Maybe “Gospel” was never a noun?
More than a Word
For many, the word Gospel has lost all meaning. The news that Jesus died on a cross for my sins means nothing in the midst of the chaos of life. What God did for my future salvation does nothing for my current circumstances.
The world around us is crumbling, doing the best with the broken pieces of the world. We need an ancient story to become new again, taking us out of the words in the paragraph and into the chapters of the whole story. This is the story of a God present in every page of the story and a people called to live that story off the pages into the neighbourhoods of our cities.
The Good Story
The Gospel comes out of an ancient story that still continues today. Turning the pages back to the beginning allows us to flip forward with context.
Creation
From the very beginning, everything originated from its creator. Out of nothing, God spoke the universe into creation. He called it good. Out of Adam, God created Eve, and they were commissioned to watch over the world God created. Everything existed in perfect harmony, and God rested together with His creation.
Fall
Adam and Eve were given one commandment, to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and not good. The Accuser exploited their desire for more, inviting them to not trust their creator. They were called to rest in God’s creation, but they seized control before it was their time.
Out of this action, all of creation was cursed. Disease; trauma; destruction; and death itself entered into God’s creation. This is the narrative so many live under today: hopelessness.
Redemption
Yet God did not give up on us. A promise was made in the midst of the curse. He would restore what was lost. The curse demands a price, and God Himself, through Jesus satisfied the demands on the cross. Humanity no longer is bound to the warping of the curse.
This is the story that many understand as the Gospel, but only in a personal sense. Through Jesus, all of creation is redeemed. We were created to be in community, and through Jesus the Church came into being – His community.
New Creation
This is the hardest, yet most exciting part to grasp. We live in a period of the story that is both the climax and the resolution. We look forward to a day when the curse is finally demolished totally and utterly, yet are no longer bound by it today. This is the hope people need today.
The Church offers a glimpse into the future reality. A place where wholeness is abundant, scarcity is absent, and relationship with God is reality. To live our lives to their absolute fullest in the midst of a broken world, bringing that future creation firmly into the present.
From a Noun to a Verb
The Gospel is so much more than a statement of fact. It should drive us to act in our everyday lives. Like an author launching their protagonist into the heat of battle, we are invited into the darkest, hardest parts of life to bring hope and healing. We accept that this is not our story, but God’s story. We cannot bring others to healing, but God is already working to that end.
It is a journey of recognizing that we are not the central character in the story of our lives, but Jesus is. Through Him, the universe was created, the fallen world was given hope, we were called to redemption, and the new creation will come to be. We cannot solve others problems, but we can point them to a deeper truth that will bring healing to broken identity.
You want to live missionally? It all starts with the Gospel.
Live the Gospel
It takes work to live in this new reality, because we have to explore our own unbelief first. Every action, every insecurity invites us to discover our own unbelief about God. The Gospel pushes us through that unbelief to the real truths about who God is and who we are in God. Then, our identity is rooted in these truths. It becomes less about what we do, and more about who we are.
Want to practice that this month? Join us for Weekly Practices, where we’ll walk through different exercises you can practice that week to become more rooted in the truth of who God is.