When Paul planted the church in Corinth, his method was simple — preach Christ and Him crucified. Paul was able to clearly and courageously call people to repent and align themselves with the true King, Jesus, and the church in Corinth was born. Our job as witnesses today is the same — preach Christ and Him crucified with courage and clarity.

And while courage comes with time, clarity takes effort. Most of us have an incomplete gospel story. We tend to emphasize one part over another, and often miss out on the depth and complexity of what salvation really is. To become effective witnesses who clearly and courageously preach the gospel, we must learn the full gospel story: Jesus has come to rule and reign over the world through His death and resurrection, and anyone can live in the Kingdom here on earth and into eternity if they repent from their sins and align themselves with Him.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 This almost will be a little bit more of a lecture than a sermon, but I think it’ll end well. You guys with me today? All right. Open your Bibles to one Corinthians chapter two.

No matter how your week went, I want you to know God the Father loves you. Jesus Christ is sufficient and supreme in the Holy Spirit can transform your life from the inside out if you let ’em. So let’s let ’em, Hey, let’s stand together in honor of reading God’s word. That’s why everybody is still standing if you’re new here.

First Corinthians chapter two. We wanna honor the reading of God’s word by reading it out loud as we stand. First Corinthians chapter two, we’re gonna read the first five verses, holy Spirit, come and teach us. When I came to you, brothers and sisters announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom.

I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear. And in much trembling my speech and my preaching, were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with the demonstration of the spirit’s power so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Let’s pray. God, that’s exactly what we want today. Your power, not our own. We ask you, God, that you would clear up some misunderstandings we have of the gospel. Would you give us courage, God, to preach the gospel to bear witness of how you have changed our life? And God, I just pray that today there’ll be people here in this room that finally surrender at your feet.

Say yes to the gospel. God, we ask you in these next moments together, would you cut us to the heart? In Jesus’ name, everyone says. Amen. Amen. Y’all, are you freezing? You guys can have a seat. Uh, you guys are amazing. You’re waiting. I’m cold, but that’s okay. ’cause we’re gonna preach on hell. No, I’m kidding.

That’s not my plan. That’s not how I, that’s not how I should have started. All right guys. In the book of Acts, we learn why and how Paul visits Corinth, and I think it’s really helpful context. So just before heading in Corinth, where we get first and second Corinthians in Acts 18, one, we see Paul, he actually creatively bears witness to the gospel in Athens in Acts chapter 17.

If you’re with us last year we talked about that. In fact, I think Pastor Caleb taught on Acts 17. What he does in Athens is Paul debates with the epicurean and stoic philosophers. He eloquently quotes Greek poets. He even builds a bridge from the altar of this unknown God. And segues that to Jesus and the resurrection.

But what’s fascinating about the end of Acts 17, we learned it all kind of falls flat. There’s no sweeping revival. Some people turn to the way of Jesus, but ultimately he’s ridiculed and he’s run off. And so he leaves Athens. We actually believe he was very discouraged because Jesus himself appears in Corinth and tells him, don’t fear, keep going.

You’re doing the right thing. But he leaves Athens and arrives in Corinth. And Corinth is another city that’s obsessed with eloquence status and spectacle. But this time Paul changes his strategy. He doesn’t go to the epicurean and stoics. He doesn’t quote Greek poets. Instead, as we just read, quote, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom.

I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Essentially what Paul does is he stops getting clever and he starts getting clearer. If you’re with us at the beginning of the year, in our fourth quarter, fourth, uh, soil series, we argued the two major obstacles we will face as witnesses of the gospel is, number one, a lack of courage.

And number two, a lack of clarity. Courage. It’s hard to share the gospel to your non-believing friends. And our prayer is that honestly, God alone just gives you courage. But we as a community, if we’re doing this together, we will give each other encouragement. But today I wanna zero in on the importance of clarity.

How do we clearly not always cleverly? How do we clearly talk about the gospel? It’s so important for us that we added it into our working definition. Working definition will be on the screen that we’ve been focusing on all month.   📍 The practice of witness is leading from your witness. To talk clearly about the gospel and leaning into your weakness to invite others into God’s grace.

