God is the Gospel

As we prepare for Advent and the celebration of the Savior's birth, I thought it appropriate for my last regular guest post of the year to leave off with this truth concerning the purpose of the Savior's work:

Today--as in every generation--it is stunning to watch the shift away from God as the all-satisfying gift of God’s love. It is stunning how seldom God himself is proclaimed as the greatest gift of the gospel. But the Bible teaches that the best and final gift of God’s love is the enjoyment of God’s beauty. “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4). The best and final gift of the gospel is that we gain Christ. “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8). This is the all-encompassing gift of God’s love through the gospel--to see and savor the glory of Christ forever.

....The Christian gospel is not merely that Jesus died and rose again; and not merely that these events appease God’s wrath, forgive sin, and justify sinners; and not merely that this redemption gets us out of hell and into heaven; but that they bring us to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as our supreme, all-satisfying, and everlasting treasure. “Christ... suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

....And the effect is that now these central gospel events and effects shine all the more brightly with what makes them truly good news--the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Now when we herald the death and resurrection of Jesus as good news, we are not just exulting in God’s acts or God’s gifts. We are showing the final joyful reason for calling them good news. When we proclaim that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the ground for propitiating God’s wrath and forgiving sin and imputing righteousness, we are not just assuaging guilt and relieving fears--we are displaying the glory of God. We are making known not merely divine acts and divine gifts--we are making known the truth and beauty and worth of Christ himself who is the image of God. By God’s sovereign, creative power, we are opening the eyes of the blind (Acts 26:17b-18; 2 Cor. 4:4, 6) to see in the gospel “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are making plain that there is no salvation through the gospel where the best and highest and final good in the gospel is not seen and savored. That good is the glory, the worth, the beauty, the treasure of Christ himself who is true God and true man. (God is the Gospel, by John Piper, pgs. 11, 167-168)

Ponder, gives thanks, rejoice, and worship!