There is for me.

It came around just before this last Christmas season. I won’t say it snuck up on me, exactly, I mean, I saw it coming. But all the same it walloped me. Again.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

The Word became flesh. And dwelt among us.

The Word. The Second Personal Expression of God. The One through Whom all things were made. Wonderful Counselor. Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven. Messiah. Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. God with our skin and our bones and our muscles and our feelings.

Among us. Here. Not on my street, exactly, not even on a street like mine. But still here, walking and eating and enjoying cool breezy days and sweating when it was hot.

Listening and talking and telling stories and learning peoples’ names and generally acting like you and I might act in a similar situation.

It still grips me when I think about it, it seizes my imagination.

Full of Grace and Truth.

Grace. Mercy. Steadfast love. That conviction deposited deeply in a soul that whispers no matter what you’ve done, no matter how weak or limited or stupid or stubborn you are, you are truly loved. No matter what, you belong.

Truth. Things do matter. There is a better way and another way that is not better but worse, maybe much worse. Truth about God and us and the way the world works and doesn’t work and was meant to work and might work again.

Truth often causes us pain; but Grace helps us not waste it.

I recently told a group of therapists and ministry leaders, Jesus loves us as we are but never leaves us where we are.

I said that and then the Christmas season came and my wife set up the manger scene in my study and I was looking at it one night.

And the force of it hit me all over again. Word. Flesh. Us. Grace. Truth.

Who is this Creator that knows all of us, hears all of us, holds all life in his hands, continues all life by the force of his being and the breath of his mouth, who—while continuing to do all that—actually inhabited our limited space for a time—just exactly the way we inhabit it?

If he went to such extravagant lengths to reach us, why do we hold anything back from him?

It’s called “The Religious Freedom Protection Act” and I have friends who are on both sides of this bill. But I want to think about this complicated issue from a particular perspective. How should Christ-followers in the marketplace deal with others with whom they have significant moral disagreements?

Followers of Jesus have to ask hard questions of ideas and movements that come along using religious language. While the language may seem to promote religion, does it truly reflect Christian faith and practice?

Jesus’ most famous message is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In it he sketches for us his alternative way of living in this world.

Jesus teaches that we can trust our Father in heaven to take care of us, one way or another, and that this is the very best way to live. There are no magic promises and not everything will unfold according to our liking. But because God’s nature is loving and generous, we are to be loving and generous with others, too, even when it costs us.

So he uses language like turning the other cheek and giving to the one who begs from you and cautions us not to judge others—this is really important—because the measure we use in judging others will be used in our own judgment.

Then Jesus makes this significant summary: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

Kansas HB 2453 perfectly represents the old way of doing things, not the new way of Jesus.

While as of this writing the Kansas Senate has not acted on the House bill, other groups are trying to push it forward. Arizona has recently passed similar legislation (though the governor vetoed it yesterday) and seven other states are considering comparable bills. This issue is not going away soon.

So, if you are a Christian, how do you think about these “religious freedom” initiatives?  How do we follow Jesus in the marketplace as we encounter others with whom we have significant disagreements? We follow the path of loving others.

To accept society’s encouragement or the state’s protection for not practicing hospitality to all others is counter to Christian spirituality. 

When it comes to dealing with others—and especially those we might disagree with—Jesus made it clear his followers are always to take the path of love. That means if I’m a Christian and run a bed and breakfast, I’ll gladly receive a homosexual couple and genuinely pray they are blessed and refreshed while they are under my roof.

Think about it. How would Jesus treat them?

That second chapter begins with these words:  “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”  (Hebrews 2:1)  Please note carefully both the exhortation to “pay much closer attention” to the truth of who Jesus is and what he has done (the Gospel), and the warning “lest we drift away from it.”

Even in an age in which folks were not bombarded by multi-media messages and over-stimulated by distractions and entertainment, it was possible to lose one’s grasp on even the most important teachings.  That is one of the fundamental traits we all have in common:  the tendency to forget what is important, to get distracted and revert to old patterns and concepts, to drift.  Therefore, when we discover truth, things that truly matter in life and in death, we must exert and discipline ourselves to pay close and continued attention to them.  Only with sustained attention does truth become established in our thinking and therefore our lives.

In the previous post we looked at the Apostle Paul’s summary statement of the Gospel in his first letter to the church at Corinth.

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-5)

As we said before, it appears that in this summary Paul was highlighting six elements to the Gospel.  They are:

• Christ—the Jewish Messiah, the promised deliverer, the prophet of whom Moses spoke—died
• His death was for the sins of those who believed in him
• His death was according to what had been prophesied
• He was buried
• He was raised on the third day
• He appeared to his chosen followers.

A lot of us might readily resonate with the phrase “Christ died for our sins.”  In fact, among many of us who regard ourselves as conservative Christians, or Bible-believing Christians, we have tended to summarize the Gospel in this way:  “Jesus died for us so that if we put our faith in him our sins will be forgiven and when we die we’ll go to heaven.”

So let me ask you:  how does that sound to you?  Is that how you understand the Gospel?

The real nature of the Gospel is that it is a beautiful and multi-faceted jewel.  There is a richness and complexity to the Gospel and so we must be wary of over-reducing it.

Let’s look at a few other passages in which Paul and some of the other writers of the New Testament consider the Gospel.  And as we look at these, consider the importance of paying “much closer attention” to what the New Testament has to say about the Gospel.

In Romans 3:23-24 Paul writes that through the gospel we are justified by God’s grace, and it is a gift and then he goes on to say that this is done through the redemption that is in Christ.  “Redemption” would make anyone familiar with Greco-Roman society—so all the first century hearers and readers of Romans—it would make them think about the buying and selling of slaves, the transfer of a human being from slavery to freedom.  That’s a much different nuance than justification and forgiveness (“Christ died for our sins”), isn’t it?