 We are taking one week at a time. Today, of course, is talking clearly about the gospel. Now here’s what’s fascinating. If you were to read all of the New Testament, the gospel message always stays the same, and yet rarely, if ever, is it presented the exact same way twice. Paul doesn’t preach the gospel to Jews in Jerusalem the same exact way he preaches to the philosophers in Athens.

Peter doesn’t speak to the Roman soldiers the exact same way he speaks to the Sanhedrin. Why? Because the gospel doesn’t fit neatly into a one size fits all elevator pitch. We wanna argue today it’s a story. That must be understood. It’s a story that must be contextualized and communicated clearly. Hear me, in every culture and in every generation, one of our favorite theologians in t Wright, he puts it this way, quote,   📍 part of the genius of genuine Christianity is that each generation has to think it through afresh precisely because.

So Christians believe God wants every single Christian to grow up in understanding as well as trust. The Christian faith has never been something that one generation can sort out in such a way as to leave their successors with no work to do.  Church our generation has a lot of sorting out to do because in our cultural moment,   📍 talking clearly about the gospel is harder than you think.

Because we are way weirder than you think,  and that’s not an insult. It’s a diagnosis. Andrew Wilson in his wonderful book, it’s actually about the founding of America. It’s a fascinating read called Remaking the World. He argues we’re living in a weirder world and that as actually a acrostic. We w Western the next slide, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, ex Christian and romantic.

Not all of these things are bad. In fact, I’m so happy to live in a western weirder world. However, this has all sorts of implications in how we’re supposed to preach the gospel. Let me name a few. Since we are Western, we are far more individualistic than the audience of the Bible. Every time in the Bible, when we read you, we think me, when they read you, they thought y’all, they always read it in the context of community.

As a result, here’s what’s happened, especially in how we present the gospel. We have boiled down the gospel so much. We think the gospel is just personal salvation, and then we wonder. Why the church seems optional to so many Christians. Why justice reconciliation with your neighbor seems so optional.

It’s because we have so personalized the gospel. It’s just for me and Jesus. Since we’re industrialized, we prize speediness over slowness. We want God to change things, but only in moments, certainly not over marathons. And so we grow tired of waiting on God and so we take matters into our own hands or we reduce the gospel to a transaction.

Hey, just say this prayer and you’ll get into heaven instead of a transformation. Hey, heaven will slowly get into you. As ex Christians, we are as a society, an ex Christian society, which means we think we know what biblical words mean, like kingdom salvation and eternal life. So our language may sound Christian, your non-believing friend may say, yes, I’ve heard of salvation before, but our definitions are usually often far from biblical.

We’re romantic. And that doesn’t mean you’re a great husband. What romantic means is our north star is not following Jesus. It’s following our heart. So then when we read passages like deny yourself, we find that to be oppressive. Submission is our archaic. And so if we follow Jesus, if and when we do that, we will do it as long as it feels right.

So all of that to say, we’re weird, y’all. We’re weirder than you think. And that makes the gospel even harder to share than you think. And I don’t want this to discourage you from sharing the gospel, but we need clarity. You. So if Paul were alive today and he went to America, would he still say, quote, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Is it enough to stand on the corner with a sign that says, Jesus died for your sins? Believe. See,   📍 Jesus Christ and Him crucified is a fitting gospel slogan. As long as we’re not forgetting the gospel story.  And I believe in a weirder culture. We know the slogans, but we have forgotten the story. Let’s boil down that statement.

Jesus Christ and him crucified. Who is Jesus Friends? Jesus is not just a good teacher. Jesus literally means Yeshua. The God who saves, the one who came down in the flesh. Did you know Christ is not a last name? It’s his title. It’s the Messiah. The long weighted one that Israel often kept looking for through the prophets and the writings of the Old Testament crucified is not just a crucifixion, something we wear as jewelry.

It’s an actual event based in history by which he died for us, meaning he led us back to union with God. He died with us, meaning he fully entered into our suffering and he sympathizes with us in our weakness, and he died instead of us, meaning he took on the punishment of sin and gave us his righteousness.

