The Glorious Gospel

Tuesdays with Timothy  #7

I Timothy 1:11-12 According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;

The glorious gospel - the good news of salvation in Christ alone. Early in my spiritual life, I thought the gospel was something for lost people. I believed that the gospel was what you believed to get saved  and then you moved on to the deep stuff, you know, like whether or not a Christian can watch T.V. and if women can wear blue jeans. This lead me down a disastrous path because it did not lead me to Christ. We never grow out of the gospel. I say that a lot because I believe the point needs to be drilled into us - we need to hear and meditate on that glorious gospel every day. 

If the gospel is indeed glorious, then it needs to be preached and proclaimed. The gospel is the preeminent theme, the magnificent message, the majestic melody of effectual preaching. The more I preach and the more I hear preaching, the more I want to hear that glorious gospel and plum the depths of the riches of the grace of Christ. Does this mean there is no room for the imperatives of Christian duty? By no means. We were saved unto good works, and because we were saved by Christ, we love Him and want to know how to follow His ways. This is the lawful use of the law according to this glorious gospel. But don't give me rules for rules sake. 

The essential gospel message of the forgiveness of sins by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is the message we preach - but that is a far cry from the whole of the gospel. The glorious gospel preached is a very simple message that can be received by a child. The depths of the glorious gospel and what it means to me, a child of God, will never be exhausted. I am happy in the trend of  evangelicals in the "gospel centered" movement, but I fear that it is becoming nothing more than a motto and the glorious gospel is not be preached in its depth and glory. Can we ever mine the depths of justification? Can we reach the end of the store house of God's love? Could we possibly ever get to the heart and the depth of the atonement? The gospel is simple in its essential message in order to receive and believe by faith - but so deep that we will spend eternity learning more and more of the depths of His love. 

This gospel was committed to Paul's trust. Paul had been given this trust by Christ while the false teachers desired of their own to teach the law. There are not two gospels. Paul's gospel came from Christ and was authorized to be preached by Christ. Any other gospel has a beginning that did not come from Jesus. Paul was thankful that God would use him, of all people, to preach this gospel. God "enabled" him, or in other words, he permitted him, or allowed him to preach and then supplied him with the power necessary to carry out the task. Paul was thankful that he was given the power and Christ put him in the position of ministry and charged him to proclaim the good news. Paul did not think he was great - in fact he was the least.