In Romans 5:10 Paul writes that before the gospel took effect we were God’s enemies, but now, through the death of Christ we are reconciled to God, and so we are saved by his life.  Reconciliation might make us think of justification and forgiveness, but it’s a little different, isn’t it?  It’s two parties who are at enmity or who have significant differences finding a way through those differences to a restored relationship.

In Acts 26:15-18, Luke tells us that when Paul was sharing his story and the Gospel he preached with King Agrippa and the Roman Governor Festus, Paul described how he had seen the Lord Jesus in his risen glory on the road to Damascus.  Paul then quoted Jesus as saying to him:

“…I am sending you [to the Gentiles] to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

As Paul is quoting Jesus instructing him regarding the Gospel he is to teach, we ought to pay close attention to what he says.  Opening our eyes distinctly implies that when it comes to spiritual reality, we are naturally blind.  We live in a spiritually darkened realm but the Gospel of Jesus brings light.  We are captive to a spiritual power which is in opposition to God.  Forgiveness is mentioned, but now forgiveness is linked to being part of a community and experiencing life-change.

Just in these few passages from Paul we see a great deal more to the Gospel than simply “Jesus died for us so that if we put our faith in him our sins will be forgiven and when we die we’ll go to heaven.”   In the next post we’ll look at what some of the other New Testament sources tell us about the Gospel.

In the years following the departure of the Risen Christ, the new community he established sought to live in grateful response and useful partnership to His continued ministry.  So they developed various practices which would help them discipline their lives to be obedient to His Spirit and faithful to His Gospel.  At some point they began annually to mark the birth of Jesus, not primarily as an excuse to entertain others or fete themselves, but as an instrument of spiritual training.  In some parts of the Church the Christmas season was assigned twelve days.  Twelve days to ponder the Scriptures, to meet for worship, to reflect on the Nativity, to celebrate with others the wondrous effects of the coming of Christ.

Twelve days, and they didn’t have television or the Internet or mp3s or rapid transportation or Skype.  They had simpler lifestyles, silence and time.  And they still took Twelve Days.  How much more, then, do we need to work hard at paying “much closer attention to what we have heard” about Jesus, who he is, what he has done?

The truth is that Christians—like everyone else—can lose their grip on the awesome and life-giving substance of this season.  That is because Christians very often become fuzzy about what the Gospel actually is.  In truth, we don’t have a very firm grip on what Christmas means.  We sorely need to regularly revisit the message of Jesus and his Gospel.

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”  (2 Corinthians 13:5).  It’s good advice for all of us, to examine ourselves and see whether we are actually believing and living in the truth of the Gospel.

Every student of the New Testament knows Paul taught a great deal about love and humility and living a life of grace.  Think of his words to these same Corinthians in his earlier letter to them (1:13:2), “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  Knowing the truth is important, faith is vital, but love trumps all, it seems the great apostle was saying.

So it is important to pay particular attention when the Apostle of Love becomes contentious.  When it came to properly understanding and stating what the Gospel is, Paul became fierce.  In writing to some of the churches in the region of Galatia (modern day western Turkey) he made clear that living a life of love did not mean being muddled about what the genuine Christian faith is and what it is not.  He recounted to them a confrontation he once had in Jerusalem.

Before he had gotten too far along in his public ministry, Paul went up to Jerusalem from Antioch in a fairly submissive and collegial spirit to confirm with the Jerusalem leaders that the Gospel he was preaching to the non-Jews was consistent with the Gospel preached by those who’d kept company with Jesus.  They agreed that it was.

But then Paul added this piece of the story:

“Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.” (Galatians 2:4-5)

Why did Paul take such a strong stand for the “truth of the gospel” as he put it?  Why did he insist that the Gospel he preached—the Gospel he and the Jerusalem pillars agreed on—why did he fight so that that Gospel might be preserved for them, for you and for me?

Paul understood that the Gospel is life-giving.  But when we change it, or others change it for us, it loses it’s effectiveness.  It is no longer the Gospel.  So, let me ask you a very important question:  what do you say that Gospel is?  What do you think of when we talk about the Gospel?

In that same first letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul spoke about the Gospel that he had taught them.  He wrote,

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve”. (1 Corinthians 15:1-5)

What do you see in this passage?  Paul referred to the “gospel I preached to you” and I see six distinct pieces to it:

• Christ—the Jewish Messiah, the promised deliverer, the prophet of whom Moses spoke—died
• His death was for the sins of those who believed in him
• His death was according to what had been prophesied
• He was buried
• He was raised on the third day
• He appeared to his chosen followers.

How do these six assertions jive with your own understanding of the Gospel?  Think them over.  Examine your thinking to see if what you believe is consistent with the truth.

It’s important to think about the real Gospel, especially now at Christmas, because the sentimentality of the season can sometimes wash over us all with the notions of love and being with those we love and taking care of others—all good things.  The risk is that we miss the central truth to this season.

The Baby of Bethlehem did not come as a composite of all that is good about us but rather as the ultimately unique person on a mission to remove all that is bad about us. 

We need to consider the Gospel carefully, thoughtfully, repeatedly.  When you look at the six elements of the Gospel above, you may think of other aspects of the Gospel.  We’ll look at some of them in the next four posts.  As with God, so with his Gospel:  there is more.  So let us examine our thinking, because the hopeful result of Christmas is this:  “Jesus Christ in you.”

Happy Christmas to you and to all of us.