When I was in college, I was asked to participate in a door-knocking campaign. We were to go door to door and ask this question: “If you died tonight, do you know, without any doubt, that you would go to heaven?” That, I was taught, was the core of the gospel, the good news of the Bible.
Sigh.
If I could go back, and if those unexpecting residents whom we spiritually assaulted would give me the time, here’s how I would communicate the gospel today. If we truly wish to get the map of our lives right, and help others get the map of their lives right, a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the gospel is needed. Here is mine:
In the beginning, God existed for eternity in a perfect community of Father, Son and Spirit. Each fully loved the other. Each was fully loved by the other. Another name for this eternal community of love is the Kingdom of God. It’s a dominion where all of God’s loving desire is perfectly fulfilled.
God desired to extend that community. So, he created the cosmos, the earth, plants and animals and humans. Creation is part of his plan to extend his Kingdom. Thus, the care of creation is an essential part of our being.
Then God created you. He made you for the purpose of participating in his loving community and expanding this Kingdom on earth. God’s desire was that you would help the whole world be a place where God’s loving desire is perfectly fulfilled. God loves you because you are his creation, the only creation made in his own image. The blood of divine royalty flows through your veins. His love has nothing to do with good things you do or bad things you don’t do. He loves you simply because you exist. He desires you to see yourself through his loving eyes. Self-hatred, though often cultivated by American Christianity, has no place in biblical faith. You are beloved. Deeply loved by the One who made you.
But God didn’t just make you human. He made all humans. American Christianity is often individualistic, focusing more on the truth that God made you and not also on the truth that God made us. American Christianity is also often exclusive, granting greater worth to certain races, genders, classes, etc. But in the story of Scripture we learn that God made every human. Every human bears his image. Every human is beloved.
In relationship to you, the Bible calls everyone else whom God made your “neighbor.” They, too, were created for the purpose of participating in God’s loving community and expanding his Kingdom on earth. Your neighbor may possess a different race than you, a different gender than you, a different sexual orientation than you, a different socio-economic class than you, or have physical or cognitive abilities different than yours. God loves your neighbor because they are his creation, made in his own image. His love has nothing to do with good things they do or bad things they don’t do. He loves them simply because they exist. He desires them to see themselves through his loving eyes. This is one of the most oft-missed truths of the biblical story–that every human on earth is endowed with great value and are bearers of the full image of God. Sadly, they’ve frequently been treated as much less as churches and Christians have fostered racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and other cruelties.
This reality reflects one of the saddest truths of the Bible: sin. Sin refers to the fact that there are things that have taken place in your own life that have grieved God and distanced yourself from God. His love for you remains. But by your own sinful actions and attitudes, distance has come between you and God. In many ways, you’ve sought to live independent from God’s loving community and Kingdom. This distance is further empowered by the work of an Evil One who seeks to frustrate God’s plans for his Kingdom and for you.
And, sin refers to the reality that there are things that have taken place in your own life that have wounded your neighbor and distanced yourself from them. God’s love for your neighbor remains even when your own love for them wanes. Neglect or mistreatment of others in any fashion because of their race, their gender, their age or their class wounds them and distances you from them. This trauma is further deepened by the work of the Evil One who delights in division, hatred and conflict.
American Christianity has tended to downplay these so-called “social” evils and even labeled them “political” or “secular” rather than spiritual. In truth, the naming and repenting of these is an essential part of living out the story revealed by the Bible.
The good news, or “gospel,” is that God himself takes responsibility to right these wrongs. He takes the initiative to bridge the gap by coming to live among us by his son Jesus. This is driven by his great love for you and for us, the love that has existed since creation. He deems you and us worthy of this gift of his son Jesus. American Christianity has often painted humanity as “worms” or “wretches.” It’s attempted to convert through shame and guilt. But the good news of the gospel is that we, all, are beloved and have been from our first breath. It’s the adoration of the All-Mighty that leads him to give us the gift of his son to address our sin.
Jesus enacts the Kingdom in his own life and ministry, making possible true community once again with God and with neighbor. He reveals the specific sins of ours which tear down this community. He lives a life of perfect love for God and for neighbor–even those neighbors who are different from him. In other words, the Kingdom comes through Jesus.
And, on the cross, Jesus does several things. Jesus gains victory over the Evil One at work in our lives and relationships, marking the beginning of the Evil One’s end. Jesus demonstrates what true self-sacrificial love looks like–God’s for us, and that which we should have for our neighbor. Jesus substitutes himself for us, taking upon himself the punishment earned by our sin. In addition to what happens at the cross, Jesus also gives the gift of the Spirit to empower us to fulfill the purpose for which we were originally created.
These gifts of Jesus ultimately enable us to experience the union with God we were created to have. We can think of union as complete intimacy with God, something that we may not fully experience in this life, only having progressive tastes of it in this life. And, the gifts of Jesus enable us to experience union with our neighbor. Jesus makes possible the eradication of the barriers we’ve erected between ourselves and God, and between ourselves and our neighbor.
But God didn’t just do all of this for you. He also did it for your neighbor. Every race. Every gender. Every sexual orientation. Every socioeconomic class. Every person with any physical or cognitive ability. And this is driven by his great love for your neighbor, the love that has existed since their creation. He deems them worthy of the gift of his son Jesus.
Jesus taught that there two responses to this good news. Two ways in which we could regain our calling as those who bring the Kingdom on earth. Jesus summarized all of Scripture into two commands: Love God and Love Neighbor. We were not made to get off the earth and into heaven. We were made to help bring heaven, God’s kingdom, to earth–by loving God and loving neighbor.
We were made to fall in love with the God who has always loved us. In loving God, Jesus taught that we were already participating in eternal life. Heaven, on earth, is living in loving union with God.
But we were also made to love our neighbor. American Christianity has tended to ignore this command, or at least restrict it to loving neighbors who are similar to us. But Jesus’ call is a love that expands to all whom God has made. This requires stopping any traumatizing attitudes and actions like racism, classism, sexism and other ways of treating others rooted in biases, prejudices, hatred and notions of superiority. It ultimately requires the same selflessness and self-sacrifice demonstrated by Jesus on his cross. It means treating our neighbor as priceless due to their being made in the image of God and worthy because of the gift of Jesus given them. The care for the poor, the addressing of trauma against minorities, and the call for justice for the oppressed is sometimes labeled “political” in American Christianity. In fact, it is fundamental to our response to the gospel. Our own love for neighbor then makes it more possible for them to love God and enter into the community created by God.
The fulfilling of these two commands is a journey, requiring endurance, patience, intentionality and the empowerment of the Spirit. It’s a journey we walk until the return of Jesus himself. The goal of Christianity is what some Christian traditions call “union”–perfect harmony between you and God and you and your neighbor. Spirituality is not simply about getting baptized or going to church or giving money. It’s about the lifelong pursuit of this loving union with God and with neighbor. One day this union will be perfectly realized as Jesus comes again and we, and all who are saved by his love, live eternally in the new heavens and earth prepared for us.
