Below is my “one” sentence summation of the gospel that I came up with after spending some time thinking through over 20 mentions of the word “gospel” in the new testament that I picked out of my concordance.  My goal was to grasp a full picture of the essential elements of the gospel.  So here goes:

The gospel is the good news that God has made a way through the murder and resurrection of His Son Jesus for mankind to be adopted into His kingdom to become sons and daughters of the eternal king instead of being justly subject to eternal death and the wrath of God due to our rebellion against Him, if we would only turn from our disobedience, believe, and trust that Jesus has delivered us from both the penalty and power of sin by paying the cost of disobedience with his perfect life and overcoming sin and death by raising from the dead, so that we are now new creations in Christ Jesus, able to worship God truly and enjoy His presence and people forever.

Is there anything missing?  Anything here that is unnecessary?  How would you sum up the gospel in “one” sentence?

This post is from one of my journal entries a few years back:

Today was a very good day. This morning I got up, not thinking very much about God. I began to catch up on reading my Business Week magazines as I haven’t read them in a while. As I read the magazine from this past September 11th, I found an article in there about one of the companies that had the most people die in the world trade center attack and that prompted me to go to the internet to sort of relive those moments. And I came to a very chilling audio clip of a man who was trapped on the 105th floor of the North Tower. He was on a call with 911 pleading with them to send help right away. He knew that he was in danger, but he did not know that those would be the last 4 minutes and 54 seconds of his life as the North Tower would come crashing down. There’s something about a dying man’s last words that are chilling. At this point all masks are torn off, and we can glimpse into the heart of the real man. What I heard was terror. Absolute terror at the prospect of dying. He said that he was not ready to die. He said “we’re young men, and we’re not ready to die”. Towards the end of the call his voice was noticeably becoming more desperate, more frantic. His voice had a really eerie tone to it as of one who is terrified to the core of their soul. He knew that he was in a predicament over which he had no control. It was in God’s hands and he did not know him. He said “Tell God to send the wind from the west”. He was suffocating in the smoke. He continued to plead to the lady on the line for help, but deep down he must have known that his pleading was futile. The lady asked for the name of another person that was in his office. He spelled the name out exhaustingly, frighteningly. Then we hear what sounds like an explosion in the background, and the caller screams at the top of his voice, “Oh God, Oh!…” The call is terminated…

This call, to me, was a gift of God this morning, because it brought me face to face with death. This morning I looked death in the eye, and I could begin to feel the fear and terror that that man on the 105th floor of the north tower felt. Death became very real to me, and I knew that death would be my destiny at some point. And what are we to do? Death is an enemy, and one that we cannot overcome by any earthly means. I kneeled down at my couch and trembled before the Lord. “Lord, you are awesome, and your wrath is terrifying, and who can stand up to you? But your word says that Jesus died on the cross and bore your wrath for us…for us…” I broke down into tears, and I sobbed for a few minutes as I was hit in the face like a ton of bricks with the love of God. All of the sudden the fear left and was replaced with a love so unimaginable, so overflowing, so transforming and uplifting, that I was filled with joy and awe and with love toward God that despite the great wrath of God, we have been given a Savior so that if we trust in him, our eternal destiny becomes life rather than death.

Afterwords I went for a walk around the condo community. I came back and read some more on the internet. I came across an article about another man trapped in the South Tower on the 81st floor, just above the impact zone. Only his story was different. He was a believer in the Lord. He saw the plane coming from his office window, he ducked under his desk with the bible he read that morning lying on top. The plane crashed through part of his office. Everything around him came crashing down, he was trapped in a pile of rubble. He prayed to God to take over. He asked God to see his wife and kids again. Just then he saw a light. It turned out to be the flashlight of another office worker. The office worker told the trapped man that he would have to bust down the drywall in order to be saved. With unnatural strength the trapped man broke free of the pile of rubble and began to punch the wall. He broke a hole in the wall and with the other man’s help was able to get out of the office. They began a decent through the stairwell that happened to be the only exit out of the building as the others were severed by the plane. They reached the ground safely and just a few minutes after they left the tower it collapsed.

Lord thank you for the stories you gave me this morning. Thank you for bringing me face to face with death and demonstrating your love and victory in the midst of it. I love you and may your name be praised amongst all the nations, in Jesus name, Amen.

Caleb

I just wanted to write to say that I’m thankful to God to have lived to see another year.  I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions save one: to know and love Jesus more this year.  I can only do this because he has first loved me so.  May His glory and fame be on the increase in this new decade!

Is the good life about achieving something?  Does the good life come when I’ve achieved a certain level of income?  Does the good life come when I’ve achieved a certain level of popularity?  Or maybe the good life comes when I attain a certain amount of comfort in my life?  Or maybe the good life is when I’ve been able to reach an enlightened state of self-actualization and self-mastery? 

What constitutes the good life?  Everyone seems to want it.  But I’m not sure that many of us know how to get it.  Most people tend to think of the good life as something that you achieve or something that you get to.  The problem with this approach is that it will necessarily always fall short.  Firstly, experience tells us that we are not naturally as disciplined as we need to be to attain all that we would hope for.  And secondly, our thirst for achievement is never quenched.  We might say that we’ll be satisfied with place to stay, food to eat, clothes to wear, some good family and friends, and at little pain and drama as possible, but inevitably there remains this “one last thing” that we need to get in order to finally feel like we’ve made it.  Just a little more money, or a little more power, a little more notoriety, a little nicer house, or a better girlfriend.  We say, just that little more and I will be content.  But we know this to be false.  Experience tells us that by and large we have not been satisfied.  We know that the last car we bought did not give us lasting satisfaction, so what makes us think that the next shiny new car will be any different? 

Thus far, I’ve mentioned only primarily the material.  For some, they recognize clearly that the material can never fully satisfy and so the good life does not consist in the material.  And this, in my opinion, is a right judgment.  However, often the counter approach is self-mastery or self-actualization.  If I can just gain enough control over my passions and thinking and achieve an “enlightened” state, only then will I have the good life.  However, this thinking is also fraught with trouble, as what human being ever experienced complete self-mastery or self-actualization?  If our idea of the good life is based solely on reaching this spiritual nirvana of self-mastery or self-actualization, then we shall never have the good life, because we will always be discontent in our failure to achieve perfection.

So then if it’s not about the material or spiritual achievement, then what could the good life be about?  To answer the question, I must first say that there is an element of truth to the “achievement” approach.  The very idea of achievement implies that there is a “good” to be attained.  If there were no good to be attained, then there would be no point in trying to achieve anything.  So the fact that there is a good to be attained is important to understanding what the good life is.  Most people’s definition of good tends toward the direction of perfection, both materially and spiritually.  Materially in the sense that I have everything thing I need to have perfect happiness, pleasure, and comfort.  Spiritually in the sense that I am in perfect control of all my thoughts and actions and that I always act in accordance with what I think to be the right way to act or respond.  Attaining perfection is by and large what people are after, religious and non-religious.  Perfection is a good thing, and so we believe that the good life is about attaining those things.  The critical problem that this approach faces, which I mentioned briefly earlier is our inability to attain this.  And perhaps even more damning of this approach is the idea that even if it were possible to attain perfection, it still wouldn’t be satisfying.  And what good is a good life that’s not satisfying? 

The breakthrough occurs when one recognizes that the good life is not about achieving, but about receiving.  Good is rightly connected to perfection.  You cannot separate the good from perfection.  So we need someone outside of us to bridge the gap between us and perfection, lest we be completely separated from the good by our inability to attain perfection.  This someone outside of us is Jesus the Christ.  God sent his son Jesus to do what we could not do, namely achieve complete self-mastery and perfection.  And God in his grace allows us to receive the perfection (aka righteousness) by belief and trust in Him.   

But not only is our inability to attain perfection addressed, but our insatiability is also addressed in Jesus the Christ.  The reason is this: perfection by our own means can never fully satisfy, because we are not what is greatest and grand in the universe.  Though the good is inextricable from perfection, the good does not consist solely of perfection.  There is a quality or attribute of perfection that is needed in order to truly satisfy, namely divinity.  Divine perfection, which can only be found in God through Christ, is that which can truly satisfy.  We receive the righteousness and perfection that make up part of the good life, but moreover we receive the ability to glory in God as the author of perfection.  God is greatest and grandest in the universe, and our own perfection can never replace that.  Thus the good life cannot be attained, but must be received, for to attain is to glory in self, but to receive is to glory in the giver.  And what we receive is not just power and perfection, but a personal relationship with God, who is the ultimate good.  Self-mastery is ultimately self-defeating, because the best it could possibly do is achieve a humanly perfection, while there yet exists a divine perfection which remains unattainable.  Though we cannot become like God in the sense of possessing his exact divine perfection, we can become like God in the sense of rejoicing in all his perfect goodness.  And it is in this relationship of love and rejoicing in our Creator that we receive the good life. 

I am always excited about the new year. This year is no different. It is a time of new beginnings. It is a time to put away the sins and dirt of the past and look forward to a year of victory. It is hopeful and bright and maybe this will be the year that we really start to make progress in our life goals.

Well, the realist in me doesn’t want to get too hopeful about the new year. This is the 28th new year’s day that God has given me the pleasure of experiencing and each one of the past 27 I’ve gone on to fail miserably at achieving my goals for the year. Okay, so I admit, I probably didn’t have too many goals as a toddler, but certainly in my teen years and onward I had them, and inevitably I failed to achieve many of them.

The hardest ones to achieve are the ones that can’t be done in a single exertion.  It’s easy to get up the nerve to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  But that’s no one’s new year’s resolution.  People resolve to things like losing 20 pounds this year, or getting a six-pack of abs.  Achieving those goals will take more than a treadmill run or two.  It takes time and it takes discipline. 

Discipline is the dreaded “D” word.  No one is naturally really fond of it.  And yet it is our only hope if we are to keep any of our new year’s resolutions.  And so I am not going into this new year naively thinking that the novelty of the new year will carry enough power to enable me to keep my resolutions.  No, that would be insanity.  But perhaps, by the grace of God, I might be able to parlay some of that new year enthusiasm into creating some routines and schedules that will foster the discipline needed to stick with the daily actions that I need to do in order to uphold my resolutions.  I’ve already started by creating a daily schedule for weekdays and then one for Saturday and one for Sunday.  On each schedule, I’ve put down those daily actions that I believe will enable me to achieve the short and long-term goals that I have for myself.  That way I hope to not leave those things up to chance and spur of the moment inclination. 

So will this all work?  Only time can tell.  Probably in the end, this year will be a mixed result.  But I’m still hopeful.  Though, my 27 years tell me that my hope can’t rest on my own ability, for I’ve proven my aptitude for failure.  My hope has to rest on the one who has always kept his word and who has never failed to accomplish what he has purposed.  His name is Jesus. 

Happy New Years!
Caleb

Well it’s been a while since I’ve written. In the mean time, I went fishing for the first time ever. I’ve always wanted to be able to catch my own food and eat it, so a friend from church invited me to go with him to mineral lake to fish for trout. It apparently wasn’t the best time of the year for fishing in this lake, but we were able to catch four medium-small rainbow trout that we fried up for “breakfast” around 4:30 in the afternoon. We rounded out the meal with three fried eggs and bacon. Now that’s what I call a well-balanced meal.