See, I think the biggest litmus test, as you can tell a lot about the gospel, you proclaim. By the disciples, it produces what kind of disciples is our gospel producing today? It’s such a big deal to us. It’s why we always open every week. Hey, we’re not here to make tenders. We’re here to make disciples of the way of Jesus Dallas Willard.

He has this question that rocked my world and it actually made us change everything we do a few years ago, ’cause I wasn’t so sure I had a good answer to this question. He says, quote,   📍 does the gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus?

 That’s the question we must answer. If we are going to be faithful witnesses in a weirder world currently, the results are not too inspiring. Happy Sunday everyone. Are you feeling good? We have to balance all of this with the parables of the four soils. The parable of four soils, we argued, kind of anchored our entire year of 2025.

And let me just remind you, because of the parable of four soils, you and I could talk very clearly about the gospel, and yet some hearts will be resistant. They will have a first soil heart where it goes in one year and goes out the other. You can preach the gospel beautifully, perfectly, humbly, and yet some people’s hearts are shallow, so they will respond with joy.

They will run to the altar. They will pray the prayer, but they run the moment. Persecution arises because of the word. Some of us, we can talk clearly about the gospel, and yet we are preaching to third soil hearts where their hearts are crowded. They love Jesus, but they also love so many other things.

And so Jesus warns some of them. They have thorns of the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things eventually overtakes their affection for Jesus and chokes them out from living a fruitful life. So fourth soil hearts, they are receptive and they will bear fruit.

But I would argue today it requires us to sow the right seed. If you have the perfect soil, but the wrong seed, it doesn’t produce gospel fruit. So are we sharing the gospel story that saves? Are we sharing the seed that actually leads to growth? Jesus Christ and him crucified? That is a faithful gospel slogan, but only if we know the fool gospel story.

And that’s why Paul offers further nuance. One Corinthians chapter two, he says, all I’m doing is preaching Christ and him crucified. But then he expands on that slogan. And points to the story. Turn with me if you can. Just a few pages to one Corinthians 15, one Corinthians 15. He is now giving a descriptor and understanding what does Christ crucified actually mean in the grand narrative of the scriptures.

These first five verses, many argue is like the gospel. It’s like packaged together, succinct, and it’s interesting because it’s actually a whole lot to do with events that have happened. Let’s look at verse one, first Corinthians chapter 15. Now I wanna make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received on which you have taken your stand.

And by which you are being saved. Notice the receive. That’s a past tense interaction with the gospel, which you are taking your stand. It’s a present reality, but also in your future, you are being saved. If you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, for I pass onto you as most important.

What I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Anybody know what the scriptures means? Here? He’s referencing the Old Testament, um, that he was buried, uh, and the gospels by the way that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Fus, who is Peter?

Then to the 12. This gospel you on Gian, as we argued last week, just simply means the good news. This good news is concerning events of the life of Jesus. He points out very, a few very important elements that Christ died. That Christ was buried, which means it actually happened. It’s not like he was wounded.

No, he was put into the tomb. Christ was raised. On the third day. He appeared to many in fact, verses six through 11. Paul gives even more details of the proof of the resurrection, including Jesus appearing to Paul himself, and he’s constantly saying this phrase, according to the scriptures, which I think is really helpful here.

So six through 11. If we were to continue to read for the sake of time, we’ll just skip a few things, but it’s the proof of the resurrection. 12 through 19. Paul argues that the resurrection’s absolutely essential, which I find fascinating because I was raised and I, please hear me, I’m not angsty, I’m not mad.

I love everybody. Okay, but I was raised of hearing a gospel that focused just on crucifixion and very little on the resurrection, and yet in this gospel narrative, Paul says, if we don’t have the resurrection, we don’t have any hope. It’s all vanity, it’s all pointless, it’s all worthless, which is so interesting again.

