Preamble

Our shared faith as members of the Lake Avenue Church family centers on God's "evangel," the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through the power of this gospel, God accomplishes His salvation plan: rescuing His people from sin, making each one complete in Christ, and making all things in His creation new. Our most basic theological convictions are aspects of this gospel.

Commentary

This is the preamble to the Statement of Faith (SOF) that we, the LAC Ministry Council, are recommending to the congregation. This preamble states that we believe that the essential convictions of our Christian faith and practice are all aspects of “the gospel.” Therefore, we need to know what “the gospel” is.

The term "gospel" quite simply means "good news."The gospel is God’s news given both to explain all of existence and to redeem all that God has created. It is not simply a minor part of the story of who God is, who we are, why our world is the way it is, and where everything is ultimately headed in the cosmos. It is THE story into which these and all other stories are subsumed. It is not simply the basic truths that we must believe in order to go to heaven. It is God’s news about Himself, about heaven and hell, and about our need to receive His offer to rescue us from our sins. In other words, it is the whole story! Through the lens of the gospel, we are to view everything in the world from God’s perspective. It is so all-embracing of reality that it affects how we perceive everything else.

The term evangel (usually translated “gospel”) is derived from Greek and also means “good news.” Of course, news is about something that has happened. The term is used in the Bible both for the announcement of good news from God as well as for the content of God’s good news. With that in mind, our goal in formulating a SOF for our local church family has been to set forth “sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” which He has now entrusted to us (1 Tim. 1:10-11 ). We believe that the essential biblical and theological convictions that hold God’s people together are vitally connected to God’s gospel. The gospel, therefore, is not one aspect of our faith but includes the complete story of our faith. It is not the A, B, or C of what we believe but embraces the totality of faith, i.e., the A to Z. It is the whole of what the Apostle Paul says we must understand, hold to, and then pass on to future generations until the work of God is completed in this world (2 Tim. 1:8-2:2 ).

The Gospel Is More Than What Many Think It Is

We know that others have used the term gospel in a much more limited sense than we do at LAC. Among the narrower uses of gospel are as follows:

1. The The way to forgiveness – In many evangelical churches, the gospel is only about asking Jesus to come into the heart to forgive sins. This is why some preachers say that if a church does not have a call to accept Jesus after a sermon, the gospel has not been preached. We believe that the opportunity to have sins forgiven and begin a new life with God is good news from God and is central to the gospel. But, the ways that the Bible speaks about the gospel indicate that the whole gospel is much bigger.
2. A call to social justice – Usually citing Luke 4:16-19 , many mainline churches have said that the gospel is a mandate to work against poverty, oppression, and injustice. Jesus’ words in Luke 4 indicate that this kind of activity is surely an outworking or application of the gospel. To exclude this aspect of the gospel would mean that we have to ignore these words of Jesus – and perhaps much of the life of Jesus. However, the alleviating of injustice, though it is a part of God's good news, is surely not the entirety. The gospel helps us understand why these wrongs exist, what we should do in the light of their existence in our world, and how working against evil in our world in the short run is a part of a much larger and eternal task.
3. A synonym for love – The argument is sometimes made that if a church excludes anyone for any reason, it does not practice the gospel because the gospel, it is said, is love. Of course, this kind of definition would mean that love is the quality that tolerates anything—even the worst kind of abuse and evil. Certainly, the gospel flows from the love of God. And, God is a welcoming God loving us before we love him (1 Jn. 4:19 ), dying for us while we were sinners (Rom. 5:6-8 ), and declaring that he did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to rescue it (Jn. 3:17 ). Moreover, those who receive the gospel will make a commitment to 1) love God with their whole beings and 2) love all those God brings across their paths. However, love is not tolerance. And, tolerance is not the gospel. To the contrary, the gospel declares that evil will not go unpunished. There is no good news if evil is simply tolerated and allowed to proliferate.

What Does God’s Gospel Include?

There probably is no neat and concise description of all that is in God’s gospel short enough to be put on a coffee mug. Jesus himself may have given us the briefest possible description of the gospel in John 3:16-17 : “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Of course, even those beautiful and clear verses call forth several huge questions about who this God is, why people need to be saved, and how to find this salvation… These are the kinds of questions that must be included if we will understand the whole of the gospel. Our proposed Statement of Faith (SOF) is an attempt to identify ten aspects of the gospel that have knit God’s people together historically and globally. Briefly put together, there are some basic truths we need to have news about if we will have a complete worldview. Among these are the following:

*Who God is – What God reveals about Himself is good news. The biblical report opens by telling us that God exists (always has and will), that He created all that is though He is not created, and that He is a relational God involved personally in this world. The rest of the news in Scripture is about God’s good character, works, and purposes. So, the gospel begins with news about what God is like, what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do.

