Jesus preached the gospel but it wasn’t Jesus’ preaching that that made people take note. Jesus preformed the gospel – making the blind to see and the lame to walk but it wasn’t Jesus’ performance of the gospel that made people take note. What made people take note was the reality that Jesus was the gospel. Jesus was the good news who set the captives free. Jesus didn’t just bear the good news Jesus embodied it.
Jesus was the gospel.
Jesus didn’t say that you will preach as his witness, or that you will act as his witness, Jesus proclaimed that you are his witness. You are the gospel – for good or for ill – your life, your whole person, your entire being, proclaims your relationship with God.
If I am a Christ-follower, a Christian, that means that I am in Christ and Christ is in me.
I am the good news. I dare not limit the gospel to the presentation of objective truth (if we think we can still communicate objective truth) as through propositions in themselves bring transformation.
I dare not limit the gospel to displays of divine power or spiritual gifts. The gospel is infinitely holistic. Christ in you the hope of Glory.
Relationship invites transformation:
If you are in Christ and Christ is in you, you are the gospel, you are not the perfect gospel that is Christ. But no gospel you share is ever perfect, only Christ is. And the sharing of the gospel is nothing other than the sharing of yourself. Exactly the way Christ did. Christ did not come to served but to serve. He emptied himself of all that was rightly due him precisely because that is what love does. Christian love is emptying self for the sake of the other. Love lays down what everyone else is fighting to pick up. Christian life is decreasing so that Christ may increase. “greater love has no one than this, then a person lay down their life for a friend.
peace, dwight
