The Gospel for Real Life
The Gospel for Real Life
By Jerry Bridges
By Jerry Bridges
"[P]reaching the gospel to yourself every day is what this book if about. It is intended to answer three questions:
What is the gospel we should preach to ourselves?
Why do we, who are already believers, need to preach it to ourselves?
How do we do it?
...All of us, regardless of how long we have known Christ, need to bathe ourselves in the gospel every day" (p.11).
We have a truncated (shortened) view of the Gospel. Many Christians "below the surface of their lives are guilt-ridden and insecure... [and] draw the assurance of their acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience" (quote from Richard Lovelace, p.14).
We have a utilitarian view of the Gospel. "What can the gospel do for me?" The Gospel and the church become a means to 'feel good about yourself', 'meet new friends', 'hear positive, practical messages', 'overcome depression', find 'the secrets of successful family living' and so on.
"[B]etween the challenges of discipleship on one hand and the utilitarian view of the gospel on the other, we fail to see the gospel as the solution to our greatest problem - our guilt, condemnation, and alienation from God. Beyond that, we fail to see it as the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with Him. As a result, many believers life in spiritual poverty" (p.15).
A true and full understanding of the Gospel opens our eyes to the "unsearchable riches of Christ" that belongs to every believer. "The purpose of this book is to explore those unsearchable riches... In the next chapter we will look at our sinful condition so as to better prepare us to explore those unsearchable riches we have in Christ" (p.20).
"Why was Christ's death such an amazing event in itself? And how could it be that the eternal Son of God, by whom all things were created and for whom all things were created (see Colossians 1:15-16), would end up in His human nature dying one of the most cruel and humiliating deaths ever devised by man? ..."
"Christ died for our sins. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, took upon Himself a human nature and died a horrible death on our behalf. That is the reason for the cross. He suffered what we should have suffered. He died in our place to pay the penalty for our sins" (p.22-23).
"We will never understand the cross until we begin to understand something of the nature and depth of our sin. And to understand that, we must go all the way back to the Garden of Eden" (p.23). Because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, all of humanity is plunged into original sin and are now criminals before a holy Judge.
A simple exploration of the Great Commandment "is sufficient to show us all how woefully short we come in obeying it" (p.25-27). "Our situation [is] so desperate that only the death of His own Son on a cruel and shameful cross was sufficient to resolve the problem" (p.28).
Add to this an understanding of the holiness of God. "[T]he Scriptures teach us that God's holiness responds to sin with immutable and eternal hatred. To put it plainly, God hates sin" (p.29).
"The cross, then, is an expression of God's wrath toward sin as well as His love to us. It expresses His holiness in His determination to punish sin, even at the cost of His Son. And it expresses His love in sending His Son to bear the punishment we so justly deserved.
So to answer the question, 'Why the cross?' we must say God's holiness demanded it as punishment for our sins, and God's love provided it to save us from our sins. We cannot begin to understand the true significance of the cross unless we understand something of the holiness of God and the depth of our sin" (p.29).
"There are times when our inward desires do not match our outward conduct. We act very proper on the outside, but sin in our hearts. This was never the case with Jesus" (p.32).
"If we think about it, we realize that obedience that is not delighted in is not perfect obedience... What, however, is the significance to us of His perfect obedience?" (p.33).
"... Jesus not only died for us, He also lived for us. That is, all that Christ did in both His life and death, He did in our place as our substitute" (p.33).
"How can this be? How can Jesus take our place both in obeying God's Law and in suffering the consequences of disobeying it? How can the innocent suffer for the guilty? How can consistently disobedient people be treated as if they were perfectly obedient?" (p.36).
"It is this legal union [in Christ, in Him, in the Lord] that the apostle Paul had in view when he wrote that we were crucified with Christ, that we died with Him, were buried with Him, were made [spiritually] alive with Him, and will ultimately be united with Him in His resurrection... In other words, all that Christ did in His life and death is effective for us because we are legally united to Him. Therefore, we can accurately sat that when Jesus lived a perfect life, we lived a perfect life. When He died on the cross to suffer the penalty of sin, we died on the cross. All that Jesus did, we did, because of our legal union with Him