The audio from the Resurgence Text + Context conference is now available [as well as the sessions from the concurrent Acts29 boot camp].
I’m looking forward to being able to listen to whole messages I only caught glimpses of parts. Stirring Gospel-centered pastoral stuff.
Gospel-saturated thoughts
Kari and I have been talking quite a bit lately on the need for us Christians to live with a Gospel-saturated mindset. That is, the Gospel (the Good News of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ) is not just a message for entering the Christian life. It is the principle we must continue to live by in all of life. Jesus is not just our ticket to God. When we believe the Gospel, we get God. He is the Gospel!
This need to always keep the Gospel front and center in our minds is key to the Apostle Paul’s instructions concerning the life in Jesus:
Colossians 2:6-7
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
How did we receive our Savior Jesus as Lord? By faith. We were the recipients of God’s grace, and thus must live by this grace as the transforming reality of a life lived under, by, through and for God.
As Tim Keller reminds us, religion says, “I obey — therefore I am accepted.” But the Gospel has an entirely different bent, saying, “I am accepted — therefore I obey.” God is at work and He is the reason we desire to live for Him, and we live and move from the seat of grace, not of having to work for and maintain this relationship we now enjoy with God.
It is the one thing we must know really well. And swim continually in the deep end of it. God at all times in every situation in our lives deals with us on the basis of grace. Who else can that be said of?
Martin Luther comments on being Gospel-saturated:
This truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine…Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.
Kari's latest Patterson Family Margin
