Friday, November 17, 2006

Watering down the gospel

These days its all too common for people to talk about the love of God. The gospel has become "God loves you and died for you", or sometimes just, "God loves you". But is that the gospel? Did Jesus incarnate, die, rise again, and ascend to heaven just to ensure he got his message through that God loved the world? Is the atonement just that God loves us?

Clearly not. Surely every good jew must have known already that Yahweh loved his covenant people dearly, as a husband loves his bride.

On other hand, proclaiming that God hates you, is mad at you because you a filthy sinner, and you will burn in hell unless you believe in Jesus, is not in any shape or form the gospel either.

Yet each extreme contains fragments of truth.

The New Testament makes clear that the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ is central to the gospel. But what is the gospel? Comments please!

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