Because we often present the gospel. Jesus died for your sins. Will you believe? Why are we leaving out the resurrection? Verse 20. Paul continues, and I think it’s really helpful for us to zero in on this as well, but as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

This word, first fruits, it means Christ has a resurrected body. Therefore, all who believe will also partake in that resurrection. So the resurrection is not just a promise of like, oh Jesus, it proves that he is God, but he’s giving it as a gift to all who believe as well. Verse 21, for since death came through a man, who is that man, Adam.

Okay. The resurrection of the dead also comes through a man, which is Jesus for just as in Adam all die. So also in Christ, all will be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits afterward at his coming. This is now the second coming. Those who belong to Christ then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and authority and power.

I really do hope you actually go home and read the rest of one Corinthians 15. There’s so much here, but let me just highlight a few things. First of all, Paul is using a lot of the Old Testament. He assumes you and I know about Adam, which Adam and Eve. Let’s throw Eve in there. Amen. All right. Adam and Eve brought about the curse of death.

Christ is the new Adam. Roman says, where he is the new Adam who brings new life, God’s kingdom, which we see that language here, it was fractured, it was broken because of the fall. I love it. Dallas Willard, the fall is a theological phrase that references when we sin in the garden, we’re cast out from his presence.

Dallas Willard calls it the leap. Which I think is so helpful as well. We were trying to leap away from God and we found it was not a very good destination, but now God’s kingdom is being made new through Christ, and so all rule, authority and power is being put back to its rightful place in Christ Jesus.

Now, please stick with me. This is kind of the lecture phase of it all. This brings us to a crucial point. We have grown far too comfortable sharing a gospel that is devoid of the story of the Bible. I have learned, I have shared the gospel in slogans and ignored the grand story and narrative that started in Genesis one and goes all the way to Revelation 22.

Now, I’m not saying to share the gospel, read the whole Bible with me. Okay. Eventually you should do that, but in a gospel presentation. But it’s very important for us to see the whole story. Scott McKnight in a really helpful book, king Jesus Gospel. He put it this way   📍 because the gospel is the story of Jesus that fulfills, completes, and resolves Israel’s story.

We dare not permit the gospel to collapse into the abstract storified points in the plan of salvation.  In other words, a personal salvation only gospel, which we’ll get to. I’ll explain some more. I know I’m triggering people. I triggered myself and study this week. Stay with me. A slogan based gospel does a great job at making decisions, but I believe the story of the gospel empowered by the spirit.

That’s what makes disciples, and I’ve seen both. I have no interest in making decisions. What I want us to do and to become is a church who are disciples, who makes more disciples. So how do we share the story that’s both faithful to the scriptures and clear to our cultural and generational moment? Me and Pastor Caleb have been praying and processing and thinking through what’s a faithful way to do this.

And so today I wanna present to you what I think is what we’re called to do by clearly telling a   📍 six part story. These six parts of the story are kingdom sin, salvation, repentance, eternal life, and formation.  It feels like a lot for now. Buckle up. We will get there. I want you to notice three of these are purely gifts from God.

Gift created by God, they are of God and its kingdom salvation and eternal life. Uh, in fact, these three terms are predominant ways. The Bible’s authors summarize the good news. If you were to read Matthew, mark, and Luke, you wouldn’t see much about, uh, salvation nearly as much as you would see kingdom.

Jesus uses a lot of kingdom language in John’s gospel, though his favorite term to use is eternal life. You’ll see eternal life everywhere, anytime the Apostle John writes and then Paul, he gives notes to those and mentions those, but primarily he uses the term salvation. This was fascinating to me when I studied this In Jesus’s inter interaction with the rich young ruler.

He actually uses all three terms interchangeably, essentially showing Jesus believes kingdom. Salvation, eternal life are all one in the same, in some sorts. It’s, they’re synonymous. It’s a part of the big story of the gospel. Paul, here in one Corinthians 15, he too makes mention of all three of these phrases.

So that’s from God. It’s a gift from God. It’s a place, it’s all his. But now the other three words are how we participate in the story. The first one is the bad one. Okay, we sin. And so that changes the narrative as you continue to read through Genesis. Uh, repentance is something we are invited to do, and formation is something we are called to do as well.

