All Things Seen & Unseen

John Piper, a noted evangelical pastor-scholar, Calvinist , and charismatic to boot presents the gospel to hearers in six minutes. He says it can be given in one sentence: The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.   My concern with this excellent kernel and his subsequent elaboration is tha t I wonder how his particular approach would be received by those outside the Faith with little knowledge of Christia nity ? In other words, it assumes much that we Christians just take for granted because we have been raised in the Faith and/or taught the Faith by the faithful teach ers in our churches .

Dr D A Car son, a noted New Testament scholar, is a sked :   'How would you explain the gospel in five minutes to someone who has no understanding of God, Jesus or sin?' Carson clear ly recognises that for many people in present, Western society the terms of the Christian gospel as used 30 years ago are no longer familiar. Pe ople typically don't know the Bible has two Testaments, the Old and the New. That the Old is pr imarily about the Messiah's p e ople, Isr ael ; the New Testament is about the Messiah and his New people, the Church made up of Jew and Gentile.

I believe that Christians should take the opportunities they receive in their daily lives to speak the good news of God to others they meet.  I n this post I will be trying to lay out one way of understanding what lies behind such witness.  I t's common to represent initiation into the Christian walk as the beginning of a relationship with God . And there's nothing wrong with this conception as long as we keep in mind some important differences between human relationsh ips and relationships with God. 1. God I s N ot A P erson It 's common to hear f o lk say that God is a person. In the evangelical world it's almost a fundamental doctrine and taken for granted.  H owever, although God relates to us in a personal way for we are persons, his being--to use C. S. Lewis' gra phic term--is 'sup er - personal'. What Lewis meant by this language is that God transcends or is beyond what we describe as a person.