Living the Gospel

Love is at the heart of the gospel and therefore, the heart of God and the theme of the Bible. The ten commandments were given in love to preserve love. The first five commandments describe how to preserve fellowship with God, the second five comandments describe how to preserve fellowship with others. Like any parent who loves their child, God does not define boundaries by “laying down the law” in order to make us miserable. He is not a tyrant and his law is not arbitrary. His law defines reality so that we may have “eyes to see” the difference between good and evil, freeing us from the deception of Satan, the father of lies and the prince of darkness.

The gospel is offensive because it is demanding and exclusive. It is demanding and exclusive because it is true; it demands a choice of either accepting or rejecting it and it excludes those who reject it. Hell is a consequence of choosing to reject the gospel, chosen by the individual who rejects the truth. Fellowship with God requires being made perfect by him through Jesus because it is the truth, the only way to be restored to him and to have the darkness of our blindness illuminated by the light, allowing us to see. Choosing to walk in the light results in fellowship with God and man as God intended according to the ten commandments. The loving manifestation of Christian fellowship is not duplicatable by the world and can only be known in the world by those who have fully embraced the truth of the gospel.

A big step that would help to bring clarity to the confusion related to the gospel would be for the Church to start living the gospel as a credible testimony of the truth. In order for this to happen, those who profess belief in Christ need to be clear about what it is they say they believe and submit themselves to be changed by it. Due to our failure to live the gospel, the world has good reason to doubt the gospel’s credibiilty. Only true fellowship will give credibility to the truth of the gospel, presenting fruit as the evidence we are connected to the vine about which the gospel story tells.


1 John 3:7-18 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. 11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.