Michael Horton - The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World

2009 by Michael Horton

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2010

Ebook corrections 04.18.2016 (VBN), 03.03.2017

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0524-7

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

To Lisa, for her partnership in the gospel-driven life

CONTENTS

I owe special thanks once again to Robert Hosack and Robert Hand, along with the rest of the Baker team, for their assistance and improvements along the way. I am also grateful to my colleagues and students at Westminster Seminary California as well as to my brothers and sisters at Christ United Reformed Church in San Diego. They offer a consistent source of encouragement, instruction, and joy for my family and me, and provide a concrete expression of the message in this book. Of course, I owe the greatest earthly gratitude to my wife Lisa and my childrenJames, Olivia, Matthew, and Adamwho are constant sources of inspiration.

The goal of this book is to reorient our faith and practice as Christians and churches toward the gospel: that is, the announcement of Gods victory over sin and death in his Son, Jesus Christ. The first six chapters explore that breaking news from heaven, while the rest of the book focuses on the kind of community that this gospel generates in the world. It is not merely that there is a gospel and then a community made up of people who believe it; the gospel creates the kind of community that is even now an imperfect preview of the kingdoms marriage feast that awaits us. The church is its own culture, not only with its distinct story and doctrine, but with its own politics and means. Consistent with the message that it proclaims, the church is receiving its life, identity, growth, and expansion from above rather than creating these for itself and from its own resources.

Distinguished from all religions, spiritualities, and philosophies of life, the Christian faith is, at its heart, a gospel (meaning Good News). The church originates, flourishes, and fulfills its mission as that part of Gods world that has been redeemed and redefined by this strange announcement that seems foolish and powerless to the rest of the world. In other words, every believerand the church corporatelyhas passed from death to life by being made a recipient of Gods activity.

Following from Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospelof the American Church, this book explores the greatest story ever told and the surprising ways in which God is at work, gathering a people for his feast in a fast-food world. With The Gospel-DrivenLife, we turn from the crisis to solutions, in the hope that we will see a new reformation in the faith, practice, and witness of contemporary Christianity.

The Good News is not just a series of facts to which we yield our assent but a dramatic narrative that replots our identity. Think of it in terms of a theatrical play. Each week we come to church with our own scripts. If yours is anything like mine, its the show about nothing. Yet God descends to give us a new script: a rich plot in which our original character dies and is raised with the lead character. Instead of trying to find a supporting role for God in our play, God writes us into his script as part of a growing cast for his new world. This script does not offer a blueprint for a new creation, if we will only follow certain steps for realizing it. Instead, through this gospel the Spirit sweeps us into the drama, into the new creation that has already been inaugurated. No longer in Adam, under the reign of sin and death, we are in Christ.

The book is divided into two sections: Looking Up, Looking Out and Looking Around, Looking Ahead. Ive chosen to use a number of news metaphors in this bookbreaking news, front-page, headlinesto emphasize both the urgency of the gospel and the surprising, unexpected means by which God communicates it to us. We dont find the truth about God, ourselves, or the world by looking within, but by being drawn outside of ourselves. Having been turned inside out, we look up in faith toward God and out toward our neighbors in loving service and witness. Surprising news has a way of focusing us on something out there in the real world rather than on our own assumptions, experiences, and speculations. Only the Spirit, working through the gospel, has this kind of power to bring about a new creation in the midst of the old. Gradually, we discover that the world outside is more interesting than the inner world of narcissistic preoccupation. It is a liberation that we never expected, much less achieved for ourselves. Its a gift. It is the marriage supper that is promised in the gospel and of which the Spirit gives us a foretaste in this present age. While our consumer culture offers instant gratification in drive-thru spiritualities, the gospel seats us at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the Triune God serves us with his heavenly gifts.

A new reformation requires both a change in our message and our methods. Its not only our beliefs, but our personal and corporate practices, that must change. If our churches today are focused on our action, piety, and world-transforming agendas, then the crying need of our day is to recover the focus on Christ as the host and the meal that delivers forgiveness, new life, and genuine transformation in a world that is literally wasting away.

Like Christless Christianity, this book is written for a wide audience of Christians who are burned out on hype and are looking for hope. It especially targets younger laypeople, parents, and pastors who want to see their own lives and their churches become more gospel centered.

LOOKING UP,
LOOKING OUT

1
THE FRONT-PAGE GOD

Judging by the success of twenty-four-hour reporting, we are news junkies these days. Besides being informed about the events shaping our world, we long to be a part of something beyond our own cycle of ordinary life. As important as many of these events may be, in most cases they come and go and as weeks, even dayssometimes hourspass, we have already forgotten the headlines that caught our momentary attention.

The same thing happens in the church world as well. We are so easily distracted from the things that matter mostthe commission that Christ gave us to proclaim the gospel and feed his sheepby fads that come and go. Every party seems to leave a bad hangover: disillusionment, burnout, and fatigue. Yet we are always suckers for The Next Big Thing.

Long before CNN and online journalism, the basic content of the Christian faith was designated newsGood News, in fact. In its secular Greek context, euangelion (good news) was normally used for the word of victory on the battlefield brought by a herald from the front lines. More than any other designation, this was the term that early Christians borrowed for their message and mission to the world.