Tag: Gospel

A Gospel Kind of Life

Re:Verse passage: Romans 12 (day six)

Coming out of Romans 1-11, it only makes sense that we would yield all of who we are in worship to such a big and glorious God. He defies comprehension! He literally sustains the universe and all human history by His word! So when we are reminded of what Jesus said to His disciples, “If you lose your life for my namesake, you shall find it,” it really is not to much to ask. Indeed it makes perfect sense.

And out of a life yielded to God comes the Gospel kind of life. We see the world with new eyes. We perceive the ways of God. We reap the reward of having the Holy Spirit active in our life. We lay down our own life, so that we might take it up again-just like Jesus!

Fairy Tales

Re:Verse reading–Romans 5:1-11 (day six)

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings,…” Romans 5:3

The Brothers Grimm wrote their fairy tales to provide a sense of escapism or present to their readers cautionary tales. Fairy tales are best when they impart some truth; acting as a sweet easy-to-swallow capsule to an otherwise unpleasant reality. And like medicine, you only use it when needed, or when you are eager to be swept away to another world.

The Gospel is nothing like a fairy tale. That’s Paul’s message in the first few verses of Romans 5. The Gospel is not a supplement to life, to be sprinkled here, or applied there as needed, no, the Gospel meets us in all of life, messy bits and all. It is not a sweet notion, or fashionable (or unfashionable) fairy tale, but is a gritty and real antidote to our most desperate brokenness. The Gospel is gritty; it is the clearest lens which to understand all of life, and it changes everything!

Deep Calls to Deep

Re: Verse reading–Romans 1:1–17 (day six)

On occasion someone will suggest to me that they need to swim away from the shallow shore of the Gospel into deeper theological waters. There is truth to that, of course. Both Paul and the writer of Hebrews write that Christians should move beyond spiritual milk to eating solid fare(Hebrews 5:2,1 Corinthians 3:2), although they seem far more concerned with Christians becoming fully discipled than having superior knowledge. From the beginning, Paul’s letter to the Romans makes it abundantly clear, once you have left the shore for deeper waters, when your toes can no longer touch the bottom, you discover that you haven’t moved beyond the Gospel at all, but are now submerged in its immeasurable depths. There is no part of life that the Gospel does not reach; it is our hermeneutic for all of life, the lens we peer through, the ocean in which we swim.

You don’t graduate from the Gospel, you dive into its depths. Will you join me? I can’t touch the bottom, but the water is just fine.