Gospel as Story

This is a re-post of an article I wrote Sept 8, 2008

The Gospel story is so significant because it has real power. When Paul writes in Rom 1.18 that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation he is right on. A story, about what God is going to do, about Jesus and what he did, and about you is God’s power. Why? Because that Story has the ability to change reality here and now. More and more I am realizing that God’s salvation is less and less about the future date in which Jesus will separate goats and sheep. Why is that true? Because the goats and sheep are already manifesting themselves today. We should already know, by our actions, which side we are on. God’s salvation is not an ethereal concept! Go and tell the Jews who walked across dry land fleeing the Egyptians that God’s salvation is a feeling in your heart. They would laugh at you. Tell David who God saved from Saul an seated as the King of Israel about this ethereal salvation. No salvation is to be found today. Today is the day of salvation. We find it when God enters our life and changes us, all the way around, from the power of sin to the power of life.

Lot’s of stories have the ability to change reality here and now. Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech was just a story. But for the tens of thousands of people who heard it that day on the DC mall were struck by it. Most of those people knew they were listening to history. Most of those people took that story and made it their own. That story changed them and the way they looked at the world. This is why Story is powerful. His speech went to war against the prevailing ideas of the time, and won. God’s Gospel is even more powerful because God is behind. In that Story, God is actually going to war.

Why does this happen? Because when what Jesus did on the cross is received by a person, it changes how they think about the world, about God, and even about themselves. When God’s plan for the world is understood by a person, they understand not to abuse the world, that God has not left it, or them, behind – but in fact is working, even now, in them and through them, to redeem it all. And that is valuable to how you are going to see the world, and what you’re going to do in the world. You are then left with the decision to “convert” which really means, to live accordingly with God’s unfolding story. That is surely what the early Christians did. They didn’t stop being Jews and change religions. They were still Jews, they just continued on with what Jesus was doing – since God was clearly working with Jesus. They kept Jesus’ story going.

And when you choose to live according to God’s story you live a certain way. You don’t abuse the world, or others. You end up looking like Jesus. Everything that the Gospel has told you about how God sees the world impacts how you see others and the issues in your day. This is how God’s Story, the Gospel, undermines our worldview. This is how the Church is supposed to look different from the world. Because the Church will have the same worldview, because they have all converted according to the same Story. They don’t buy in to the world’s carnivorous ambition, abusive tendencies, or wasteful ways. They find their joy in what God is doing, what God is redeeming, not what the world is destroying. And they get involved in God’s redeeming work in the world.