Plymothian

¹² For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. ¹³ For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. ¹⁴ For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. ¹⁵ They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them ¹⁶ on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Are Unreached People Damned?

I have frequently been asked about the lone soul, usually pictured in one of the world’s great rainforests, who has been born and lived their whole life without hearing the gospel.  The gospel is more than a get-out-of-hell free card.  It is the good news of reconciliation with God so that we can live life in harmony with him eternally.  How does God damn someone who doesn’t have the chance to know about Jesus and the means of reconciliation.  One of the first things to be challenged in this scenario is the location.  It is unnecessarily exotic and remote.  The unreached now exist among us.  I am not sure what it means to be the third largest mission field, but the USA has been reported as being the third largest mission field.  In a city like Chicago, thousands of people fit the profile of the ‘unreached’ person who has never heard the good news of Jesus.

So, is he or she damned?

Both non-believers and believers have a code that they live by.  The passage above makes a kind of moral argument.  It states that people everywhere have a personal code.  However, no-one lives perfectly in accordance with their own set of values.  This perspective transcends culture.  Each culture makes its own laws, and some individuals are a law unto themselves.  However, the falling short of even our own arbitrary rules shows the hopeless condition of our hearts.

If we show we are damned by our own failings, we show that God is just when he condemns.  So, God does not damn us in the active sense of gleefully making us go to hell.  In a judicial sense, God is the judge who pronounces the just penalty on all people.  All people, so the Bible teaches, do not act in accordance with their own standards (let alone God’s).  In so doing, all people show that they start life among the condemned.

With the case of the poor soul in a rain-forest, we think of his fate very individualistically.  Not all cultures think as individualistically as us.  High context cultures, or more collective cultures, understand that people-groups and societies share responsibility because of a common identity.  Scientific research and biblical truth align when they say that humans have spread across the globe.  Biblical narrative starts with a single family in the Ancient Near East.  At some point people in the narrative gave up relationship with God and in each case their ancestors have wandered from the truth.

People in New York, London, the Amazon, and the Himalayas who have not received the Old Testament laws of God have transgressed their own standards.  They are all without God and without hope in the world.  The grace of God has equipped followers of Jesus to reach out in reconciliation.  We are sent to speak the truth to all who will listen.  We are meant to make this world a better place for those who are perishing.  However, it blunts our mission if we pretend that those who are unreached are just fine without the gospel of Christ.  We are all lost without Jesus.

Prayer

All over the world the unreached perish.  They are successful business owners in L.A. and they are living in poverty in Washington D.C.  We can not point to the Amazon, to Indonesia and to Africa as the great mission fields.  Without you we are all orphaned and on the edge of doom.  God, by your Spirit, bring revival.  Renew our call.  Help us to see those next door who are perishing.  Let us share with them the hope that we have found.

Questions

1. What happens to those who sin without the law?
2. What do righteous acts performed by Gentiles show to Jewish people?
3. What will God judge on the last day?
4. How do those around us in our home cities stand condemned even when they do not know God’s laws?
5. How should we respond to the condition of the people around us who do not know Jesus and can not live up to their own standards?

⁶ He will render to each one according to his works: ⁷ to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; ⁸ but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. ⁹ There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,¹⁰ but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. ¹¹ For God shows no partiality.

Saved by Works

Some have argued that those who do not know anything about Jesus can be saved by working really hard.   However, the passage that we read above is in the larger case that Paul is building.  Unfortunately the case is not a positive one.  He is stating that people are ultimately judged on their performance and people receive an F.  In today’s times we read this and think we are all basically doing well.  However, that is a view which was popularized at the time of the Enlightenment.  John Locke and others advocated that we are born a blank slate, or tabula rasa, and the slate is blotted over time.  More recently we just tell each other that someone does bad things but they are a good kid deep down.

Paul lived in a world where it was understood that bad people did good things.  Paul knew that the heart of man is wicked.  Paul knew that people are evil.  In this section he is making the case that the sum total of our works will condemn us.  Either we have underperformed or we have chosen evil.  God damns both the Jew and the Gentile.  There is no escape for anyone based on natural heritage, or nation of birth.

