Instead of congealing the whole of the Scriptures into a simplistic tag line, we must expound the depth and richness of the gospel that defy simplistic accounts. The plot line of redemptive history is deep and rich because redemption is deep and rich. The Bible’s articulation of the gospel mirrors the depth and richness of the gospel

Most of us are too busy to slow down. Kind of odd, huh? Our lives move at such a pace that we can barely remember what’s actually important. If our lives are a story, the narrative seems to have too much filler and too little real plot. It probably wouldn’t make a good novel.

By contrast the story of Jesus moves with the feel of an epic drama. It is almost too grand to keep fully in view. A different kind of problem forces its way onto our conscience—can the Good News of Jesus Christ actually be simple enough to understand and integrate into life? After all, why do we need so many different books of Scripture to tell the whole drama of redemption? Why are there so many diverse words used to depict the nature of salvation?

One of the chief challenges today in keeping the gospel central to ministry and to life is the claim that there is just too much in Scripture to distill the gospel into a single framework. There are just too many parts and too many descriptions of Jesus to make it all cohere into one simple story.

By analogy there are also just too many parts of ordinary life to keep it organized by one central idea. Life is too complicated to suppose there might be anything that makes it coherent.

Richard Lints and Stephen Um serve as faculty mentors for the Gospel in Church and Culture track of the Doctor of Ministry program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Read More:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/02/07/the-centrality-of-the-gospel-in-a-distracted-world/