us.

This should be the greatest part of our lives, touching everything in it, and therefore the greatest portion of our teaching.

The cross bought our forgiveness, our justification, and our assurance of salvation. It cleared our record, disarmed Satan, and gave us permission to sit on God’s knee on the throne for eternity! How is this not all we talk about?

We need to live and breathe the Gospel in our saturation teaching; it should be at the absolute heart of all we teach. In fact, I’m going to challenge you that every passage in the Bible, properly understood in context, will tell you something of that gospel. It is the central action of all history, the most pivotal part of creation.

Our young people need this message of hope, love and beauty more than anything else. It is naturally relevant, it sits at the heart of everything the disciples did, and it is thoroughly expressed in how Jesus lived.