Gospel: Ready, GO.

Usually at Bible Study, I feel like I blab on & on, with a few welcomed interjections from a few girls.  This week, I felt like we really discussed something together, maybe for the first time.  We were all involved in the conversation & all had input & I think we were all challenged by it.  And I absolutely love that.

This is the thing we ended up focusing on most: explain the Gospel in three sentences or less.  Ready, go.

{...}

That's kind of a tall order.  And one we should definitely all be able to fulfill.  But can we?

Some of the last words Jesus left with us were about making disciples.  How do we intend to make disciples without actually knowing what we're supposed to be teaching them?   

This is what David Platt has to say about it... [this is actually in a later chapter]

If you ask the average Christian sitting in a worship service on a Sunday morning to summarize the message of Christianity, you would most likely hear something along the lines of "The message of Christianity is that God loves me."  Or someone might say, "The message of Christianity is that God loves me enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die for me."
As wonderful as this sentiment sounds, is it biblical?  Isn't it incomplete, based on what we have seen in the Bible?  "God loves me" is not the essence of biblical Christianity.  Because if "God loves me" is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity?
God loves me.
Me.
Chistianity's object is me. (70)

 Of course God loves us.  But is that the purpose of His existence?  No way.  

God is HUGE & perfect & sovereign & deserving of ALL glory.  This is primarily what Christianity is about: glorifying Him.  The fact that we receive salvation through that is a perk. 

This is how Platt describes the Gospel:

Fundamentally, the gospel is the revelation of who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled to Him.  Yet in the American dream, where self reigns as king (or queen), we have a dangerous tendency to misunderstand, minimize, and even manipulate the gospel in order to accommodate our assumptions and our desires.  As a result, we desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical. (28)

So next week, the girls are supposed to be explaining the Gospel as if they were telling it to someone who knows nothing of Jesus or Christianity.

Here's my take on it:

God's plan from the beginning was to glorify Himself, the only One worthy of glory.  He sent His Son, Jesus as the only way to be reconciled to God through faith in Him.  Through Jesus' death & resurrection, we may be washed clean, made new, & can glorify Him for all eternity.  Our purpose on Earth is to magnify Him so that all people will see Him & turn to Him.

Some of the main verses that I'd look to to explain the Gospel:

2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:21, John 14:6, Galatians 2:20, 1 John 4:10-12, 1 John 5:20, 2 Timothy 2:9-10, & of course, John 3:16 [however, Christianity in its entirety cannot be explained through this one sentence, as we so often want to believe...if so, why would God have bothered to give us so much more of His Word?]

So what about you?  How would you explain the Gospel?