The Gospel E-Book

Ray Ortlund

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Building Healthy Churches
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 158

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

How does the church portray the beauty of Christ? The gospel is the greatest message of all time addressing the greatest need of all people. However, the good news about Jesus does more than just promise eternal life to all who believe. In the latest addition to the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series, pastor Ray Ortlund explains the gospel's power to transform individuals from the inside out and create beautiful human relationships. This short book helps readers experience the power of God as they are encouraged to trust in Christ and allow him to transform their beliefs, perspectives, and practices. For everyone who wants to be true to the Bible and honest with themselves, this book offers a practical guide to the fundamental teachings of the gospel and how they affect our relationships with others.

Leseprobe

BUILDING HEALTHY CHURCHES

THE GOSPEL

RAY ORTLUND

The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

Copyright © 2014 by Ray Ortlund

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Dual Identity inc.Cover image(s): Wayne Brezinka for brezinkadesign.com

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked JB are from The Jerusalem Bible. Copyright © 1966, 1967, 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and Doubleday & Co., Inc.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture references marked NLT are from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Ill., 60189. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4083-7 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4086-8 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4084-4Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4085-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ortlund, Raymond C.

   The gospel : how the church portrays the beauty of Christ / Ray Ortlund.

        1 online resource. – (9marks: building healthy churches)

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

   ISBN 978-1-4335-4084-4 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4085-1 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4086-8 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4083-7 (print)

   1. Jesus Christ–Person and offices.  I. Title.

BV203

262–dc23

2014005113

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Immanuel Church, where gospel doctrine and gospel culture converge, for God’s glory alone

CONTENTS

CoverNewsletter Sign UpEndorsementsSeries ListTitle PageCopyright PageDedicationSeries PrefaceForeword by J. I. PackerIntroduction 1 The Gospel for You 2 The Gospel for the Church 3 The Gospel for Everything 4 Something New 5 It Isn’t Easy, But It Is Possible 6 What We Can Expect 7 Our Path ForwardSpecial ThanksNotesGeneral IndexScripture Index9Marks: Building Healthy Churches9Marks: Building Healthy Churches SeriesBack Cover

SERIES PREFACE

The 9Marks series of books is premised on two basic ideas. First, the local church is far more important to the Christian life than many Christians today perhaps realize.

Second, local churches grow in life and vitality as they organize their lives around God’s Word. God speaks. Churches should listen and follow. It’s that simple. When a church listens and follows, it begins to look like the One it is following. It reflects his love and holiness. It displays his glory. A church will look like him as it listens to him.

So our basic message to churches is, don’t look to the best business practices or the latest styles; look to God. Start by listening to God’s Word again.

Out of this overall project comes the 9Marks series of books. Some target pastors. Some target church members. Hopefully all will combine careful biblical examination, theological reflection, cultural consideration, corporate application, and even a bit of individual exhortation. The best Christian books are always both theological and practical.

It’s our prayer that God will use this volume and the others to help prepare his bride, the church, with radiance and splendor for the day of his coming.

FOREWORD

Satan, in his wicked way, is a shrewd strategist. C. S. Lewis reminded us of this in The Screwtape Letters, and the apostle Paul clearly never forgot it (e.g. 2 Cor. 2:11; 11:14). Sherlock Holmes spoke of Professor Moriarty as the “Napoleon of crime,” and we do well to think of Satan as the “Napoleon of sin.” Satan stays active, keeping pace with God, cunningly aiming to spoil God’s work and to thwart his plans to do good for his people and bring praise to his name. So the church must ever be at war with Satan, since Satan is always at war with it—with us who believe.

Today, God is renewing within the church a concern for a deeper knowledge of his truth in Scripture and of his love in Christ. Yet already it is observable that Satan seeks to derail this concern by causing trouble in the congregations that possess it. We can be certain, moreover, that he will keep on doing this as long as the renewal of orthodoxy continues. And so books that call for authentic, Christ-centered faith to show itself in Christlike beauty of life—books like this one—become very significant for the Christian cause at this time.

It seems beyond question that we believers do not think often enough, or hard enough, about the culture of our congregations. Culture, a word borrowed from sociology, means the public lifestyle that expresses a shared mindset and convictions held in common. A church’s culture should be orthopraxy expressing orthodoxy. It should look like self-giving love for others that in turn reflects the sacrificial love for us of Jesus Christ our Savior and our Lord.

By hammering home the reality of this, our cultural calling, and reminding us that Christian belief minus Christian culture is real hypocrisy, Dr. Ortlund renders us good and needed service. May his words be heard and taken to heart.

J. I. PackerBoard of Governors’ Professor of Theology Regent College

INTRODUCTION

Evangelion (what we call “the gospel”) is a Greek word, signifying good, merry, glad and joyful news, that makes a man’s heart glad and makes him sing, dance and leap for joy.1

William Tyndale

William Tyndale, the pioneer translator of the Bible into English, wrote those delightful words in 1525. And he sealed them with a martyr’s death. What a world we live in, that something so happy would be so hated! But so it is.

