Monday, January 11, 2010

The Gospel Command

Although one might disagree with some of the things N.T. Wright says in the first sentence, the main point is something we can all learn from. The gospel is primarily an announcement, a command from the world's true Lord.

"The 'good news' is not, first and foremost, about something that can happen to us. What happens to us through the 'gospel' is indeed dramatic and exciting: God's good news will catch us up and transform our lives and our hopes like nothing else. But the 'good news' which Paul announces is primarily good news about something that has happened, events through which the world is now a different place. It is about what God has done in Jesus, the Messiah, Israel's true king, the world's true Lord...The gospel isn't like an advertisement for a product we might or might not want to buy, depending on how we felt at the time. It is more like a command from an authority we would be foolish to resist. Caesar's messengers didn't go round the world saying 'Caesar is lord, so if you feel you need to have a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him.' The challenge of Paul's gospel is that someone very different to Caesar, exercising a very different kind of power, is the world's true lord." (Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1 pp.4-5)

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