*What our world is like – God’s initial report about the created world is good because, when God was finished with each of the first 5½ days of creation in Genesis 1:1-26 , he repeatedly announced that it was good. The gospel explains why Jesus-followers should be the people most positive about this world because God made it, God entered it on a rescue mission, God loves it, and God pledges to re-fashion it into something that reveals His glory.

*What it means to be human – God’s good news tells us the beautiful truth that all human beings are made in God’s image. God’s report to us is that it was not until human beings were made on the sixth day that God declared that creation was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). In Genesis 2 , we discover that we were made to live with God at the center of our lives. Our lives have meaning when we care for and manage the rest of creation in the way God has enabled us to do it. Reflecting God’s image, we are at peace when we live in right relationship to God, to one another, and to the rest of the created world.

*What has gone wrong – Human beings have broken relationship with God through disobeying Him. In Genesis 3 , the first people did not want God to rule their lives and so disobeyed Him and tried to become their own “gods.” This was the beginning of what the Bible calls “enmity” between God and those made in His image. In our fallen condition, we are fighting with God for control of our lives. When the relationship to God was broken, every other relationship was broken—with people and with the rest of creation. Our world is filled with injustice, self-centeredness, ecological devastation, suffering, and death. We now live in a day after millennia of ongoing sin that affects everything in our universe. The world is not now what it was when God declared it “very good.”

*What God has done to change things – God came to the world personally. This is the heart of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-11 ). Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, entered the world on a rescue mission (“to seek and save that which was lost”), lived the life we should have lived but have not, and then died the death we should have died and now do not have to because he has done it in our place. And, in history, Jesus personally defeated sin and death through his resurrection from the dead. On the cross, Jesus the sinless one allowed his relationship with the Father to be shattered while he bore our sins so that our relationship to the Father might be made whole. The bad news is that people made in God’s image are evil—more so than we could ever imagine. But the good news is that God loves us—more than we could ever hope for. We are both utterly sinful and utterly loved. Out of his love, Jesus, the one through whom all was created, entered creation to rescue us and make all things new. The event that took place in history—from the birth of Jesus to his ascension into heaven and gift of the Holy Spirit—comprises thirty years that changed the world and form the heart of the gospel.

*What we must do with the news – We must receive the message and messenger by faith. We must pass the news on to others. And, we must live in the light of its truth. The Bible is primarily news about what God has done—not advice about how to live. Different from other religions, God’s gospel does not start with a philosophy or a set of teachings by which we must be guided. The gospel is first and foremost the report of what God has done. This fact is, in and of itself, good news. A religion that starts with advice for living means that we must follow the advice if we will live. But, imperfect people will always fail to keep advice perfectly. We need a rescue from our failure, and that’s what the gospel is about. As Romans 1:16 declares, the gospel is “the power of God for the salvation for everyone who believes.” The gospel is that God has done something in history that we must believe. It will change our lives because the gospel affects everything about us. But, following the teaching of Jesus does not save us. Jesus saves us. Living in the light of this news will draw us to love God, love people (and therefore seek to bring about justice, compassion, and reconciliation), and love the world as God loves the world.

*How God’s story will end – Our SOF preamble summarizes the news: “Through the power of this gospel, God accomplishes His salvation plan: rescuing His people from sin, making each one complete in Christ, and making all things in His creation new.” And Article 9 states that God will establish a world with “restored relationships to God, renewed creation, and one another in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace.”

Even more powerfully, Revelation 21:1- 5a describes the promised end of God’s work in this way:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'” This is the culmination of the God’s gospel story. It is good news indeed.

Our SOF is centered in this gospel story. It is what our children’s ministry leaders are calling “the Big God Story.” Ten aspects of this gospel combine to form the heart of our convictions as followers of Jesus. They hold us together. They give us a worldview large enough to provide a framework for all of life’s experiences. As Paul declared in his last letter (or, at least, the last one we have) written to a young pastor named Timothy (speaking of the gospel),

“What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us… And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 1:13-14 ; 2:2).

Our prayer is that God will use our SOF and the commentary that will accompany it to enable us to understand this “good deposit” God has given us in the gospel, live in the light of its sound teaching, and then pass it on until the work of God is complete.

To God’s glory alone,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor