Every church has a functional center, something that motivates what they do, how they do it, and how they understand who they are. Sometimes this “center” is not clearly defined and other times what is stated as the central motivation is not what really motivates church life. At Redemption Hill, we aim to be a church that is centered on the Gospel. This means that the Gospel shapes the character of this church…the practices, commitments, and behavior of the church. As we like to say, we aim to be a church that brings all of life “in step with the gospel” (Galatians 2:14).
The Gospel (which simply means “good news”) is that the wisdom of God made a way for the love of God to redeem rebellious men and women and make them children of God without compromising the holiness and justice of God.
For starters:
The Gospel is the good news that God delivers us from the penalty of our sin once and for all. It is also the good news that God continually delivers us from the power of sin that keeps us in bondage.
The Gospel is not just the means of our salvation, but the means of our transformation. It is not simply deliverance from sin’s penalty, but release from sin’s power. The gospel is what makes us right with God (justification) and it is also what frees us to delight in God (sanctification). This means that the Gospel is for both the unbeliever and the believer because it satisfies the unbeliever’s debt owed to God and it satisfies the believer’s inability to conquer the deathly power of sin.
So when Paul calls us to “work out our salvation,” he is calling us to work the gospel into every nook and cranny of our lives so that we are transformed emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, physically, and culturally—for the gospel is the power of God to heal all of our deepest and most profound personal and societal problems.
The great reformer Martin Luther rightly said that, as sinners, we are prone to pursue a relationship with God in one of two ways. The first is religion/spirituality and the second is the gospel. The two are antithetical in every way.