What Is the Gospel? Quotes

“The Bible is the story of God’s counteroffensive against sin. It is the grand narrative of how God made it right, how he is making it right, and how he will one day make it right finally and forever.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“An emaciated gospel leads to emaciated worship. It lowers our eyes from God to self and cheapens what God has accomplished for us in Christ. The biblical gospel, by contrast, is like fuel in the furnace of worship. The more you understand about it, believe it, and rely on it, the more you adore God both for who he is and for what he has done for us in Christ.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“To put one’s faith in King Jesus is to renounce his enemies.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“Many Christians struggle hard with this idea of repentance because they somehow expect that if they genuinely repent, sin will go away and temptation will stop. When that doesn’t happen, they fall into despair, questioning whether their faith in Jesus is real. It’s true that when God regenerates us, he gives us power to fight against and overcome sin (1 Cor. 10:13). But because we will continue to struggle with sin until we are glorified, we have to remember that genuine repentance is more a matter of the heart’s attitude toward sin that it is a mere change of behavior. Do we hate sin and war against it, or do we cherish it and defend it? (p. 81).”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a canyon and seen the birds swooping below you and the clouds stretched out over your head, or if you’ve ever stood in a field and felt a tiny rush of fear as you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in over the horizon, then you know what this means. There is something about the grandeur of creation that calls out to the human heart, saying, “You are not all there is!”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“It is our obligation, as people created and owned by God, to give him the honor and glory that is due to him, to live and speak and act and think in a way that recognizes and acknowledges his authority over us. We are made by him, owned by him, dependent on him, and therefore accountable to him.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“Indeed I believe one of the greatest dangers the body of Christ faces today is the temptation to rethink and rearticulate the gospel in a way that makes its center something other than the death of Jesus on the cross in the place of sinners.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“to say that Jesus Christ died to save us from negative thoughts about ourselves is reprehensibly unbiblical. In fact, the Bible teaches that a big part of our problem is that we think too highly of ourselves, not too lowly.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“The Bible’s teaching is that sin is indeed a breaking of relationship with God, but that broken relationship consists in a rejection of his kingly majesty. It’s not just adultery (though it is that); it is also rebellion. Not just betrayal, but also treason.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“How did the Serpent tempt Adam and Eve? He told them they were thinking too negatively about themselves. He told them they needed to think more positively, to extend their grasp, to reach toward their full potential, to be like God! In a word, he told them to think bigger.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“CREATION-FALL-REDEMPTION-CONSUMMATION IS NOT THE GOSPEL Many Christians have outlined the story of the Bible using the four words creation, fall, redemption, consummation. Actually that outline is a really good way to summarize the Bible’s main story line. God creates the world, man sins, God acts in the Messiah Jesus to redeem a people for himself, and history comes to an end with the final consummation of his glorious kingdom. From Genesis to Revelation, that’s a great way to remember the Bible’s basic narrative. In fact, when you understand and articulate it rightly, the creation-fall-redemption-consummation outline provides a good framework for a faithful presentation of the biblical gospel. The problem, though, is that creation-fall-redemption-consummation has been used wrongly by some as a way to place the emphasis of the gospel on God’s promise to renew the world, rather than on the cross.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“In the last book of J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnificent epic The Lord of the Rings, the heroes of the story come to the darkest part of their journey. They’ve traveled a thousand miles and come finally to the evil land that has been their goal, but for several different reasons, everything seems lost now. Yet in that darkest moment, one of the heroes, Sam, looks into the black sky. Here’s what Tolkien writes: Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. That is one of my favorite moments in the story, because it is right there that Tolkien, who himself professed faith in Christ, points us to where we find the courage to press on through darkness. It comes from hope. It comes from knowing that our present sufferings are indeed a small and passing thing, and that, as Paul said, they truly are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us when our King returns.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“God does not declare us righteous because we are ourselves righteous. And thank God that is true, because none of us would meet that standard! No, God declares us righteous because by faith, we are clothed with Christ’s righteous life. God saves us by pure grace, not because of anything we have done, but solely because of what Jesus has done for us.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit, therefore, they weren’t just violating some arbitrary command, “Don’t eat the fruit.” They were doing something much sadder and much more serious. They were rejecting God’s authority over them and declaring their independence from him. Adam and Eve wanted to be, as the Serpent promised them, “like God,” so both of them seized on what they thought was an opportunity to shed the vice-regency and take the crown itself. In all the universe, there was only one thing God had not placed under Adam’s feet—God himself. Yet Adam decided this arrangement was not good enough for him, and so he rebelled.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“It's (sin) the breaking of a relationship, and even more, it is a rejection of God Himself--a repudiation of God's rule, God's care, God's authority, and God's right to command those to whom He gave life.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“When a church listens and follows, it begins to look like the One it is following.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“In the days of the early church, the declaration “Jesus is Lord!” was a seditious and blasphemous rejection of the emperor’s authority, and they killed Christians for saying it. Today, the declaration “Jesus is Lord” is an intolerant and bigoted rejection of pluralism, and the world reviles us for it.”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.3”
― Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

“Piense en ese hermano o hermana a quien no se ha molestado en conocer porque no piensa que serán compatibles. Piense en esa persona con la que tiene una relación rota y no ha querido repararla. Ahora considere que esa misma persona ama y adora al mismo Señor que usted. Considere que el mismo Señor que murió por usted, también murió por él, o ella. Me pregunto si su entendimiento del evangelio de Jesucristo–las buenas nuevas de que Jesús le salvó sin que usted lo mereciera–es lo suficientemente profundo como para tragarse las pequeñas críticas que tiene contra sus hermanos y hermanas. Me pregunto si es lo suficientemente profundo como para enterrar las ofensas que han cometido en su contra, incluyendo las más dolorosas, y como para llevarle a perdonarlos y amarlos justo como Jesús mismo lo ha hecho por usted. Me pregunto si la vastedad del amor de Dios por usted ha incrementado su amor por los demás.”
― Greg Gilbert, ¿Qué es el Evangelio?