“THE GOSPEL IS BAD news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want them or just doesn’t give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth”(Frederick Buechner).
That’s the beauty of the gospel. The same good news that gets you in the door will be the path you walk up to heaven and the password that gets you in the gate. None of us ever outgrow our need of the gospel. We need to preach it to ourselves every day, multiple times a day, or we’ll start to think that we’re good enough for God or clever enough to believe in the right things or saintly enough to make it to heaven on our own.
But the gospel says this: You can’t, but God can. You tried, you failed, but God gave you His success and took your failure. None of us can ever get to God by any road or by any means, but God in Jesus has come down to us. That’s the gospel.
