“The healthy evangelist is asking these questions and looking for answers so as to guard the gospel.  Here is the critical test.  Could you have preached that sermon if Christ had not died on the cross?  Could you have developed that Christian leadership principle had Christ not been crucified?  I’m not saying be impractical-the Bible has much to say about being practical-but make sure that the practical is tied to the message of Jesus.  Otherwise we are on the road to an assumption that will lost the gospel.”

-J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 41.

In light of David’s posts on Preaching Christ, we must also remember to center our preaching of Christ on his cross.  John Stott wrote,

    The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christians stubornly refused, 
    in spite of the ridicule, to discard it in favor of something less offensive, can have only on
    explanation.  It means that the centrality of the cross originated in the mind of Jesus
    himself.
       - John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 31.

Christ himself deemed the cross worthy of his path to victory over death.  He found it necessary for our reconciliation to God. He died in the brutality and incomprehensible offensiveness of the cross taking God’s punishment of our sin upon himself.  If he pointed his life to the cross, so must our preaching.

“You have nothing in and of yourself.  You and I are made of clay and spit.  Any holiness of ours is polluted beyond our petty comprehension.  I have nothing to offer Him but a bent neck, a neck He helped me bend.  I have nothing to offer Him but filth, and He has taken it.  He exchanged it for blood like wine, and His own body broken like bread.”

-N.D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 178.

C.J. Mahaney’s, Christ Our Mediator, is a wonderful short mediation on the glorious cross of Jesus Christ. He quotes his “historical hero, Charles Spurgeon, who wrote, ‘Abide hard by the cross and search the mystery of His wounds” (12).

In chapters three and four, Mahaney writes about how Jesus saved us from God’s wrath on the cross. Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath, so that, “today you and I find ourselves with another cup in our hands. It’s the cup of salvation. From this precious new cup we find ourselves drinking and drinking–drinking consistently, drinking endlessly, drinking eternally…for the cup of salvation is always full and overflowing” (57).

In the closing chapter of his book, Mahaney shows how Christians can have assurance and joy in this life, in the midst of our own sufferings, because of Jesus’ suffering on the cross. He implores the reader that the cross must be our daily focus. He writes:

In your own times of severe distress, which are you more aware of–your suffering or your salvation? What the Puritan Thomas Watson recognized will always be true for us: “Your sufferings are not so great as your sins: Put these two in the balance, and see which weighs heaviest.” We can rejoice even amid affliction when we recognize the seriousness of our sins and their just penalty, and the forgiveness and salvation we’re so graciously granted through Christ’s death (89).

In his book, Mahaney includes a number of wonderful cross-centered quotes from church history, including one from the great Reformer, Martin Luther.  Luther “once wrote that he taught the gospel ‘again and again, because I greatly fear that after we have laid our head to rest, it will soon be forgotten and will again disappear’” (92). Oh, that daily we would preach the gospel to ourselves, even as we seek to proclaim that same glorious gospel to others!

Mark Driscoll has turned out several books in recent years, and Death by Love is one of those that is great.  Several reviews can be found for this book on the internet, so I will not waste your time with an in-depth review, but more of a taste and see reccommendation.

This book is written as a series of letters to different people from Mark’s life, each of whom is in need of a touch from the cross.  Examining the theological results of the crucifixion such as propitiation, expiation, atonement, ransom, and justification, Driscoll writes theology that is easily understandable and applicable by all.  I personally found this book to be a very helpful tool for gaining a better understanding of Christ’s work on the cross. 

As we approach Good Friday and Easter, we could all benefit by focusing on the cross of Christ.  After all, that cross is the only reason we can celebrate our life in Christ.  Without the cross, there is no salvation.

In his chapter on Gift Righteousness, Driscoll outlines ten differences between religion and the gospel.  I’ve summarized those in the list below.

1. Religion says that God will not love me until I obey his rules…gospel says that because God has already loved me and expressed this through the person and work of Jesus, I am now free from sin to live a new life dedicated to him.

2. Religion says the world is filled with good people and bad people…the gospel says that everyone is a sinner separated from God and in need of a savior.

3. Religion is about what you do…the gospel is about what Jesus had done–for you, in you, and through you–by grace.

4. Religion is about receiving from God…the gospel is about Jesus giving to us, he gave himself.

5. Religion sees hardship as unloving punishment rather than sanctifying discipline…the gospel reminds us that God is a loving Father who’s discipline is never vitrioloic and who has provided an escape from eternal punishment.

6. Religion is about you…the gospel is all about Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

7. Religion focuses on the external, visible life of a person and overlooks the internal, invisible life of teh heart where motives lie…the gospel gets right to the heart changing people from the inside out.

8. Because religion is about what we do, we lack assurance regarding our standing before God…The gospel telsl us that because our standing before God is contingent on Jesus alone, we can know with assurance that we are secure as redeemed people (1 John 5:11-14).

9. Religion does not work because it results in either pride or despair…the gospel leads us toa humbley confident, joyous obedience because it teaches us that our rightousness is not our own, but rather a gift from Jesus because of his work on the cross.

10. People pursue religion to possess righteousness…the gospel says that no one is righteous, but that because of Christ’s sacrifice, we can have his righteousness.

I reccommend this book to you, and would recommend it especially to lay people because it makes theology understandable.  Driscoll has a great way of doing that.  I’ve imbedded the video trailer below.