Taking the Gospel Seriously

If you are reading this sentence, just to check this out, go ahead and keep reading. For some of you, do something you don’t ordinarily do, that is, read and meditate on this little essay. Then start doing it every week. Don’t make excuses – this isn’t long, folks.

We’ve got to be or get serious about the gospel. That starts with your being serious about your reception of the one and true gospel. Faith in Christ means that you now receive Jesus as King, the Lord of your life. People who do that will follow and keep following the Lord – yes, the Lord – which starts then with believer’s baptism. God loves you and gives you every good and perfect gift. You can never repay Him, but He wants you, your entire life. When you give Him your soul, He will cleanse it of sin and make you a new person, what the Apostle Paul calls a new creation. You need to stop kicking this can down the road, because you don’t have innumerable opportunities to receive the gospel, the news of salvation about which I’m writing here.

Maybe you think you’re all set, like the Jews of Jesus’ day and a majority of religious figures through the history of the world. After all, you’re reading this. If this is really the case, His church will take a preeminent place in your life, not just something you fit into your life, but your life instead fitting into His body like a body part. When you do, He will use you, just like you use your own body parts.

Body parts are members and people who follow Christ identify with His body and fit into it like you would want any of your body parts to do. This is not an arbitrary submission, but wholehearted. The Jews were making up what it meant to follow God in Israel and God rejected that. It just isn’t true. You need to know that. As a body, your church, including you, will spread the gospel then to everyone else with a very serious pursuit, emulating the example of Jesus and what He did on earth.