SS: Part 2

Was the gospel intended as a threat or as an announcement of good news?

Two words:  good news.  Actually, great news.

Four words:  tidings of great joy.

For whom?

For everyone.  For all people.  Seriously.  Not just a few.   All.

And what exactly was that great news?  It was that God became flesh and lived among us.  C'mon, really?

Well, surely then, if God came and lived among us, he came to judge.  To condemn.  To whip us into shape.

Ummm, no.   Actually, to bless us.  To recommend us to the Father.  To make our case for us.  To endorse us.  To free us.

He didn't come to declare us to be morally wrong or evil.  He didn't come to censure us, damn us, denounce us, or reprehend us.  He did not join us to attack, blame, blast, criticize, fault, belittle, deprecate, disparage, doom, sentence, convict, blacklist, excommunicate, castigate, reprimand, chide, berate, scold, upbraid, vituperate, curse, imprecate, abhor, detest, hate, loathe, shame or revile us.

There are an awful lot of words that describe what we often think he came to do to us.

But none of those awful lot of words are true.

The King, the Head of State, visited us to do what Heads of State often do -- to honor the people he is visiting.  To Christians, the God of all we know and experience visited us to love us and to show us what love is.

Isn't is ironic that we crucified him, and then we modern humans obfuscate the good news and transform it into bad news, claiming in effect that he came to crucify us?  We blame him for our own self-condemnation.  We say "in some sense, God is all about rules," when his only rule is love and his gospel is peace.  God is not all about rules.  He is love.  

Yet we somehow still think he came to skewer, clobber, rebuke, excoriate, hammer, lash, pillory, or put down us.

I know I think it.  One day, when I was in the middle of thinking "it" out loud, a dear friend asked me a question.  She said:

"Isn't the point of Christianity that we aren't perfect and therefore need help . . . so, please don't take this the wrong way, but isn't it arrogant for you to think that God is going to be displeased with you because you failed at something?  Aren't you, in effect, saying I don't believe you love me, God?"   

Y'know, I think she's right.  He left his place of honor to honor us.  He left his place of glory to glorify us.  In the Lessons & Carols service on Christmas Eve, it jumps right out at you.  From Zephaniah:

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.  He will rejoice over you with gladness.  He will quiet you by his love.  He will exult over you with loud singing.  He will gather those who mourn for the feast, so that you will no longer suffer reproach.  He will deal with all your oppressors.  He will save the lame and gather the outcast.  He will change your shame into praise.

WOW!  O HOLY NIGHT INDEED!  Where is the condemnation that we so readily ascribe to God?  It is a figment of our own imagination.

The gospel is not a threat.  It is the announcement of good news to all of us.  It is the announcement that God loves us enough to become one of us.  It is the announcement that He is not far off at all.  He is with us.  Jesus Christ Immanuel.

In Part 3, I'll try to explore how the gospel becomes real to a man, woman, boy or girl.