Quotes about Gospel

Cross and resurrection are the South and North polls, true gospel polarities, of a single, undivided, salvation world. Remove either Paul and you've got salvation.

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective.

The gospel offers a different view of suffering: in suffering we enter the depths; we are at the heart of things; we are near to where Christ was on the cross.

Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.

The gospel is entirely a message about what someone else has done not only for me but also for the renewal of the whole creation.

The gospel is not a philosophy of repression, as so many regard it. It is a plan of freedom that gives discipline to appetite and direction to behavior.

Our assignment has never been about what we can do for God, but what can God do through us. That is the essence of the gospel: to do exactly what Jesus did and destroy the works of the devil.

It is quite another to endure and respect those whose passion is to pursue living an authentic Gospel in ways that challenge our comfort zones. Such is the nature of real faith. It offends the stationary.

Once, while teaching a group of students about the importance of signs and wonders in the ministry of the gospel, a young man spoke up, saying, "I'll pursue signs and wonders when I know I have more of the character of Christ in me." As good as that may sound, it comes from a religious mind-set, not a heart that is abandoned to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The idea of Kingdom power and spiritual conflict unsettles some people, but without power, the gospel is not good news. Jesus never made the gospel simply a doctrinal exercise.

That spirit has worked to reduce the gospel to a mere intellectual message, rather than a supernatural God encounter. It tolerates the mention of power if it's in the past. Occasionally, it considers that power is appropriate for people in faraway places. But, never does this spirit expect the anointing of God's power to be available in the here and now.

Anything so precious as the gospel of Jesus Christ is worthy of all the effort and sacrifice of time and means employed to teach it.