A highlight from Continuing to Share the Gospel
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Craig N. Cook and I'm the Senior Director of Gospel in Life. I want to personally thank you for the prayers and thoughtful messages so many of you have sent to the Gospel in Life team, Kathy and the whole Keller family in response to the death of our founder and dear friend, Tim Keller. Tim was always delighted to talk about Gospel in Life. He and Kathy were regularly encouraged and surprised at how God was using this ministry to influence and shape so many people and bring many more to faith in Christ. One of the best outcomes from expanding the reach of Gospel in Life in the past few years is seeing so many of you share Tim's teaching and writing with those God has put in your life. As we move forward, you will play a critical role in our effectiveness in spreading the Gospel. We want to encourage you that as you continue listening to Tim's sermons or reading his books and articles, that you would not just use them for your own benefit, but that you would continue to also share these resources with those you know who need the rich, beautiful and everlasting love of Jesus in their lives. Tim would often talk about how once a person was transformed by Christ's love, then the grace, joy, hope and compassion they experienced would naturally flow out of them and be contagious. It's our prayer that through this ministry, God would continue to work through many of you as you share the hope and beauty of the Gospel. Because as Tim liked to remind us regularly, it is the Gospel that truly changes everything. As an encouragement to you and to remind all of us about the beauty of the Gospel, I'd like to share this short message from the Redeemer City to City tribute video in which Tim presents the Gospel succinctly and winsomely. We're not saved by what we do, but by what God has done, completely and wholly and fully by what God has done. We do not contribute to salvation at all. How could that be? The answer is when Jesus Christ came, he came to live the life we should have lived and die the death we should die. He lived a life, a perfect life, the only human being who ever lived a perfect life and therefore earned God's blessing. But then at the end of his life, he went to the cross and took the curse that we deserve. He earned the blessing of a fully obedient human being, but then he took the curse and punishment of imperfect, disobedient human beings, which means that when you become a Christian, when you put your faith in him, all of your sins and what you deserve fall on him, but then all of his blessing, what he deserves, comes to you. And God treats you as if you've done everything that Jesus Christ has done. That's radical. Now because we have this complete salvation, complete gift, all accomplished by him, we contribute nothing to it, and now we have received this, there's a freedom. First of all, we're free from any sense of condemnation, Romans 8 verse 1. Now there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Do not fear, ever, coming into condemnation from God, and now we're also free not just from condemnation, but from, you might say, compulsion. That is, we now want to obey God. We want to please him. We no longer are obeying the law of God out of a sense of, just a sense of duty or a sense of being forced or compelled. Instead we want to please the one who did this for us. We want to resemble the one who did this for us. As we continue to reestablish regular rhythms of ministry in the coming weeks, I hope it encourages you to know that Tim and Kathy have set us on a clear course to continue the ministry of gospel and life, and with your help and the work of the Holy Spirit, we expect that it will flourish for many years to come as together we continue sharing the gospel. I want to reiterate