Simple Ways to Share and Express God’s Good News!

 

Are you looking for ways to express the Good News of the Father, Son and Spirit’s Love for us that are simple? Statements that are filled with Good News clarity without all of the valid, but heavy theological terms and language you could speak? Something short but to the point?

I thought I would try to assist you with that on this post. Three things have brought it to mind of late: 1.) Helping my local congregation to do it. 2.) Reading a great book called “The Crucifixion of Ministry” (one of my top ten books of all time).

In this book, writer Andrew Purves, rightly points out that our responsibility as pastors and ministers of the Gospel is to “…first approach people not with God’s judgment or even with God’s forgiveness. We cannot assume that a person knows who the God is who judges or forgives him or her. Instead we come announcing and bearing the love of God.” He continues, “Thus the first pastoral movement of the ministry of grace must be quite simply (although of immense significance) the announcement ‘Jesus Christ is Lord, and this Jesus is God who loves you.’ The statement stands over and against all other claims to divinity and all other definitions of divinity.”

Finally, under the section “Announce the Love of God” on p.130, Purves adds that the Gospel “…is the announcement of the human reality as St. Paul saw it; ‘for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:3)…’the first pastoral act of our participation in the ministry of the grace of God is the announcement in word or act: ‘Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus who is God loves you.'”

That’s a simple expression of the Gospel and easy enough to speak, isn’t it? (by Jesus through your vocal cords! 🙂 )

I think that any preacher or proclaimer of the Gospel should always start with making a similar statement to their audience before they “move on” to other stuff because, in REALITY, there is no other stuff! God the Father, Son and Spirit IS Love and has included all of humanity in His loving, shared, relationship in the person of Jesus! That is the most fundamental truth undergirding every human life!

3.) The third thing that got me thinking about this post was the very practical and simple expression of the Gospel made by one of my Pastor friends, Bill Winn, recently. He had received a similar letter of spam and unsolicited e-mail, as I did, by a person who had gotten a hold of our e-mail addresses. In most of these spam letters, we receive some religious take on a subject. The subject matter is usually not centered on the “Who” of Jesus but some distracting “what”, “where”, “why”, “when” or “how” topic. This e-mail spam was typical.

However what was not typical, was Bill’s great response! His response to the distracting topic was so simple but profound and to the “Christ Point”, I was inspired to write this blog post and share it with you! Here is Bill’s Gospel reply and MANY simple ways to share and express God’s Good News with others. It has been edited for anonymity but Bill’s EXACT words of the Gospel remain untouched.

“Dear [Anyone],

 

You belong to the Father, Son, and Spirit. You always have. You always will. The real concern for you is not [to be distracted by such and such a subject] but to answer the question; “Who is Jesus?”

 

The Father’s eternal purpose for humanity was to gather us together, in His Son, and to have us in relationship with Himself. He has accomplished that in the Incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, Who is fully God and fully man.

 

Christ Jesus is also the vicarious man. Jesus is you, for you, as you, with you, and in you in the presence of the Father.

 

Acts 17:28 is where Paul said that all mortals, “live, move, and have their being in Jesus.”

 

You died when He died. You were raised when He was raised. You ascended to the right hand of the Father with Him.

 

You are beloved of the Father. Jesus and the Father have been face to face in relationship from all eternity with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God too. The Holy Spirit is the One by which we call out “Abba Father” in the first instance.

 

[Anyone], my friend, you are utterly and completely adored by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Jesus is so are you in this world. He has shared every spiritual blessing with you already and has made good on the Father’s dream to have the fall of the first Adam undone and to have humanity adopted into His circle of fellowship. He is the Last Adam.

 

Learning to live Loved in the Father’s embrace,

Bill

 

PS you might like these books: Jesus and the Undoing of Adam, C. Baxter Kruger, The Great Dance, C. Baxter Kruger, The Mediation of Christ, T.F. Torrance, On the Incarnation of the Word of God, St. Athanasius, The Shack, Wm. Paul Young.”

Isn’t that a GREAT but simple response spoken by the Holy Spirit through Bill? You Go Jesus in Bill!!! 🙂 And, YES!, even though Bill doesn’t typically respond to these or get positive feedback, when he wrote this letter, he did get a response with positive feedback!! Hmmmmmm – I wonder why???!!!! 🙂 You KNOW why!!! 🙂

A Very Practical and Inspiring Gospel Quote

Let’s face it! To think of theology as practical, inspiring and full of Good News is quite a stretch for most people these days! As one man said “most of us would rather have a root canal than listen to something called theology!” 🙂

Part of this is the fault of theologians who have not done a good job of putting theology in everyday and relational terms for the man on the street. Far too often, theology has gotten stuck in the ivory tower of dry, professorial analysis and speech, and become a battle of pride in knowing “learned words”.

Make no mistake though! Theology is important! It has been called into being by the Triune God because something has gone wrong (John 1:1-5, 14!) We have forgotten Whose we are, and therefore don’t know who we are, and we are suffering a huge crisis of identity! Something HAS to break through our darkness and clutter so that we can experience life as it really is (Eph 1!) The Gospel is Good News BUT it is not a game (just look at the wrecked relationships and broken lives that come from not knowing or believing the truth of our Inclusion in the Life of Triune God!) Therefore, theologians aren’t to be easily dismissed just because they sometimes use “big words” we can’t always understand up front!

Theologians should be considered like the expert behind any “simple” product. For instance, aren’t we glad there are engineers that understand and know the terminology and technical building process behind a “simple” microwave oven (which I use practically almost daily by the way)? Of course we are! But we are also glad that they make the complexity behind the “simple” microwave as easy as pushing a button, right?! We don’t want them to get rid of the complexity behind a microwave (because we want to be safe – saved – when figuring it out and messing with it!) We only want them to make it simple to live with the complexity, right?! 🙂

I’ve said all of this to help broaden your mind about the serious function and nature of theology! The Father doesn’t want you to misconstrue His Good News just because there is some complexity in it, and you are “just a simple person!” He is both simple AND complex!!! I, personally, want you to understand more fundamentally why the theology of our Inclusion in Jesus MUST and DOES sound so different and complex as it cuts through our preconceived ideas and faulty notions about Who God REALLY is! The Father wants us out of the fog of our illusions and “to show which of you have God’s approval” (1 Corinthians 11:19!)

I’ve also said it because I now want to quote a theologian that many people call “inaccessible”. I want you to see how practical, inspiring, IMPORTANT, and accessible theology can be when it is put in simpler language that the average man on the street can understand. After many years of studying and teaching the Nature of the Triune God and Jesus from scripture and the historical church, and after having a firm grasp on complex Hebrew and Greek languages,  here is what theologian Thomas F. Torrance has to say about the Good News of Jesus Christ, Our Mediator,  in his book entitled, “The Mediation of Christ”, p.94:

“In Jesus Christ God has actualized his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as you Lord and Saviour.  

From beginning to end what Jesus Christ has done for you he has done not only as God but as man. He has acted in your place in the whole range of your human life and activity, including your personal decisions, and your responses to God’s love, and even your acts of faith. He has believed for you, fulfilled your human response to God, even made your personal decision for you, so that he acknowledges you before God as one who has already responded to God in him, who has already believed in God through him..in all of which he has been fully and completely accepted by the Father, so that in Jesus Christ you are already accepted by him. Therefore, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.”

Now THAT is both the complexity AND the simplicity behind the Father’s Good News! None of us really knows how that technically works out BUT we sure can relax in the liberating SIMPLICITY of knowing we are liked and loved and will always be embraced and accepted by the Father and the Spirit, in Jesus, NO MATTER WHAT!!!