How does that sit with you?  It seems to make an awful lot more sense of the world to me.

Prayer

Father, thank you that you do not require me to be perfect, you just require me to acknowledge that I am not.  I am rightly judged by my life’s actions and they show that I am not righteous, as you are.  I rely upon your mercy.

Questions

1. Upon what are people judged?
2. Does anyone attain immortality by their works?
3. How does the broader context inform this passage?
4. How have your works condemned you?
5. How do we convince others that the belief that all people are basically good is in error?

²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Though they know God’s decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them.

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practise the very same things. ² We know that the judgement of God rightly falls on those who practise such things. ³ Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practise such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgement of God? ⁴ Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? ⁵ But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgement will be revealed.

Don’t Have a Superior Attitude

Homosexuals know that Christians can cop an attitude.  We can become really vocal about sins like abortion that we don’t commit.  We can judge and condemn.  Jews in the time of Paul would have been similar.  As Paul made his way through Romans 1, they would have been nodding in agreement.  However, when he finished up the chapter he listed sins that they would probably have committed.  The Jewish people are being drawn into Paul’s general thesis that we all start our lives under God’s verdict of ‘guilty’.

So do Christians escape the verdict.  In one sense we do because Jesus has made us righteous.  In another sense we don’t.  We do not escape because of our own innocence.  We escape because of God’s grace.  Grace is undeserved and so there is no room for anyone to get on their high horse.

Although contempt can surface in any relationship, it is extremely destructive in the marriage relationship.  When a person fixates on their partner’s sin it can become a marriage killer.  However, as we build up the myth of self-esteem, it doesn’t sit well with us that we might be responsible for failings in our relationship.  We blame our spouse when we feel bad because our brain works against us.  They become responsible for our feelings.

We are all guilty of offense before God.  In Paul’s day Jewish believers would have claimed that their heritage made them pure.  Paul lets them know this is not the case.  At the end of the passage above the sad conclusion that all people have to reach is that our own sin leaves us guilty before God.

Prayer (Psalm 51)

Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin!
³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
    and blameless in your judgement.
⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
    and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Questions

1. Which sin receives most attention from Paul?
2. Why does he list so many sins at the end of chapter 1?
3. Do you agree with Moo that Paul switches from Gentiles to Jews as we switch from chapter 1 to 2?  Why?  Why not?
4. How are Christians like early Jews in the way they condemn others?
5. How can Christians acknowledge sin wherever it is found and at the same time refrain from judgement?

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Human Regress

Solomon has a reputation for wisdom.  It is well deserved.  We all remember the famous story about how he took the hooker’s baby and threatened to slice it in two.  We believe he was able to write down many thoughtful Proverbs about how life is best lived.  However, he made alliances with surrounding nations by marrying their pagan daughters.  He compromised his faith and allowed pagan practices to grow unchecked on the high places of Israel.  His son, Rehoboam didn’t pay heed to his father’s words possibly because his actions spoke louder.  In one sense, under Solomon, the country progressed in prestige, technology and wealth.  However, in the way that really mattered it regressed.  It adopted godless patterns of thinking that would, many year later, lead to its demise and exile.

We have indoor plumbing, personal computers and telecommunications systems that span the globe.  We can send people into space, explore the outer regions of our own solar system, and we have medicines that keep us healthy and make us live longer.  We look sideways at Aristitotle and Plato, because they were men rooted in their backward age.  Metaxas tells us that we have ceased to hold up people from the past as heroes.  Anything before this present age is corrupted by racism, agism, sexism, or nationalism.  However, we have ceased to have big answers to big questions.  Individuals have been authorised to work out the meaning of life in private.  Public life is reserved for seeking passing pleasures or making a profit.  Although we often symplistically label all things new as progress, The Apostle Paul questions that assumption.  He shows how the devolution of the mind is inevitable once the mind ceases to be in right relationship with God the Creator.  We have clever gadgets and we have instant access.  However, our frantic pace of life keeps us from seeing our descent into hell.

Life is pointless.  Our hearts are dark.  We think we’re clever because our science has disproved God.  We create mythologies in movies and computer games.  People in our age have replaced the transcendent with the vulgar and we think we are clever.

