Preserving the Gospel

My husband, Nathan, spent a few years as a cell phone salesman. As most phone stores do, his stores carried a cell phones and also numerous accessories to go with them. Now suppose that Nathan thought the phones were all well and good, but he had a particular obsession with all the nifty cell phone cases in the store. Instead of spending his time pouring over the various features of the phones, he spent all his breaks looking over the cases, comparing the benefits and pitfalls of the different models and designs. And when a customer came into the store, he just assumed they already had a phone and jumped into selling them a great new case. "Phones are nice," he'd admit. "But what's really important is that you get the best case possible. This one here has several great features. And just look at the cool design on the back..." If all he ever talked about were the cases, and if he sold them with enough passion, he might just sell a few to gullible customers who didn't own a phone to put in the case. But while they could certainly find other things to keep in there, other ways to put it to use, that case wouldn't do them any good at all if they were in a bad accident on the highway and needed to call for help.

Now this story seems absurd. What cell phone salesman in his right mind would focus only on the cases? But as Don Carson pointed out at the Gospel Coalition conference this past weekend, in his message "Preserving the Gospel", this is something we often do as believers when it comes to the gospel. His point was that the people around us will catch from us what we are most passionate about, and what we repeat most often. If we assume the gospel, if it's not our primary focus and passion, we won't pass it on to others, intentionally or not. If we talk more about some issue than about the gospel, those around us--our children, our fellow church members, unbelievers--will pick up a passion for that issue, rather than a passion for the gospel, because they will see that this other thing is what we consider to be most important.

Of course, the cell phone illustration is incomplete. Having a cell phone is not essential (I know, because we had no phone and no GPS for our entire trip to an unknown city, and we came back alive and happy!), whereas having the gospel is THE essential. But if it's so important for a salesman to be passionate to sell actual phones, and not just their cases, how much more important is it for us to be passionate about the essential gospel of life!

So I'm asking myself: Is the gospel my passion? Do I care more about feeding on demand, or homeschooling, or healthy eating habits than I do about the gospel? When I talk with other believers, am I insisting on the gospel first and foremost, or am I spending all my time debating what the Bible says about a woman's role in the home? Are we more focused on arguing over mode of baptism, or the continuation of the gifts, than we are on preaching the gospel to each other? And for those of us with kids, are we more focused on the law and its rewards, or on the gospel of grace, when we instruct and discipline our them?

I'm not saying, and neither was Carson, that these issues aren't important, that there isn't a time and place to discuss them, to make distinctions, to decide for one side rather than the other. But without the centrality of the gospel, it doesn't matter how much time we pour into other even very important biblical issues. When I die, the deciding question for me is not going to be "Do you think it is righteous to send your kids to public school?" or even "Were you baptized as an infant?" The question will be "What gives you the right to stand before God and be counted righteous, rather than thrown into hell to suffer his just wrath for all eternity?" And the only answer to that is the gospel that I do indeed deserve his wrath, and yet he, in all his holiness and in all his mercy, sent his perfect son Jesus Christ to live a perfectly righteous life and die in my place to take the punishment for my sins, and to give me his perfect righteousness as my own, as if I had never sinned, nor been a sinner, so that now, I have all of God's approval and love and forgiveness, and the hope of knowing God as his beloved child for all eternity. THAT is what I want to be most passionate about. THAT is the primary thing I want to communicate to my husband (who actually cares far more about the phones than about their cases), to my children, to my brothers and sisters in Christ, to the lost around me every day! And it is only in light of THAT that all the other issues have meaning and importance.

Lord, give me a passion for your glorious gospel that far outweighs the issues of the day, or the issues of my day. Help me to be intentional about beholding your glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18-4:6), so that my love for the gospel would increase, not only for my own perseverance in the faith, but also so that my family and my friends and even the strangers around me would see what is truly central and essential, and by your Spirit, be encouraged to pursue it, too!