NOTE: This is an update to a previous post, which you can read HERE:What is the Gospel? In my last post on this subject, I gave a common list of points that people often use in sharing Jesus with others. On his Jesus Creed blog, Scot McKnight suggests the following as a better, fuller account of the Biblical Good News that we are called to proclaim:
- God loves you and everyone else and has a plan for us: the kingdom community.
- But you and everyone else have a sin problem that separates you and everyone else from God, from yourselves, from one another, and from the good world God made for you.
- The good news is that Jesus lived for you, died for you, was raised for you, and sent the Spirit for you - so you all can live as the beloved community.
- If you enter into Jesus' story, by repentance and faith, you can be reconnected to God, to yourself, to others, and to this world.
- Those who are reconnected like this will live now as God's community and will find themselves eternally in union with God and communion with others.
3 comments:
I would change the second bullet point to read...
But you and everyone else have a sin problem that separates you and everyone else from God. Sin and separation from God also alienates you from from yourself, from one another, and from the good world God made for you.This, I think, establishes that the most important consequence of sin is that it separates us from God - and then it messes everything else up.
What I miss in this is anything about who God is. The restatement is pretty exclusively directed toward me. The historic creeds do a better job of introducing God. In my case my longing for salvation came more because I desired God -- His beauty, glory, holiness -- than because I realized my sin. That realization only came later. This summary would have left me pretty cold, although that's not to say it wouldn't appeal to others.
i agree with both comments. i think the author's intent was to highlight one important missing ingredient of the common "spiritual laws" approach—the focus on individualistic salvation that leaves people thinking church and community are optional. it encourages us to think of "my story" in the light of the Biblical story of God creating a people and recreating the world. Having said that, i too think there is more to be said.
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