Prayer

God, we thank you for the ingenuity to create machines and systems that make this world more easy to live in.  We repent of the thoughts that deceive us into thinking we are gods.  May we bow down in awe before you and regain the mind we have lost.

Questions

1. What are the markers in the passage of human regression?
2. What is the word translated ‘futile’ in Greek?
3. How do we see cycles in the Bible of godly and futile thinking?
4. Is the country in which you live making progress or regressing?
5. How can you be a factor in reestablishing the Christian mind?

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

General Revelation

Although General Revelation is all around us, it condemns.  Although it is beautiful and God’s creativity is still conveyed in the world around us, it counts against most people.  The passage runs through a judicial case.  The case is made against humanity that, in general, we have seen the evidence of a power greater than ourselves but we have not acknowledged that God exists.  We have looked at the broader world and we have mastered it – we have exercised dominion – but then a process has recurred in each culture that descends toward godlessness.

When I was 18 and lived in Pakistan, I looked at a leaf and it saved my faith.  The beauty of the sunlight shining through the veins in the morning convinced me that, although science has extensive explaining power, it is insufficient.  My wonder goes beyond the God of the Gaps.  The God of the Gaps presupposes a secularism that has the sacred fill the gaps that materialism cannot explain.  That which we do explain belongs to God.  That which we can not explain also belongs to God.  Whether there is a universe or a multiverse, the God who transcends all fills it.  Whether matter is comprised of energy or whether solids exist, the most minuscule particles speak of design.

Those who look through the telescope and microscope and don’t see God stand condemned.  That is a point of the passage.

Prayer

May we see your nature revealed in the grain of wood, the flight of the birds and the colour of the sky.  In the fall leaves here, may we give thanks that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

Questions

1. What words describe Natural or General Revelation?
2. What is the role of revelation in this passage?
3. Why would Paul seek to make sure people know God is just in condemning people?
4. How do those around you respond to nature?
5. How do you?

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The Wrath of God is Upon Us

I went to church up a steep slope and sat in a row in the balcony as far from the pulpit as possible.  Maybe they would not notice me as far from the preacher as possible.  He wore a suit that looked like nylon or polyester or something synthetic.  It was drab and the lack of colour in his necktie seemed unimaginative and servile.  His hair was greased and parted at the side – although it was the eighties each previous decade seemed to rest unaware on his clothing.  However, after he had read from the text fire fell from heaven.  It rained sulfur and brimstone each Sunday evening.  Pastors flushed with passion and pounded the pulpit, declaring God’s revulsion at sin.  I knew that I too repulsed him.  My eyes lost their focus.  My lids grew heavy and in sleep I forgot my sin and smiled.

That was not the case every Sunday, but I was raised in an age when hellfire and wrath were regularly remembered.  I longed for grace and unconditional acceptance.  Thirty years later I wonder at how the pendulum has swung.  We seem to be coddling ourselves and ignorant of the depth of God’s justice and his holiness.  Jehovah is not a Greek god who becomes enraged when he doesn’t get his way.  His anger is not dark like Hades.  God’s wrath is at the offence of injustice.  It is a fully righteous version of our indignation of the massacres in Syria, or the plight of a child abandoned on a subway.  These things should cause anger because the goodness of God has been thwarted by freedom.  The flourishing of creation is cauterized by our choices.  We can agree that someone must pay – we resist the idea that the someone is ourselves.

God is good.  We are not.  In this age of acceptance, that does not sound too bad.  However, God’s holy goodness causes separation from all that is unholy.  All that is corrupted warrants destruction.  The garbage should be cleaned from God’s pure streets.  If we were talking homicidal maniacs, child molesters and bureaucrats we might get some sympathy for clearing the streets with a dose of God’s wrath.  However, when the garbage collection comes we find loving mothers, doting fathers, young children and feeble grandparents also swept up in the collection.  How can a loving God assign all walks of people to the incinerator?  Because he is good and there is no-one good but him.  His very creation contaminates itself by its free-will and so he designates a place where the infection can fester forever.  He lovingly allows those who shake their fists and knowingly shake their heads in disbelief to live apart from him.  He righteously assigns them their fate.  He is love, yes.  But he is good – a pure goodness that can not abide corruption.  Apart from a miracle, he is the Father whose own nature alienates him from his children.  We begin our story without God and without hope in the world.  Why?  Because that is the way it should be.  Maybe when we see his wrath we will cry out.  Then we will know what the true meaning of God’s mercy and grace is.