As Tyndale pointed out, the very form of the Greek word translated “gospel” means good news.2 The gospel is not law, demanding that we pay our own way. The gospel is a welcome announcement, declaring that Jesus paid it all. It’s like a long-awaited telephone call. When the phone finally rings, we grab the phone and eagerly take that call. This gospel is a message to be proclaimed and believed (Mark 1:14–15). It is the point of the whole Bible (Gal. 3:8). It comes from God above (Gal. 1:11–12). It is worthy of our utmost (Phil. 1:27–30).

This good news is more than good vibes. This message has specific content. It can and must be defined, and from the Bible alone. Every generation must pick up their Bibles and rediscover the gospel afresh for themselves and rearticulate the ancient message in their own words for their own times. We are in just such a time of active gospel rediscovery, and it is exciting to be involved.

Here is the essential message Bible-believing people rally around:

God, through the perfect life, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, rescues all his people from the wrath of God into peace with God, with a promise of the full restoration of his created order forever—all to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Salvation from the judgment of God into fellowship with God is all of God. It is not of us. That is good news indeed! And this gospel is widely known and sincerely preached in our churches today.

SOMETHING TROUBLING

But here is something troubling. If a message so good lies at the defining center of our churches, why do we see such bad things in those same churches—ranging from active strife to sheer exhaustion? Where is the saving power of the gospel? Why don’t we see more of Tyndale’s singing, dancing, and leaping for joy in our churches, if the good news is setting the tone?

In his prophetic book Witness, Whittaker Chambers tells of a young German woman whose father had been fervently pro-Communist. Then he became strongly anti-Communist. Why? She said: “You will laugh at me, but you must not laugh at my father. One night, in Moscow, he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams.”3

This happens in our churches too. People come to hear good news. But then they hear screams. They hear cries of anguish and distress in churches that preach the gospel in concept but inflict pain in reality. That is shocking, but it is not new. The prophet Isaiah writes:

The vineyard of the LORD Almightyis the house of Israel,

and the men of Judahare the garden of his delight.

And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;

for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. (Isa. 5:7, NIV)

How many people in our cities are ex-Christians, and even strongly anti-Christian, because they went to church to hear “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) but it was drowned out by strife and trouble?

Let’s not assume that our churches are faithful to the gospel. Let’s examine whether they are. After all, “Every institution tends to produce its opposite.”4 A church with the truth of the gospel in its theology can produce the opposite of the gospel in its practice. The risen Lord said to one of his churches, “You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17). The problem was not what they believed doctrinally but what they had become personally, and they didn’t even realize it. Yet it was obvious to the Lord: “I know your works” (Rev. 3:15). Therefore, they needed to go to Christ with a new humility, openness, and honesty.

THE TEST OF A GOSPEL-CENTERED CHURCH

Not long after his life-altering crisis of faith, brought on by the personal ugliness he saw in his denomination, Francis Schaeffer wrote an article entitled “How Heresy Should Be Met.” Here is his main point:

The final problem is not to prove men wrong but to win them back to Christ. Therefore, the only ultimately successful apologetic is, first, a clear, intellectual statement of what is wrong with the false doctrine, plus a clear, intellectual return to the proper scriptural emphasis, in all its vitality and in its relation to the total Christian Faith, plus a demonstration in the life that this correct and vital scriptural emphasis meets the genuine needs and aspirations of men in a way that Satan’s counterfeit does not.5

So the test of a gospel-centered church is its doctrine on paper plus its culture in practice—“a demonstration in the life that this correct and vital scriptural emphasis meets the genuine needs and aspirations of men.” If a church’s gospel culture has been lost, or was never built, the only remedy is found at the feet of Christ. That church needs a fresh rediscovery of his gospel in all its beauty. It needs to prayerfully reconsider every­thing it believes and practices. Nothing is gained by merely repackaging the church in forms more attractive to outsiders.

First and foremost, the gospel of Christ must be fully believed and embraced by our churches. That is more profound than a momentary upsurge of enthusiasm. The need of our times is nothing less than the re-Christianization of our churches, according to the gospel alone, in both doctrine and culture, by Christ himself. Nothing less than the beauty of Christ will suffice today, though what a renewed church will look like might, at present, lie beyond our imaginations.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

The purpose of this book, then, is simple. I want to show how Christ puts his beauty into our churches by his gospel. That explains the title of this book: The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ. Beauty is powerful. Our churches long for it. You and I long for it. And we can help our churches see it. We possess, in the gospel alone, God’s wonder-working resources for the display of Christ among us. And as you read, I hope you find yourself thrilled with the beauty of Christ. That’s my ultimate goal.

So this is a book about the gospel, yes. But more specifically, it’s about how the gospel can shape the life and culture of our churches so that they portray Christ as he really is, according to his gospel.

I believe that A. W. Tozer’s ironic quip from a generation ago still holds: “A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years.”6 What is there in our churches that deserves to survive? What is there in our churches that can survive? Any church of any denomination today that falls short of the gospel of Christ in either doctrine or culture will inevitably collapse under the extreme pressures of our times.

My own dear dad said in a sermon years ago, “Only an awakened church . . . only people in a revived condition are going to make a dent on this society.”7 The gospel alone works with the power of God (Rom. 1:16). Everything else, everything less, will be swept away, and rightly so.

Let’s set all lesser things aside and prayerfully, before the Lord, rediscover his powerful gospel, while we still can.