Wilson Gospel Wakefulness (Foreword by Ray Ortlund)

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2639-8
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

We may know the gospel. We may believe it-even proclaim it. But we also may assume the gospel and become lethargic. In this book Jared Wilson seeks to answer the central question, how do we experience and present the gospel in a fresh, nonroutine way in order to prevent ourselves and others from becoming numb? His answer may be surprising: 'by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement.' We don't excite and awaken people to the glorious truths of the gospel by spicing up our worship services or through cutting-edge, dramatic rhetoric, but by passionately and faithfully proclaiming the same truths we have already been given in Scripture.  Wilson's book will stir churches to live out the power of the gospel with a fervent, genuine zeal. After an explanation of the term 'gospel wakefulness,' Wilson unpacks implications for worship, hyper-spirituality, godly habits, and sanctification, as well as other aspects of church life. Pastors, church leaders, and all in ministry, especially those who are tired or discouraged, will be uplifted, emboldened, and empowered by this book. 

Jared C. Wilson is assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri. He is a popular author and conference speaker, and also blogs regularly at Gospel Driven Church, hosted by the Gospel Coalition. His books include Gospel Wakefulness; The Storytelling God; and The Wonder-Working God.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Jared C.

Leseproben

1

What Is Gospel Wakefulness?

In the well-appointed study of a professor of history in a prestigious university in the American South sits a brick-sized piece of the Berlin Wall. It sits on the floor, because he uses it as a doorstop. He is not ignorant of the piece’s historical significance; as a historian he is deeply informed of the struggle and the repression attached to the wall, to the shame it symbolized and the division both literal and cultural it created. He not only knows about but also teaches on the international reverberations that occurred when the great emblem of the communist stronghold in Western Europe finally came down. The piece of wall propping open the professor’s door has some sentimental significance to him as well, as it was a gift from a former student, a star pupil currently pursuing her doctorate.

In a small, dingy apartment in Midwest America lives an elderly immigrant woman who sells newspapers and fresh cut flowers during the day and cleans an office building in the evenings. On an iron shelf in her bedroom sits a small lidless glass jar, and in that jar is a piece of the Berlin Wall the size of a marble. She has often held that piece of rock in her withered hand and wept. Her husband did not live to see the wall come down. Her cousin was one of the estimated five thousand people who tried to escape from the communist Eastern Bloc into West Berlin. He was one of the estimated one hundred to two hundred people killed by border guards in the attempt. He was one of those crushed by the Iron Curtain, so she is one of those who knows the unique confluence of memorial pain and joy in having intimately felt how the world once was and in having experienced how the whole world was changed. She knows what it feels like to carry an ocean full of grief and longing, what it feels like to cling to a sliver of hope, and what it feels like when that sliver of hope—a crack in the great barrier of darkness—gives way to a dam break of glorious fulfillment and release.

When the professor hears the epic Brandenburg Gate speech in which President Ronald Reagan famously commanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he admires it as a watershed moment in history, as iconic a sound bite from the annals of historical rhetoric as any. When the woman hears “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” she is stirred, always. When the professor speaks of the fall of the Berlin Wall as an earth-shattering event, he really does mean to communicate the radical nature of the event; he really does understand this. But the woman knows that the fall of the Berlin Wall was an earth-shattering event deep down in her bones.1

This is gospel wakefulness.

In December 2009 I had written the latest in a long line of updates using the phrase “gospel wakefulness” to my Twitter feed when one of my “followers” messaged me: “Where did you get this gospel wakefulness stuff?” he wanted to know. “I Googled it, and the only person who seems to be talking about it is you.”

This really surprised me. I didn’t believe I had made up the concept (and still don’t), but perhaps I had made up that particular phrasing. I didn’t think I had; in fact, the wording owes a lot to things I’ve read by the likes of Jonathan Edwards and Martin Luther and heard in the sermons of some like John Piper and Tim Keller. But it was true that in the previous two to three years, I had used the phrase a lot, had really tried to make it my own without really trying to make it my own (if you understand my meaning). But the concept of gospel wakefulness has the appearance—and the danger—of seeming new, and it’s my hope to prove that that is not the case, that in fact it is not only a widespread Spiritual phenomenon among God’s regenerate children, but that it is also biblical, no matter what words we use to define it or describe it.