Prayer

Oh God – our sin is immense.  Even the most well-behaved and helpful of us has lost their way.  We are an offence to your created order and we deserve the most extreme punishment.  Help us to know how to communicate both your wrath and your love.  Help us to communicate compassion and estrangement.  The whole picture makes the most sense – help us to see it and speak it.

Questions

1. What is revealed from heaven?
2. What is it revealed against?
3. How would you describe God’s wrath?
4. Why is God’s wrath talked about less than it was 50 years ago?
5. How could you communicate God’s wrath in a way that is true?

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Unashamed

Having just spent time in Genesis 3 with the advent of shame, I was struck by Paul’s boldness in proclaiming his lack of shame.  The source of his lack of shame is the gospel.  We are given two distinct characteristics of the gospel which embolden Paul.  It is powerful and it reveals the righteousness of God.  The power in the gospel saves all who believe.  The salvation is conditional.  It does not force people to enter into harmony with God;  It allows people to establish a right relationship with God.  To move from the depths of a the fallen condition of man to the incomparable nature of prelapsarian mankind requires immense power.  We do not comprehend that power if we do not see how desperately depraved our condition truly is.  Paul will establish mankind’s nature in the opening chapters of Romans.

The  second reason for not being ashamed is the revealed righteousness of God.  Is this God’s own righteousness?  Is this a righteousness from God?  Is it a righteousness done by God?  The truth is that we don’t really know.  Which one would cause you to be unashamed?  Douglas Moo writes that we should look to God’s righteousness in the Old testament to get a clue as to what is going on here.  He concludes that for Paul, “the righteousness of God is personal and relational.”  We are justified with God because of our personal faith.  Have you exercised such faith?

Prayer

May I be unashamed.  May I look for every opportunity given to me by you to speak a righteousness by faith into the lives of anyone who will listen.

Questions

1. What reasons does Paul give for not being ashamed?
2. Who is saved first?
3. State in your own words what you believe Paul is saying about faith in this passage?
4. How can people see that you are unashamed of the gospel?
5. What empowers you to speak the gospel unashamedly?

⁹ For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you ¹⁰ always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. ¹¹ For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— ¹² that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. ¹³ I want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. ¹⁴ I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. ¹⁵ So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Eager

Paul communicates a passionate commitment.  He knows that God, who sees everything, can see his heart.  His heart, or spirit, is dedicated to the good news that he shares.  When he shares that good news in the book of Acts, it is often in the form of a narrative.  The whole narrative is God’s story, but the Old Testament points to the cross of Jesus and His resurrection.  In the resurrection life of Jesus, we all have opportunity for a new beginning.  When we have begun to live the life of Christ we have a different perspective and calling that continues through eternity.  This new, eternal life is good news and Paul wants to share it.

God’s timing is not the same as Paul’s though.  He will go to Rome, we know that from history.  However, at the time of writing this letter he has not been there.  The gospel shows no partiality.  Jews, Greeks and barbarians can all come to God through Christ.  When the Romans hear more of the gospel, they will receive a gift and Paul will reap a harvest.  Perhaps the gift is a gift that Paul will bestow upon them as a spiritual leader, such as an increased gift of prophecy.  Perhaps the harvest he will receive is a financial harvest which he will be ale to take with him to those struggling financially elsewhere.  I think it is the gift of the gospel that Paul will take.  Since he is writing to a church, most of them will have been reconciled to God through Jesus, but they might not know the pervasive nature of the new life which they have received.  In this way Paul would receive the reward of seeing their growth and increased service to God.

