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?

Yes, we do.  The Gospel of Luke contains a story that gives us good insight into what Jesus thought was the thrust of his Gospel message.

In Luke 4:16-21 we read that when Jesus visited Nazareth, the town in which he grew up, he went to synagogue on the Sabbath as was his habit.  As a visiting rabbi, it was customary he be given the opportunity to read one of the scripture passages of the day and speak to the people.  He was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, a very large scroll.  In our version of the book it’s divided into sixty-six chapters.  But in his day it was one long, undivided scroll.  He had to have known the text of Isaiah intimately to have turned the scroll to the passage he read.

Jesus turned to a passage in the part of Isaiah we know as chapter 61.  He read these verses:

   “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
                                because he has anointed me
                                to proclaim good news to the poor.
                He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
                                and recovering of sight to the blind,
                                to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
                to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In the synagogue practice of Jesus’ day, the reader of the Scripture text stood to read.  The rabbi sat to instruct.  Luke says Jesus rolled up the scroll of Isaiah and handed it back to the synagogue attendant.  Then he sat down.  Everyone simply stared at him.  And then into their attentive silence Jesus spoke these thunderous words:  “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

It was an absolutely stunning declaration of both who he perceived himself to be, and the Gospel message he was sent to proclaim.

There are four elements in the passage Jesus read from Isaiah, and they give outline to his Gospel, or good news.

It was to the poor he was proclaiming good news.  What do we suppose Jesus meant by “the poor?”  Certainly the economically depressed constituted the poor for Jesus because he focused much of his ministry among and to them.  But we should also remember the phrase from the Sermon on the Mount in Mathew’s Gospel that the poor are also the “poor in spirit.”  For Jesus the poor are also those who are broken-hearted, spiritually distressed, those who are empty, or deprived.

To all these and more Jesus says his Gospel is an announcement that those who are hungry will not always be deprived.  In the economy of his Father the empty will be filled and their emptiness will be replaced by fullness.  To those who are broken-hearted they will be comforted and healed.  Those distressed spiritually will find encouragement and vision and lightness.

Jesus goes on to say that his mission is proclaiming liberty to the captives.    Some human beings are literally slaves to other humans.  One impact of the Gospel of Jesus is to free women and men so that they may live as their Creator desires, not as another person demands.  As the message of Jesus permeates this disordered realm, those who are captive will be freed.

Human captivity comes in a variety of forms, however.  The genuine spiritual seeker trying to live a good life increasingly realizes a difficult and cruel reality.  We are grossly limited by our very nature to be the people we earnestly desire to be.  So Jesus promises freedom also for those of us captive to unseen, but equally cruel, forces.

The Gospel of Jesus includes proclaiming the recovery of sight to the blind.   Miracles are recorded of Jesus restoring physical sight to blind persons, giving powerful demonstrati0n of the power of God in his Gospel.  But Jesus also made clear that a common affliction of humanity is spiritual blindness (John 9).  A physically blind person knows they cannot see and has to learn to accommodate that limitation.  But a spiritually blind person by very definition does not recognize their disability, and so lives a dangerous and precarious life.  They think they are perceiving life in all its physical and spiritual elements as it truly is and, therefore, making wise life choices accordingly.  But they are not perceiving spiritual reality accurately, because they cannot see, and so they are hopelessly in danger of making poor choices and missing the main points of this life.

Jesus continues that his Gospel sets at liberty those who are oppressed which means he will bring relief to those who struggle with the burdens this life so often imposes.  Life can be difficult and challenging, much more for some than for others, and the oppressive realities many of us endure severely limit our ability to find peace or joy.  Life in this realm often brings relentless fatigue and hopelessness.  Jesus says his Gospel will have the effect of causing those downcast and inwardly bruised to find their way to healing and freedom.

This passage concludes with the phrase “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” rendered “the acceptable year of the Lord” in other translations.  The prophet Isaiah was not referring to a calendar year as we might think of it.  He was describing the future age in which God firmly and finally moves to redeem and restore his people by sending the heir of David’s dynasty, the prophet like Moses, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

When Jesus told the folks of his hometown in the synagogue at Nazareth that today this passage—including the proclamation of it being “the year of the Lord’s favor”—was being fulfilled in their hearing, he was declaring himself to be the Messiah.  They clearly understood his remarks this way because they took umbrage at them.  They’d seen him grow up, and good reputation or not, who did he think he was?

As Jesus goes on with his ministry he performs many miracles, demonstrations of the power of God to interrupt the natural process so as to emphasize the truth and power of his Gospel.  Jesus not only proclaimed good news, he physically demonstrated illustrations of the fulfillment of God’s intentions towards his people.  If the passage from Isaiah 61 is one way of describing the mission and Gospel of Jesus, his miracles underline the fact that he has both the position and the power to fulfill that mission.

Those of us who want not only to believe what the Gospel actually is but participate with Jesus in living it out in our lives need to ask ourselves some questions.  If the invitation to do life with Jesus is usually more comprehensive than we think, where are my blind spots?  What are my prejudices that block the impact of the Gospel in my life?  How am I resistant to the full effect of the Gospel in my life?

How do we see if we are spiritually blind?  How do we find our way to spiritual freedom and sight?  By following him and daily opening our selves to his Spirit, inviting him to open our eyes and our minds and our hearts—admitting our need and asking his help.

This passage in Luke begins with the words, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit” and that’s how we must live our lives if we are to follow him.

There’s wonderful invitation in this passage, but warning, too: the hearers—who knew Jesus and thought they knew him well—rejected his message, and so they rejected him and his Gospel.

He never returned to Nazareth.

What do we think the Gospel is? And what difference does it make for us?

Some of us who think of ourselves as Christians have been taught to think of the Gospel this way: Jesus came and 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.

But others of us have been taught something more like this: the Gospel is the story of God’s redemptive love expressed in the self-emptying sacrifice of Christ, which causes believers to become agents of reconciliation in this disordered realm, bringing the peace and righteousness of the Kingdom of God to earth.

Fairly different views. One with the emphasis on sin and sacrifice, forgiveness and eternal life in heaven. The other more focused on remaking this world according to God’s values for the immediate benefit of all. One that leans to the individual appropriation of the effects of Christ’s sacrifice, the other moving us towards corporate engagement.

But is either one a sufficient summary of the Gospel?

We began this exploration by considering how strenuously Paul contested with those who tried to alter the Gospel that Paul, Peter, James, John and the other early Church leaders preached.

In the texts we’ve looked at so far, we’ve identified the following elements of the Gospel:

• 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
• The effect of his death for those who believe in him is that they are justified in the eyes of God
• This justification is a gift
• He accomplishes this justification by purchasing our freedom-redeeming those who believe in him
• He reconciles us to God-removing the enmity that exists between sinful humans and the Holy God
• The Gospel gives us power to have spiritual sight instead of being spiritually blind
• The Gospel empowers us to turn from darkness to light
• The Gospel gives us the ability to turn from the power of Satan to God
• The Gospel gives us a place among those who belong to God
• The Gospel changes us-sanctifies us, makes us “other” than we have been, makes us holy

But there is more.

Let’s look again at the Letter to the Hebrews and there we will see more elements of the Gospel.

In Hebrews 2:14-15, the author (writing to encourage Jewish Christians who were under enormous pressure to renounce Jesus as their Messiah and return to Judaism) writes that Christ came to earth sharing in our same flesh and blood so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death; that is in his death he destroyed Satan, so that all who were in lifelong slavery to the fear of death might be delivered. Sharing in our “same flesh and blood” he is totally human. Being the Son of God he came with power from God. He used his power and his death to destroy the enemy of God. By destroying death and Satan, he also destroyed the fear each of us naturally have about facing our own death.

Again, in Hebrews 7:23-25, the writer says that Jesus is the ultimate and greatest high priest because death cannot prevent him from continuing in his office as high priest; so because he continues forever, is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him and he always lives to make intercession for them.

And in Hebrews 9:14, the writer says that Christ offered his blood through the eternal Spirit, so his blood is able to purify our consciences of dead works and therefore we can serve the living God.

Then, in Hebrews 9:27-28, the writer says that Christ came the first time as an offering to bear the sins of many—think of a scapegoat—and will come a second time, not to deal with sins but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

And, in Hebrews 2:11, the writer says that Jesus makes his followers holy, and since his followers are of the same origin as he, he is not ashamed to call them his brothers and his sisters.

Two more texts.

Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:21-25 that Christ was an example for us, so that we might follow in his steps. He modeled for us how to handle opposition and suffering, and how to trust the Father in heaven with our well being. He says that Christ bore our sins in his body so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. He says by the wounds of Christ we are healed. And he says all of us were straying, but by following Christ we have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.

Mark writes in his Gospel (1:14-15) that Jesus came “…proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’”

Salvation gospel? Social gospel? We’re given to reductions—necessary, I know, because we forget, we get distracted. We dumb down so easily. Anything we have a chance of remembering has to be 140 characters—or less—and sing-songy, catchy, imaginative, impactful, memorable.

And then we still will probably forget, moving on to the next thing, the next impulse, the next distraction, to whatever next catches our attention.

But the Gospel, people, the Gospel is…life. It’s the one thing—The One Thing—that makes a difference, temporal and eternal, individual and collective, physically and spiritually, now and forever.

And like any fantastic, extraordinary jewel, we need to treasure it, keep coming back to it, admiring it, peering at it, altered by our very possession of it.

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.