You can take 4 minutes to listen to my reading of this post here:
If someone offered you a Shelby Mustang GT for $10 you’d be a fool not to take it.
If someone offered you a tire from the same car, that’s a different story.
Some things can’t be separated out for parts and keep their value. We must be vigilant to guard the Gospel from the world’s chop shop.
We recently looked at 3 important ways the Bible speaks of the Gospel, or Good News:
The Good News of God’s Big Story.
The Good News of Jesus’ Life Story.
The Good News of First Importance.
These 3 meanings of Gospel cannot be separated and sold for parts.
Dangerous mutations of the Gospel do exactly this.
Like someone rolling a tire pretending to drive a Mustang, they claim the Christian Gospel but have tragically detached from Gospel power.
A common mutation talks of God’s Big Story without the Good News of First Importance– Jesus’ death for sins, burial, and resurrection.
Let’s call this the Gospel of Big Story Only or the God-less Big Story.
A Gospel of Big Story Only has a way conveniently forgetting and revising God. The beauty and triumphs of the big story are only the victories that a current culture or specific person want to celebrate. God is conveniently winning in my image.
This is why rainbow flags can fly at a “church” or a “minister” can serve wearing a Planned Parenthood sash.
“God will end injustice!” is celebrated without the confrontation of Christ dying for our sins.
The standard for righteousness falls to me. The injustice is over there. The problem with the world is them.
The universal humbling of the Cross of Christ is removed and so is the hope. Only the God of the Bible and the Christ who makes Him visible is good enough to determine right and hold wrong accountable.
Pride month is just around the corner and many “Christian” denominations will wave flags and post slogans that preach a Big Story without God.
A God-less gospel with no repentance us and plenty of condemnation for them. A “good news” that fuels pride with affirmation instead of humility by repentance.
The Gospel of First Importance challenges each of us to see our place in God’s Big Story as rebels– Jesus died for our sins. In the Gospels Lord Jesus calls us to come and die that we might live. In the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ we can take our stand and live.
The true Gospel takes us from rebels to raised sons who walk in worship.
Christ died for our sins… this is the central act in how He puts an end to sin and evil in us.
It’s central to how Christ puts an end to evil everywhere!
We can’t separate the Gospel out for parts. We must keep the Gospel of First Importance connected to the Good News of God’s Big Story.