The Gospel: The Story We Live and Tell

Today’s reading concludes Section I: The Gospel – The Story We Live and Tell. READ HERE

Therefore, anyone who is in Christ belongs to God’s new creation formed by his Word through his Spirit.

God will complete his work of new creation when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead. Then all who are in Christ will share in his bodily resurrection, and the whole of God’s creation will be transformed. His people will live under the rule of the Messiah as a unity of peoples whose distinct ways of living God’s gift of eternal life are offered to God as worship. In this way, God’s people will care for God’s world in a community of blessing with God at the centre as the source of all that is good.

By faith, we take our place within Christ’s church, the one people of the one God, the people of peoples of the triune God. By faith, we are baptised into Christ’s death for the forgiveness of sins, raised to new life, and incorporated into the one body of Christ. By faith, we are declared righteous by the righteousness of the resurrected One. By faith, the church becomes the dwelling of God in Christ through his Spirit, and he, our never-ending source of life. By faith, we live under and for God’s reign. By faith, we steward and care for God’s creation and one another; work for his justice in our societies; and seek to live peaceable lives of faithful service. By faith, we live as those whom death cannot destroy because we are in Christ and have our life within the life of God.

As we gather in local churches, we live, rehearse, and remember the gospel, the true story of everything; we celebrate its gracious Author and his works in our worship; we clarify and distil its key moments in our doctrine; we teach God’s people to obey by conforming their lives to its pattern and commands; we express its effects in our practice of love, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation; we pray for its ends; we reflect its values in our individual and collective life. Through our presence, our practice, and our proclamation we tell the story of the gospel to the ends of the earth. All the while, with all creation, we groan for the consummation of new creation and cry, “Come, Lord Jesus, come!”

“O God, our Father, by your Son and through your Spirit, bring the fulness of new creation!”