Conclusion
Changed Lives
My earnest desire is that you have found this e-book challenging, thought-provoking, and informative. I can’t think of another topic that is more important or beneficial to ponder than the gospel of Jesus. As you reflect on what you’ve learned in this book, I hope you’ll take away a few key points.
First, keep in mind that the gospel is God’s work alone. Not mine. Not yours. Not anyone’s. We’ve been saved from sin and hell and the law’s demands not because we’re so great but because God was so gracious in giving his Son, Jesus, to die on our behalf and offer us new life in him. His gift was freely given to us through no merit of our own. So we have nothing to boast about before God, except for his grace.
Second, keep in mind that the gospel message is powerful. Be a faithful steward of it. Love and cherish it. Share it well, because you know that in it the “righteousness of God is revealed” (Romans 1:17). This righteousness makes all the difference. It represents life and hope for people all around the world who are lost in sin and darkness, crying out for someone to set them free.
Third, allow this beautiful gospel to provide the framework for your life. You aren’t bound to the law anymore if you’re a Christian. You aren’t enslaved to sin or bound to Satan any longer either. You aren’t condemned by your past or your weaknesses anymore. Let the gospel remind you of who you are: a child of God through faith in Jesus, a cherished and prized possession of our King. You’re living not to earn God’s approval but out of gratitude for his amazing grace.
Let the gospel remind you of who you are: a child of God
through faith in Jesus,
a cherished and prized possession of our King.
Finally, enjoy the work God is doing in you to change and shape you into who he wants you to be. Cooperate with him in this venture, and keep the gospel in focus. Let it renew your faith and reignite your love for Jesus as you remember the gospel encounter where your journey first began.
This coming Sunday, I’ll have the great privilege of standing once again before the congregation I’ve been serving for more than seven years now. I’ll open the Bible and pray that God will do what he does best: empower the message and speak to people exactly what they need to hear.
As I do that, I’ll look out over the audience and see evidence of the gospel at work. I’ll see reformed hippies and drug dealers God has changed through the good news. I’ll see a former alcoholic and Irish fire chief who was radically delivered by the grace of Jesus, when his five-year-old granddaughter shared it with him. I’ll see an ex-convict who today holds master keys to every building on our campus and who is one of my most trusted helpers. Up until his health prevented him, he had a job cleaning bank vaults, because the gospel set him free from himself and from our enemy. I’ll see prodigal sons who returned to Christ and are raising their growing families in faith because of the gospel.
Throughout this place of worship, I’ll see engineers and professors, retail clerks and garbage collectors, business owners and waitresses, secretaries and soldiers, World War II vets and yuppie soccer moms, college students and nurses, Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, Asians and Filipinos, Latinos and Europeans, and young and old—all of us together celebrating with one voice this wondrous gospel that changed us. Rejoicing in God that we’re no longer who we used to be. What a life I lead!
My prayer is that you, too, have been saved by grace through faith in Christ and are in the habit of celebrating God’s life-changing work with a community of believers who have heard this same gospel message and are being changed by the good news of what God did in Christ on our behalf. May you be powerfully transformed and continually reformed by that gospel and its work in your life.
Blessings, friends!
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