Missio Dei Suburbia

The Gospel - Of First Importance

At the heart of the church is the call to be on mission in the context of community - and the key to doing life together as we move towards and bless particular groups of people around us is the gospel.

One of my concerns with our heavy use of the word 'gospel' is that it can become watered-down and lose both its meaning and its ability to motivate us towards community and mission. So we need constant and regular reminders about the content of the gospel; we should regularly rehearse and practice the content of this word which brings a holistic salvation to the people God calls to himself.

One way to keep the gospel in front of you is to sign up to receive daily emails from the guys from the Of First Importance blog - every day when you wake up there's a quote that shows up in your inbox like this one from John Piper's book, This Momentary Marriage:

God requires two things of us: punishment for our sins and perfection in our lives. Our sins must be punished, and our lives must be righteous. But we cannot bear our own punishment, and we cannot provide our own righteousness. Therefore, God, out of His immeasurable love for us, provided his own Son to do both. Christ bears our punishment, and Christ performs our righteousness. And when we receive Christ, all of his punishment and all of his righteousness is counted as ours.

Tim Keller has written that every problem we face is due to the fact that we fail to take in and live out the gospel - here's a practical way for you to take on life with a satisfying an sustaining hope in God.

Of First Importance - sign up and soak in the gospel.

Questioning John Piper's Answer

The Desiring God website has a series of answers that John Piper gives to questions that people send in. Today, Dr. Piper answers the question - 'Why is differentiating between evangelism and missions important?' You can read or listen or watch the answer here.

A friend of mine asked what me (and others)  what we thought about Piper's answer. Here's my response:

What I appreciate about John is his concern that the mission of God extend to unreached people groups. He has been banging that drum since a lot of us were wearing diapers and I thank God for that.

He has also stood firm in insisting that evangelism is a word – a declaration about what has done in time and space through Jesus Christ. This is critical in a church world that increasingly resonates with the pseudographical word attributed to St. Francis – ‘preach the gospel, use words if necessary.’

Here’s where the problem begins to creep in for me (and no, I don’t think his distinctions hold up across the course of the Scriptures). I remain concerned that the brothers in T4G (particularly Dever and Piper) are taking what is of first importance in the gospel (‘Jesus died for our sins’) and extrapolating that as the full weight of the gospel, as though God’s complete mission can be summarized in the justification/sanctification/glorification of individuals (to the glory of God) with less attention given to the biblical emphases placed on the renewal and redemption of cultures and creation (they don’t ignore them but see them as implications of the gospel).

You see the effect of this in the answer Piper gives to the distinction between evangelism and missions. If he had said, ‘Yes, there is a difference between evangelism and mission(s). The mission of God is a holistic blessing of the nations that includes what we call evangelism but it’s more than just the words we say – it involves every aspect of our lives. There is no mission of God apart from the story of God’s work in and through the cross but God’s mission is bigger than evangelism’, he would still uphold the necessity of declaring the gospel word – whenever, wherever – without creating what I encounter with Piper fan-boys who think the only thing that matters in life is evangelism and bonus points if you do it across an ocean.

I see two particular opportunities to get all of us back on the same page:
- Clarity on the mission of God. Is the mission of God more than a declaration of the gospel?
- Clarity on what constitutes a culture. Is cross-cultural ministry something that can only take place on foreign soil?

So as a guy whose very first interaction on the internet back in ‘95 was to print off every John Piper sermon available from 1980 to 1995, I would say that yes, there are distinctions between evangelism and mission(s) but in this case I don’t believe Dr. Piper’s distinctions hold up against the Scriptures and I don’t find them particularly helpful.

What do you think about Piper's distinction between evangelism and missions? Does this fit the shape and scope of the Scriptures? How would you answer the question?

Download John Piper's New Book for Free

From the Desiring God blog:

John Piper's new book Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ is now available for download. Get it for free.

Gospel Coalition Notes - Keller, Piper Driscoll

The Gospel Coalition National Conference began yesterday - here are notes/manuscripts from several of the main sessions:

• Tim Keller
• John Piper
• Mark Driscoll

You can watch the live webcast today here. Audio and video from yesterday's sessions should be available later today.

Piper - Never Shrink the Gospel

From Desiring God:

Here is a simple exhortation that I have been trying to implement in our family:

Seek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller.

Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.

The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart,

• grace gets bigger;
• Christ gets greater;
• his death gets more wonderful;
• his resurrection gets more astonishing;
• the work of the Spirit gets mightier;
• the power of the gospel gets more pervasive;
• its global extent gets wider;
• your own sin gets uglier;
• the devil gets more evil;
• the gospel's roots in eternity go deeper;
• its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger;
• and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder.

So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.

Pray that it won't. Read solid books on it. Sing about it. Tell someone about it who is ignorant or unsure about it.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel.... 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. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)