Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach[b] to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,[c] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being[d] might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him[e] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

Dane Ortlund

The Gospel is not a hotel to pass through but a home to live in. Not only a gateway into the Christian life but the pathway of the Christian life. Not the jumper cables to get the Christian life started but an engine to keep the Christian life going.

GOSPEL-LIVING

Martin Luther

"I have gone through open doors into paradise."

Charles Spurgeon

"When I understood that salvation was a matter of looking to Christ, not of doing, I found rest"

Elisabeth Elliot

"When obedience became joy."

Tim Keller

"When grace became sweet"

C.S. Lewis, Letter to an Italian Priest

During the past year a great joy has befallen me. Difficult though it is, I shall try to explain this in words. It is astonishing that sometimes we believe that we believe what, really, in our heart, we do not believe. For a long time I believed that I believed in the forgiveness of sins. But suddenly this truth appeared in my mind so clear a light that I perceived that never before had I believed it with my whole heart… From mere intellectual acceptance of, to realization of, the doctrine that our sins are forgiven. That is perhaps the most blessed thing that has ever happened to me. How little they know of Christianity who think the story ends with conversion.

Dane Ortlund

We will not grow in Christ if we view his presence and favor as a ticking clock, ready for an alarm to go off once we fail him enough. We can flourish into deeper health only as the truth settles over us that once Jesus has brought us to himself, he will never be looking for an off-ramp. He will stick by us to the end. In that knowledge we calm down and begin to flourish. One Bible scholar rightly called our growth in Christ "a strangely relaxed kind of strenuousness." We strain forward, but it is a straining that is at the same time relaxed, because it has been settled into our hearts that we cannot sin our way out of the grip of Jesus.

1. The Cross as a historical event in life

2. The Cross as the start to a better life

Revelation 13:8

8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

1 Peter 1:19-20

18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

3. The Cross as the point/peak of life

A "gospel" is any message that promises to make a person truly good, happy, whole, healed, and at peace.

Galatians 1:3-9

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse!

1. The Scandalous Nature of the Gospel

No work today can add to the finished work of Jesus.

Galatians 2:4

4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.

2. The All-Encompassing Nature of the Gospel

No work today can be separated from the finished work of Jesus.

Galatians 2:13-14

13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Dane Ortlund

Sensing our inadequacy, we set up our career, our relationships, our studies, our public speaking, our athletic abilities as functional gods to which we are looking for justification—to know we're okay. But what if we went into the interview, the conversation, the classroom, the game, already okay? Already justified. Not just theologically, but emotionally.

John Piper

The essence of worship is experiencing Christ as gain.