Concise gospel
Author
Faustino de JesĂşs Zamora Vargas
Summary: To make the gospel more effective, we need to live it out fully, not just theologize it in theory. The gospel becomes supernatural when it is incarnated in our daily lives. We need to have a living faith in Christ that is reflected in our actions and relationships. The concise gospel is not about clerical structures or human ministries, but about the simple conviction that God loves us and expects us to love others. Theology should be tailored to our spiritual needs and centered on Christ. Christianity should be seen as a better way to live, renewing and encouraging us with purpose and joy. Let us reflect the image of Christ in our lives.
For the gospel to be more effective, we have to assimilate it all, entirely. There is a tendency to theologize the good news in doctrinal and theoretical framework, but little initiative to put theory into practice. This, inevitably, generates a synthetic faith. Christian culture is naive in believing that the message of salvation alone is sufficient to draw souls to Christ. There are preachers preaching on the air and others who fill churches with a vain and malnourished message. The truth is that the gospel takes on a supernatural dimension when it is incarnated. The boundary line between the Christian and the atheist struggles to disappear. May God save us from crossing our arms to see the coffin of faith pass before our eyes without major consequences. The good fight must be fought. “Fight the good fight of faith; make yours the eternal life, to which you were called… ”(1 Tim 6.12).
Do you know what kind of faith I'm talking about? Faith when you tremble before the name of God, faith when you recognize your insufficiency in difficult situations, faith when you do not understand the purposes of God in what is happening in you and your family, but you know that "it will help you good", faith when You pray for the impossible trusting that He will work, faith when you are thrown into the den of lions and you know in advance that the Lord will feed them so that they do not reduce you to a mass of flesh and blood.
The concise gospel is based on living faith in Christ. With such faith you can launch yourself from the pinnacle of the temple with the certainty that their angels will not allow you to collapse to the ground. Because of that faith, the devil fled with his tail between his legs. This is the faith of the concise gospel.
The concise gospel is not based on clerical structures, nor on human ministries to carry it out, but on a simple conviction: God loves me and expects me to love others in proportion to his love for me. He wants us to love our neighbor by presenting Jesus as “the only mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2.5). For this, our faith must not move between the transcendent and the worldly ... it cannot be fluctuating, it cannot be epidermal, but rather be seen in practice, reflected in daily life, even when no one sees us, but only God.
The times of ecumenical debates and dissenting theological approaches have passed. Theology must be a dress tailored to our spiritual needs, to depend more and more on Christ to solve the conflicts and dilemmas of today, from the home and to the ends of the earth. The concise gospel proclaims Christ from the trenches of faith, does not offer solutions lightly, nor does it promise prosperity to those who choose to follow him. It is about impact, life transfer, relational, friend and partner. Search the truth in the Scriptures (Jesus is the truth) and understand eternal life since saving faith in the redeemer of humanity is embraced. “If someone comes to you preaching a different Jesus than the one we have preached to you, or if you receive a different spirit or gospel than those you have already received, you can easily put up with that” (2 Cor 11.4)
Recently a pastor from my country, with a heavy face and tearful eyes, told me: - The government needs to give us more possibilities to preach Christ in Cuba. - Without thinking I replied: -No, what they are missing are brave people who become more involved in the task of preaching a real Christ who transforms lives -. It is just an illustration. The point is that we always blame something or someone to make up our insufficiencies ... and the world continues to collapse before its god, who has blinded its understanding "so that it does not see the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, which is the image of God ”(2 Cor. 4.4.)
People have to see that Christians make Christianity relevant, urgent, essential. They do not understand first if heaven is a gift or hell the destiny of sinners. They want to see that Christianity is a better way to live, that it renews, that it encourages living with well-founded purpose and joy. Let us understand that when God looks at us he wants to see the image of his son Jesus Christ reflected in us.
God bless your Word!