Most of us think that the gospel and its message is only relevant for non-Christians in order for them to believe and to be converted. But the truth is: the Gospel is relevant for Christians everyday of their lives until glorification.
The late Tim Keller explains:
“The gospel is not simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A through Z. The gospel does not just ignite the Christian life; it is the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day. Once God rescues sinners, His plan is not to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel – and since Christians remain sinners even after they are converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes everyday. Since we never leave off sinning, we can never leave the gospel”.
Martin Luther described the condition of a Christian as “simultaneously justified and sinful” – he understood that while he had already been saved from sin’s penalty, he was in daily need of salvation from sin’s power.
The Apostle Paul calls the gospel “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16), and he did not mean simply the “power of God for conversion”. The gospel remains the power of God unto salvation until we are glorified because we are all “partly unbelievers until we die”, as Calving puts it. We need God’s rescue every day and in every way.
The lack of understanding and appreciation of this truth perhaps explains the ‘problems’ and ‘heartaches’ of believers in their own lives as well as in the life of the community of God, the church. Of course, we are aware that the church has been infiltrated by the evil one and there are ‘weeds among the wheat’. But we must consciously be aware that the church is filled with believers who are justified sinners – Christians remain ‘partly unbelievers’ until they die – this is because they ‘abandon’ the true meaning of the gospel in their lives as well as the relentless spiritual attacks of the evil one (who seeks to cast doubts as well as disunity and disharmony in God’s community).
Jerry Bridges, in his book ‘The Gospel for real life” explains: Christians need the gospel just as much as non-Christians – spiritual poverty in so much of our Christian experience is the result of an inadequate understanding of the gospel’s depths.
The answer is not to try harder in our Christian life but to comprehend more fully and clearly Christ’s incredible work on behalf of sinners and then to live in a more vital awareness of that grace day by day.
Our main problem is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel and applied its powerful reality to all parts of our life (including church life). Real spiritual growth happens as we continually rediscover the gospel.
Take the worship service: a gospel-fueled worship service is a service where God’s rescue in Christ is unveiled and unpacked through song, sermon, and sacrament in such a way that it results in the exposure of both the idols of our community and the idols of our hearts. The faithful exposition of our Lord and Saviour will reveal the various ways in which we as individuals and as a community depend on lesser things than Jesus to provide the security, protection, affection, meaning, and satisfaction that only Jesus Christ can supply. The service must serve the gospel to sinners (both Christians and non-Christians) by telling and retelling the story that while we are all great sinners, Christ is our great Saviour.
Feasting on God’s gospel together through prayer and preaching, sacraments, and singing, provides us with the faith, hope, and love we need to be good-news people in a bad-news world. And we not only look back to what Christ has done, but also we look ahead to what Christ will do. When Christ comes again, the process of reversing the curse of sin and recreating all things will be complete (1 Cor. 15:51-58). In a gospel-fueled worship service, we enter into the very outskirts of heaven and get a weekly taste of what will eventually be permanent and eternal.
But the gospel is not only relevant and applicable in our worship service, It is always to be in the forefront in our devotional time with God, in our Bible study with fellow-believers, in our families, and in the interaction and fellowship in church. We must constantly remember that we are ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ – God is not finished with us individually and corporately; heaven is now but heaven is not yet consummated and life on earth can be a struggle, filled with pain, disappointment, at times ‘delusions’ but Christ promises that He will build His church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.