Fundamentally, our Lord’s message was Himself. He did not come merely to preach a Gospel; He Himself is that Gospel. He did not come merely to give bread; He said, “I am the Bread.” He did not come merely to shed light; He said, “I am the Light.” He did not come merely to show the door; He said, “I am the Door.” He did not come merely to name a shepherd; He said, “I am the Shepherd.” He did not come merely to point the way; He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
The real truth is that while He came to preach the gospel, His chief object in coming was that there might be a gospel to preach.
Surely Paul could have made the gospel more palatable – and less dangerous – by saying it was about something else. Something cleaner and less ridiculous than the cross. Something more glorious. Less disgusting. He didn’t do that, though. “I decided,” Paul said, “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). In the face of the worst cultural prejudice imaginable, he fixed the entire gospel squarely and immovably on the fact that Jesus was tacked to a stauros and left to die. If he had been trying to find a surefire way to turn first-century people off from his “good news,” he couldn’t have done better than that! So why did he do it? It’s simple. He did it because he knew that leaving the cross out, or running past it with a glance, or making it peripheral to the gospel, or allowing anything else to displace it at the center of the gospel would make it, finally, no gospel at all.
The Gospel – God’s Self-Substitution for Sinners by Greg Gilbert, taken from Don’t Call it a Comeback, edited by Kevin DeYoung, copyright 2011, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org, page 73. Get this book!
The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a Person who is the Truth.
The Christian Gospel is about “the glory of Christ,” not about me. And when it is – in some measure – about me, it is not about my being made much of by God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making much of Him forever.
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Crossway, 2004, p. 16.
