Erin and I have been taking a class through World Team called Gospel Foundations. In the class we are working through how to apply the Gospel to our lives, because as a professor of mine used to say, “As Christians we never move on from the Gospel, we move on in the Gospel.” One of the most basic truths of the Gospel that continues to amaze me is that it works. One of my favorite authors, in talking about the apostle Paul, put it like this:
I have often reflected on the strangeness of the task to which Paul devoted his life: telling pagans that there is a single creator God rather than a multiplicity of gods was bad enough, but adding that this God had made himself known in a crucified Jew, who had then been raised from the dead, was bound to cause hoots of derision…. Yet Paul found that when he told this story, when he proclaimed that this Jesus was indeed the world’s true Lord, people (to their great surprise, no doubt) found this announcement making itself at home in their minds and hearts, generating the belief that it was true, and transforming their lives with a strange new presence and power. (N. T. Wright, Paul, pg. 100)
The strange power of the Gospel works. It worked then and it works now.