Do you have an eager passion for the gospel?  Is your heart or spirit fully focused on God’s desire that people live life daily aligned with him?  I know that I am often self-focused.  My stomach isn’t feeling great today and now my mind tends to be drawn back to my stomach.  I have a lot of grading and publicity for our book to take care of.  I don’t always see them as opportunities to live a gospel life as a witness to others.  Today, though, as I am about to go over to Moody Radio and I will come back to a pile of grading, I will think of my responsibilities as opportunities.  Rather than focus on my performance or my own tasks, I will prayerfully lift up those I will reach through my words on air and the red pen I write on their papers.

Prayer

Dear God, I am now eager for those who know you to grow in you.  I pray for those in Chicago as they go about their day today.  I pray for those in Plymouth, England, the city of my birth.  May we share the good news of the new life you offer.  May those who don’t know you begin the adventure.  May those who do know you find encouragement and strength for the road ahead.

Questions

1. What does Paul claim that God witnesses?
2. Which words communicate Paul’s passion?
3. Does commitment have to be passionate?
4. How can you develop more passion in your commitments?
5. Who do you know who needs to experience more of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

⁸ First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

Faith Proclaimed All Over the World

Paul had never been to Rome and the faith there was still thriving.  The Jewish Christians were exiled at one point, but after a reversal in Roman thinking they were allowed to return.  Could this be how news of Roman faith spread through the world?  It has been said that ‘all roads lead to Rome.’  This idiom describes the inevitable common destination of many different courses of action.  The idiom is rooted in the reality that Rome was centered politically and culturally on the city by the same name.  Ideas in the empire made their way to Rome and Rome disseminated ideas.

Faith in Jesus had journeyed to Rome in Paul’s time and now it was spreading from there.  Paul’s strategy reflected the reality that if you can influence cities, you influence the countryside.  If you can get the hub, all the various spokes are dealt with.  Paul is grateful that, without him, the new faith of Christianity is disseminating from Rome.

Are we thankful for the cities in the world and the believers in those cities who work in the name of Jesus.  It’s easy to see how a city like L.A. might get a reputation for purveying smut and violence.  However, there are Christians in that city.  Some film-makers want to make films which glorify God and not man.  People attend churches there that faithfully preach biblical truth and broadcast that truth across the airwaves.  Also, there are Christian schools which take in wealthy international students and share Jesus with these students when they attend classes.  In cities there are many opportunities to be a powerful beacon of light.  In the darkness of depravity (Rome too was depraved) the light shines more brightly.

Prayer

May we give thanks for and support Christians who serve faithfully in the cities of the world.  If we live in a city, show us and equip us to use the opportunities that city-life brings to be a hub of communication.  May we broadcast the good news of hope and rejoice as others are saved.

Questions

1. What does it mean to thank someone through Jesus Christ?
2. What is the reason Paul gives for thanking them?
3. Who do you think was proclaiming Roman faith throughout the world and why?
4. Are you thankful that the faith of other cities is proclaimed?  Which urban centers have well-known churches?  Does Willow Creek make your list?  What about Hillsong?
5. Could you personally be a part of a strategy to reach the world by targeting an urban center like Rome first?  How?

I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God’s words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Rome, God’s friends.

^2-7 The sacred writings contain preliminary reports by the prophets on God’s Son. His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master. Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus. You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ! And I greet you now with all the generosity of God our Father and our Master Jesus, the Messiah.

The Essence of the Gospel

Paul is ‘set apart for the gospel of God’.  The Message, above, translates that as ‘proclaiming God’s work and acts.’  The word ‘gospel’ may have seemed to have lost its meaning to Eugene Petersen (author of The Message), and I think he may have a point.  When the gospel is talked about in some circles it has been reduced to a simple formula of Accept, Believe, Confess!   Accept that Jesus Christ is your Saviour.  Believe in your heart that God the Father raised his Son from the dead.  Confess that Jesus is Lord.

The gospel is the entirety of the good news that Jesus brings.  It is a story that goes beyond our limited expectations.

Prayer

May I broaden my understanding of what ‘gospel’ means.

Questions

1. What does gospel mean?
2. Why do you think Eugene Petersen chose to leave out that word from his translation?
3. How does Paul’s introduction give a summary of the gospel?
4. How do you define ‘gospel’?
5. What gospel do you communicate with others?