Hear the royal decree!

So for my personal development plan, I have been studying security and this begins with how good the gospel is and where my identity is. I have been reading a book by my favorite author, John Piper, called God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself. The goal of the Gospel is to see and savor God Himself, being changed into the image of His Son so that more and more we delight in and display God’s infinite beauty and worth.

So here are some excerpts that just speak volumes for themselves. Be filled with hope and joy!

God is the Gospel. The good news is that the King himself has come, and the enemies have been defeated, and if we trust in what He has done and what He promises, we will escape the death sentence and see the glory of our Liberator and live with Him forever! This hope fills us with hope and joy (Rom 15:16) and frees us from self-pity and empowers us to love those who are suffering!

The biblical meaning of the Christian Gospel includes the existence of the living God and His coming into history with imperial authority over all things as the long-awaited King of Israel and lord of the universe. This King was Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior. He fulfilled the Old Testament expectations of the Son of David, died for our sins, was buried, and rose again triumphant over Satan, death, and hell. He promised His own Spirit to be with us and help us. On the basis of His death and resurrection, the gospel promises a great salvation- eventual healing from disease and liberation from oppression, peace with God and others who believe, justification by faith part from works of the law, forgiveness of sins, transformation into the image of Christ, eternal life, and the global inclusion of all people from all nations in this salvation.

The gospel is not good news without the spirit:
>John 14:17-18- You know [the Spirit of Truth] for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
>In other words, when the Spirit comes, he will be the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit will be for us the presence and power of Christ himself. The fellowship of Christ, promised in the Gospel, happens by the Spirit’s presence in us.
>The Holy Spirit is the down payment, a guarantee of the fullness of joy we will know in the perfected fellowship with the Father and the Son in the age to come (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5). What makes the gospel good news in the end is the enjoyment of the glory of God in Christ. The Holy Spirit provides the present experience of that enjoyment. Therefore the promise of the Spirit in the gospel is what makes it good news!