Monday, September 16, 2013

The saccharin gospel

I'm not suggesting that we need to lay grace aside and impose oppressive rules on anyone. That's not the gospel, either! We need a full-orbed gospel message—the one Jesus taught, modeled, and imparted to His disciples. Anything else leaves us with a saccharin-sweet taste in our mouths but feeling empty. A lite version of the gospel simply can't satisfy the deepest needs and longings of the human heart. We can't be truly saved by a “Lite Savior.” We need the Lamb of God to die for us, but He's also the Lion of Judah who demands everything we have as we follow Him.— Christianity Lite, page 122

<idle musing>
Amen! Good preaching! We have to hang onto grace while preaching a serious message of death to self. It we drop grace, we end up with empty legalism. But if we drop death to self, we end up with a cheap imitation of the gospel. The hymn Trust and Obey got it right: we have to trust, but we also have to obey. If try to do one without the other, you end up with a sorry caricature of the real thing...
</idle musing>

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