"True or False: The essence of the Christian message is that you are to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. The answer is… FALSE!"
If you answered wrong, you're not alone. With little thought I answered "True, that's what Christ told the rich young ruler." But then I went on to read just how wrong I was! This post is a great reminder of the Gospel of Christ. Check out this quote.
The essence of the Christian message is that you can’t but Jesus Christ did. You can’t earn God’s favor, but Christ did perfectly through his life of obedience culminating with his sin atoning, guilt removing, wrath satisfying, death defeating sacrifice on the cross. It is with this reality fixed that the Christian then lives their life to love and honor God supremely while loving their neighbor as themselves. Christians obey God not to earn God’s favor but because Christ has earned the favor and we are now living lives controlled by the Spirit, in obedience to the Word.Read the rest of Erik Raymond's post here.
1 comment:
my comment over at irishcalvinist:
"I like this! But I also agree with some of the comments, that to displace the common understanding of "love God/love others" from "The Essence of the Christian Message" without relocating it to its proper place is somewhat confusing. Kind of comes of like a baby/bathwater thing - only the call to love that follows salvation (by "The Essence of the Christian Message") can hardly be called bathwater!
This is a great post on the gospel! But perhaps not so helpful as it would be with a follow-up post called "The Essence of Christian Living" - which is a call to holiness born out of love."
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