Okay? So let me show you, I, I kind of wanna create this where it’s a story that you can write on a napkin so you can clearly tell the gospel to somebody. And I, I always think like. I even am making fun of myself. Now, people always talk about like, make sure you can write it on a napkin. I don’t carry napkins that often.

I don’t know why that’s such a thing. Can we just put it on like a note, sticky note or something? I don’t know. But here’s the napkin version of the gospel, I suppose. So the beginning of the story of the Bible begins with the kingdom.   📍 So I would start by just saying, look, kingdom and the opening pages of the Bible that Paul is alluding to, God creates a good world where humans share communion with God.

 They’re walking in the garden with God, and God shares his authority with Adam and Eve. He tells them to rule under God’s authority, but to rule and reign over creation, to spread his goodness and his presence to the rest of the world, be fruitful and multiply. What we see in the beginning of the story of this beautiful kingdom built by love, joy, and peace, is we were made by God to commune with him and to rule as His representatives the best job around incredible, but.

Read Genesis chapter three. Rather than submitting to God’s ultimate rule in reign, Adam and Eves subvert God’s rule and assert their own authority, and we call this sin.   📍 It’s the next part of the graphic. By breaking one, the one rule God gave them in the garden. You know what it was?  Don’t eat. The forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve, by partaking, they now have spread sin and death throughout all of creation.

We even see in Romans that even the earth is groaning and decaying. Our ness, if you were here last week, has now shattered. We no longer have perfect union with God. Or each other, or even our creation. And so now since Adam and Eve, we are all born with a sinful nature. It’s a disease that makes us spiritually dead and we are set against God.

And we always say, man, if you were Adam and Eve, you would’ve done the same thing as well. See, sin is disobedience to God’s commands. It’s participating in evil and it’s distorting God’s original design. There’s so many ways God designed this world, and anytime we say, no, I’m gonna do it my own way. It’s not just morally wrong, it’s just bad for you.

It’s just not good for anybody. And so as a result of sin, now, death enters into the picture now just division destruction, bitterness. What many of us experience on the day to day, and what we don’t name often enough is we are now enslaved to Satan. We are in bondage to sin, Satan and death and friends.

We are in desperate need of saving. Deep down, we all know that we are all running after solutions. The Bible calls idols. These idols are these false gods. If you do this enough, then you will be happy. False gods like success, wealth, romance, control, cults. This the idol of approval, entertainments, substance abuse.

All of these things give this false promise. If you just give me your all, I will be all that you need. But how many of us in the room have story after story? It was never enough. It only led to more brokenness, more shame, more bitterness, more despair. And so all of them are manmade. All of them are hopeless.

But one, see, if we don’t turn to this one, we wind up with the in. Wherever the Bible calls hell, hell is a life forever apart from God. That alone is hell to the Christian. Wow. I don’t want any. I want Jesus and Jesus alone. Hell is our own choosing and our own making. It’s saying, God, we got it from here, and it is the worst decay.

It’s the gnashing of teeth. But friends, again, we have good news. God doesn’t leave us in our rebellion. Get your napkin back out. What he does is he steps into the story, not just to save us from something, but to save us to something, and we call this salvation.   📍 Salvation is a predominant word you are probably familiar with if you grew up in America.

 God, he comes to defeat sin by becoming a man Jesus, who dies on a cross and brings the kingdom of God here on earth. He raises again on the third day and through his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, he redeems us, he restores us. He reconciles us back to God. We’ll talk a lot about this in week four, but as a result of all of this, of his grace, we’re forgiven.

We’re redeemed, we’re chosen, we’re united with God, we’re adopted, we’re made new. Our lives were once marked by fear, shame, and guilt. But now through Christ Jesus, they’re marked by love, joy, and peace. And here’s the beautiful news for us to partake in this gift. You and I must take this step of repentance.  📍

Repentance is a word that I would argue has been robbed of its original, meaning repentance means we confess and turn from our sin.  We look to God and we admit that we have participated in undoing creation. We. Not just they out there, we, I have spread evil to a good world, and I am living by my own standards and my own design to life.

