The Gospel Is Good News, Not Good Advice

The heart of most religions is good advice, good techniques, good programs, good ideas, and good support systems. These drive us deeper into ourselves, to find our inner light, inner goodness, inner voice, or inner resources.

Nothing new can be found inside of us. There is no inner rescuer deep in my soul; I just hear echoes of my own voice telling me all sorts of crazy things to numb my sense of fear, anxiety, and boredom, the origins of which I cannot truly identify.

But the heart of Christianity is Good News. It comes not as a task for us to fulfill, a mission for us to accomplish, a game plan for us to follow with the help of life coaches, but as a report that someone else has already fulfilled, accomplished, followed, and achieved everything for us.

Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life

A Strange Word From A Strange God

“Through this Word of reconciliation – the gospel – God becomes a stranger in a third sense: not only because he is our creator and judge, but because he is our Redeemer. This is a strange Word from a strange God because it contradicts our moral reasoning, which is captive to a theology of glory. [If] limited to “the moral law within”, the gospel can only be dismissed as foolish superstition. Contrary to our distorted intuitions, the gospel does not encourage our conquest of heaven through intellectual, mystical and moral striving. It announces that even while we were enemies, God reconciled us. While we were dead in sins, he made us alive in Christ. We are saved by God’s good works, not our own. Because we are sinners, God’s speech is disruptive and disorienting. It is not we who overcome estrangement, but God who heals the breach by communicating the gospel of his Son… While a theology of glory presumes to scale the walls of God’s heavenly chamber, a theology of the Cross will always recognize that although we cannot reach God, he can reach us and has done so.”
Michael Horton, The Christian Life, page 51, 53.

What if God tunes the hearts of strangers AND sons with the same song? What if never-ceasing mercy is God’s song for salvation AND transformation? What if there are no dead ends in Jesus… and even our wandering is just another way home?
John Dink