So I'm bummed that Jerry Bridges was in town over the weekend and that I had no idea about the event...but I did catch the recap, entitled “Speaker asks audience to live Gospel” by Natalie Plumb in yesterday's Collegian. I am also thrilled to report that this article was also an official gospel sighting right on page 3 of The Daily Collegian. Praise God!
I actually don't know that much about Bridges except that he is somehow connected to the Navigators (a campus ministry God has used in great ways over the years), and that he wrote a book called The Discipline of Grace which revolutionized my view of the Gospel towards the end of high school or early in college (I can't remember exactly when...I'm only 25 and I'm already losing my memory!)
It is interesting (and a bit frustrating) that when most of us read a non-fiction book of say, 150-200 pages, we often forget most of the small bits of information, supporting arguments, and catchy anecdotes that often surround--is it too scandalous to say clothe (?)-- the real message that the book is getting at. I think that the success of a book (and as a side-note, good preaching...and probably any communication for that matter) lies in the communicator's ability to lead his/her readers or listeners to the naked truth, the ultimate truth which inspired the message to be crafted in the first place. Another way to explain this (perhaps a bit more 'G' rated) is to say that with most media that we take in we will eventually forget the fluff, but if the message was well crafted we will remember the heart of the message.
All that to say that although I don't remember a whole lot of specifics from Bridges' Discipline of Grace, the bottom-line truth that has stuck with me is that the gospel is not something we move beyond; it's not something that happened a long time ago when we said a magic prayer. The Gospel is something we need every day, and it is something that should be constantly transforming us and influencing the way we view everything. I don't have the time or the space to show you all the scripture references that back up this idea, so you may want to take a look at The Discipline of Grace (or just read the Bible for that matter.) In a few words, this idea and its application into our lives is referred to as The Centrality of the Gospel, and happens to be one of the core values of the Missio Dei movement.
To repeat the Bridges quote from Plumb's article: “Preach the gospel to yourself every day.” Why? Because we desperately need to hear it EVERY DAY!
One of the other quotes that I remember was something to the effect of “Your good days are never so good that you are beyond the need for God's grace, and your bad days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace.” (I'm going by memory so that may not be the exact quote.)
When these theological concepts are integrated into our lives, we are freed from a perfectionistic view of our Christian lives (The idea that we were saved by Grace, but when it comes to our daily lives we feel like we have to continually be at a certain “spiritual” level-- that somehow in our post-salvation lives we have to earn God's favor so he'll keep blessing us.) We realize that we are in need of God's saving grace at every moment of every day. It's not that we are losing and regaining our salvation moment by moment (that is a frightening thought), but rather that we have come to terms with the fact that being a Christian is more about a continual recognition of how messed up we are and how we constantly need Jesus if we're going to do anything right, than it is about crossing over some moral threshold where we assume new identities as righteous, sinless, superheroes.
Consider the words of Jesus in John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” As Bridges said, and Plumb reported so well, “It is the death and perfect righteousness of God” that grants Christians justification, or entrance to heaven. I would add that the death and perfect righteousness of God is also what gives us the ability to live with purpose in this world-- to love sacrificially, to pick ourselves up when we fail, and to find hope in times of sorrow. I'll close this long blog post with Hebrews 12:1,2: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
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