And it’s only leading to death and destruction and decay. But in repentance, we’re saying no. I choose to follow Jesus. I trust in his death and resurrection to pay the penalty for my sin. And that his rule in reign as king secures my future in his kingdom. I think a good way to describe repentance is just means we completely change how we see the world and ourselves and God.

We redefine reality based on God’s rule in reign. And his definitions of truth based off of what he says is good, true, and beautiful. And here’s what I think is not emphasized enough in our moment. One of the first steps, hear me, the first steps of repentance, not 10 steps down the line. When you feel like you’re worthy enough, one of the first steps you take is getting baptized.

It’s identifying with Christ in this story. It’s seeing yourself in the story of the kingdom and saying, okay, through his death, burial, and resurrection, I have new life, so I’m going to be buried with Christ in the water. Thankfully it’s not with dirt, and then raised again on the new life and it shows I’m a new creature With new values and new perspectives and a new community with new goals and purpose in life.

Jesus gives us what we now call   📍 eternal life. He doesn’t just forgive us of our past, it’s the next part of the napkin. He gives us a whole new future, which we call eternal life.  Can we put that on the slide please? Thank you. When we repent and align ourselves with King Jesus, we are made into new beings.

We’re given the Holy Spirit and that spirit regenerates our heart. We once were dead spiritually. Now we’re brought to life, and yes, one way you can describe it is you have been saved from hell, but also heaven is now. It’s beginning in the here and now into eternity. Jesus himself describes eternal life in John 17, and it’s to know him.

It’s to be unified with Jesus, and we don’t have to wait till heaven to experience that truth. Eternal life, it’s a new quality of life. It’s that of abundance and eternal life is a gift from God. And now our job is formation. It’s how we live in it. In the every day we respond to the gospel by repenting and believing.

And now for the rest of our lives, we seek to be formed by Jesus together. For others, we partake in this formation. When Jesus was here on earth, he told us, Hey, I’m showing you a certain way to live. You’re supposed to surrender to his love. His leadership and his lifestyle. And so we constantly are partaking in formation.

So we form our souls to look like him. We form our calendars to look like Jesus. But not only that, we form our church to look more like him. We form our city to look more like him and our state, our nation world. We are all forming. We’re doing the part that we can play and bringing as much of the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven.  📍

And that’s why the arrow goes back to the kingdom because a false picture of the gospel is, oh, go to heaven when you die. And it’s up there in the clouds.  Friends read the scriptures. The story is that the kingdom’s gonna come back here on earth. This thing will be renewed and made new and new heavens and a new earth.

And so what we do here matters for Corinthians 1558. The goal is for us to form into the kingdom, and that’s the hope of the world. But hear me, ultimately, it isn’t up to our eloquence in presenting this gospel. Let’s read again what Paul says in one Corinthians chapter two, I came to you in weakness and fear and in much trembling my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the spirit’s power so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Here’s the comfort. It’s not about the power of our words. It is about the power of his spirit. And yet we must do our part in stewarding this good news by talking clearly not just in gospel slogans, but showing us the whole gospel story. And here’s why I’m stressing this, because the gospel loses its power when we shrink it down to just one slice of the story.

This is the part I’m gonna get in trouble for. Okay? Buckle up. Here’s my argument. First of all, a   📍 salvation only gospel tends to settle for bare minimum faith instead of bearing maximum fruit.  A salvation only gospel focuses just on the napkin, on just sin and salvation. That’s it. Doesn’t look at the full story, doesn’t emphasize resurrection or transformation.

It celebrates and praise God that we’re saved from our sin. You are now forgiven, but it doesn’t talk about what we’re saved for. To bring the kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. It talks a whole lot about the cross. Yes and amen, but rarely about the empty tomb. One leading, uh, group when I was growing up that was saying, let’s, let’s recenter our hearts on the gospel.

And I’m so grateful. It helped me a lot, but I think it tended to salvation only because one person started to study all of the different books that this group was, was creating. And they noticed for every one time they mentioned the resurrection, they mentioned the crucifixion 37 times. In other words, they just talked about the cross.