But what is it, exactly?

What Is the Gospel?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we have to first arrive at an agreeable definition of the gospel itself. The word gospel comes from the Greek word evangelion, which essentially means “good news” or “good report.” Perhaps the clearest and most concise biblical summation of the gospel can be found in 1 Corinthians 15:1–4:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

     For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

This outline of the gospel’s content from the apostle Paul gives us in just a few lines a wealth of information about what the gospel is and what the gospel does. Paul informs the church at Corinth that the received gospel is the grounds for justification (“in which you stand”) and sanctification (“by which you are being saved”). He also says this message is “of first importance,” and if you are even cursorily familiar with Paul’s writings, you know he really believes this. Paul then reminds the church what the good report actually reports—that Jesus died to forgive sins, that he was buried, and that he was resurrected, and that all this was not a fluke or an accident or a plan B for the heavenly Father, but actually part of God’s sovereign plan for the world. Paul denotes this by repeating at each point that this was all “in accordance with the Scriptures.” In verses 5–8, Paul refers to those who witnessed the events reported in the gospel, which is his way of making this spiritual claim a historical claim. The good news is news about something that actually, literally happened in real life.

This is the basic, nonnegotiable truth of the news that God declares good. Notice that it is not advice, not suggestion, not instruction. Nor is it vague spirituality, steps to enlightenment, skills to implement, or precepts to practice. It is information; it is an announcement. It is news. News to be believed, yes, but it is not news of something that has yet to happen or something we can make happen, but rather something that has already happened and was made to happen by God himself.

There may be no need to further distill the gospel; Paul has done not just a good job in 1 Corinthians 15 but an authoritative job. But if we were to summarize his own summary, we might put it this way: The good news is that eternal life is possible because Jesus died to forgive sins and came back to life to conquer death. You may have walked down a church aisle, as I have, to accept an invitation to believe just that.

The New Testament, however, talks about the gospel in other ways too, as its Spirit-inspired writers draw out the implications and applications of the good report. Jesus himself, and John the Baptist before him, are recorded in Matthew’s Gospel as preaching the “gospel of the kingdom,” in Mark’s and Luke’s as preaching just “the gospel.” They were not preaching the death and resurrection of Christ, at least not directly at first. They were announcing that God’s righteousness was finally coming to bear upon the real world, that the manifest presence of his sovereignty was finally breaking into history, as is the hope seen throughout the longing of Israel in the Old Testament. This in-breaking kingdom, of course, centers on Christ as King, and the coronation and exaltation of Christ as King hinges on his death and resurrection, so the “gospel of the kingdom” and Paul’s gospel of first importance are not really separate concepts, but degrees of magnification of the same concept. All analogies break down, but perhaps we could say that Jesus’s death and resurrection are an electron and a proton, and that Christ’s kingdom is the atom they make up. (In this case, that atom would be hydrogen, but I’m an idiot when it comes to science, so that’s as far as I’ll take the analogy.) Jesus died and resurrected according to the Scriptures, which means God’s kingdom has come according to the Scriptures.

The kingdom of God was being inaugurated by and through Christ before his death, of course, but this inauguration was predicated upon his eventual (thorned) crowning and elevation upon the cross. (His announcement of the kingdom and his acting like the king preceded his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as well.) We could step back a bit and examine how Christ’s sinless life was integral to the efficacy of his eventual substitutionary sacrifice, which means his life before his death is implicitly integral to Paul’s gospel of first importance, but that sort of theological rabbit trail is beyond the scope of this book.

What we can say is that one primary way the Bible talks about the gospel is in the sense of “the kingdom,” but we cannot, as some writers and pastors today do, hermetically seal this form of the gospel off from the core announcement of the gospel found in 1 Corinthians 15. In fact, if you keep reading further into the chapter, you will see in verses 22–25 that Paul begins connecting Christ’s work on the cross and out of the tomb to the coming and consummation of God’s kingdom. In addition, the gospel of all the Scriptures has a cosmic scope that posits God’s glory itself as the sum of the good news. In this wide-angle view of the gospel, the good news is that the peace that was broken at the fall will be restored in everything, from God’s reconciliation with sinners to his establishing of the new heavens and the new earth. A cosmic...