But very, very little about the empty tomb. Yes, talk about the cross, but don’t stop there. I don’t want a bare minimum faith, and I don’t want to preach a gospel. That bear of bare minimum faith. I want to bear maximum fruit. I want the kind of gospel that changes us in character and in contribution. I want the kind of gospel that gives us the gifts of the spirit and day by day we walk in the fruit of the spirit for the here and now.

Now that’s just one   📍 in eternal life only gospel tends to focus on life in the age to come, but not life of the age to come.  And there’s a difference. Life in the age to come means we have gospel conversations. And I know I would, I ask this question a lot. What happens if you were to die tonight? Is that a threat?

You know, like what do you mean? What do you know That I don’t know. It’s honestly a great question. But we should also ask what happens if you wake up tomorrow and live? What is your hope? See an eternal life gospel just makes it about passing a test when you die. But the good news of the gospel is about placing your trust while you live.

A growing number of scholars would even argue this phrase, eternal life is actually best to find as life of the age to come. Maybe we’ll talk about it in the podcast this week because of time, but essentially the argument is the age to come represents the kingdom, the sermon on the mount, the Jesus way to life.

And so when we get saved, we’re not saying we’re gonna live like that in heaven. We’re saying we’re bringing heaven here on earth. So we’re not just promised that we will live a life in the age to come, but that age to come. Life is in the here and now. And we exhibit the fruit of the spirit. We operate in the gifts of the spirit.

We do what Christ has done in the here and now through us. And here’s the other critique.   📍 A kingdom only gospel tends to use all of its energy, dismantling worldly powers, but gives little attention to denying worldly pleasures.  This is what some would call the social justice gospel. And at some points, I know this is loaded.

I think they do a good job calling out some systemic sin, that there is evil, not just in our souls, but in our society, but it often turns a blind eye to personal repentance. It seeks justice for those in power, but ignores holiness in our own soul. It argues, yes, there’s sin out there, but don’t you dare question my cravings in here.

I’m gonna live the type of life I wanna live. This type of gospel. Can’t imagine a god of love. Whatever, require a change of heart. But read the gospels, it says, repent, turn from your sin. Change your definition of reality, but you will find this narrow way. That’s a good life. See the full gospel. It is beautifully breathtaking and worth giving our entire lives to The kingdom of God is about dismantling worldly powers and denying our worldly pleasure.

Salvation is about what you’re saved from and what you are saved to. Eternal life is about what’s coming in the age to come, but also life of the age to come. But please hear me. None of this matters without Jesus. One Corinthians 1557 says, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Do you know him? Have you surrendered to him as Lord and Messiah, or have you only looked to him to save you from something, but not to something? Have you set your eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith? ’cause friends, if you just look past him or say, I’ve done that before, I promise you, you haven’t actually come to his feet.

’cause there’s nobody better than him. There’s nobody like him. There’s no hope for us. Without Jesus, there’s no point of kingdom salvation or or eternal life. If there’s no Christ in it, it’s about him. And our gospel finds its power when we set our gaze on him. And I just said a lot. So in your careers this week, you’re gonna figure this out.  📍

This week’s practice, I have to total shift there. Write out your story. It is to be a witness of the gospel. We must share.  We need to learn how to share God’s story. But then we want you to learn how to share your story in it, how there’s a kingdom and how when I was born and raised, I was thinking of this purpose, but as sin continued to infect my life, I was broken.

I needed saving. And that’s why Jesus offered salvation. And as I repented, here’s how I experienced eternal life. All of those things, we want you to work that through. What was your life like before Christ? How has he changed you since then? What’s your life’s mission as a result? And some of you, you’re gonna get honest, I pray and read that your story is not done.

Really, all of our stories aren’t done, but some of us, we are still in sin and we have yet to just receive the free gift of salvation. And I pray you do that today. And I pray that you, saints would encounter people this week and you’d share with them the good news about Jesus. He is so much better than anything else this world has to offer.

Can we just please not be silent about it? Let’s, with courage and clarity present this gospel. Let’s stand to respond.