Spring 2014 Acts 29 New England Regional Part 3 of 4 | Gospel Metaphors

 

Acts 29 New England Regional Discipleship Training with Jonathan Dodson in Woburn, Massachusetts on Monday, May 5, 2014 

These posts are for the Discipleship Training I had the privilege to participate in back in early May with Jonathan Dodson and more than 90 churches represented in the New England area. The topics covered were "Unbelievable Discipleship", "Re-Evangelism", "Gospel Metaphors", and "Intro to Gospel Counseling". Here are previous posts:
 

• Acts 29 New England Regional Part 1 of 4 | Unbelievable Discipleship 
• Acts 29 New England Regional Part 2 of 4 | Re-Evangelism

I'm still soaking in the thoughtfulness and wisdom that was shared. If you'd like to do some soaking yourself, here are video links* to three of the talks followed by my notes from the specific session this post is focused on:

• Unbelievable Discipleship (46:56 minutes)
• Re-Evangelism (39:14 minutes)
• Gospel Metaphors (36:15 minutes)

*I would highly encourage you to watch the videos as Jonathan provides more research and great real-life examples during his talks that I wasn't able to record below.

Discipleship Training with Jonathan Dodson Part 3 of 4 | Gospel Metaphors

“'How is the gospel good news to those we evangelize?’ We can be proficient at rehearsing the information of the gospel but we often lack the ability to situate the gospel in the lives of others. We need to get into their skin, to understand how the gospel could transform the self-righteous do-gooder, the skeptical urbanite, the abused mother, the successful professional, and the strung out addict. It is true that, in the end, the Holy Spirit has the final say in convincing others that the gospel is good news. But it is also true that the Holy Spirit chooses to use what we say along the way.” – pgs. 9-10, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

Underneath the stories of people, there are deep longings. As followers of Jesus, we need to slow down, listen, and be willing to "inconvenience" ourselves. As conversations continue and deepen, we will be able to move into more thoughtful questions like "How has your life been shaped by that experience?" and "How did that situation make you feel?"

"We need to give up on time and give in to love."

We also need to grasp a fuller understanding of the gospel.

“If Jesus did die and rise for the world, then it is incumbent upon his followers to tell them how and why the gospel is good. Reciting the memorized fact that Jesus died on the cross for sins to a coworker doesn’t tell them why this is important or how it can change their life. Reciting this information dispassionately is even less convincing. What people need to know is not only what the gospel is but also what the gospel does." – pgs. 9-10, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

We're all undergraduates in the school of grace. So we continue to learn not only what Jesus did climb down the spiritual ladder to share who God is with us, but how He did it so that we can share His truth with others in a way they can understand it.

“All disciples are called to evangelism, but an evangelist isn’t someone who coughs up information about Jesus or proselytizes people. According to Paul, an evangelist is someone who communicates the gospel of Jesus with patience and wisdom. This is why it is ‘work’ – not because it is onerous but because it requires thoughtfulness. Anyone can drop a name or recite a presentation, but it takes effort to listen patiently to discern how to share the gospel in a wise and meaningful way. The great cultural apologist-evangelish, Francis Shaeffer, was asked what he would say if he had an hour to share the gospel with someone. He responded by saying: ‘I will spend the first fifty-five minutes asking questions and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind, and then in the last five minutes will I share something of the truth.’ The work or calling of an evangelist isn’t to drop names, recite presentations, or campaign politics. Rather, then work of the evangelist is to listen patiently for minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years in order to wisely show others how the gospel is actually worth believing.” – pg. 19, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

God has called every person who follows Jesus to be a light, to be part of His kingdom of priests. We have been given His grace and hope and we are each called to minister His grace and hope to others. And the gospel is so rich, that there are "metaphors" or facets of the diamond that different people are often looking for.

Through faith in Jesus, God offers us a new identity informed by the graces present in each gospel metaphor. These graces are not metaphors in the sense that they are symbolic of some deeper reality. Rather, each gospel metaphor actually represents a facet of the gospel. 

• Adoption: how we become part of God’s family
• Justification: how a righteous God relates to unrighteous us by making us righteous
• Redemption: how we receive forgiveness
• Propitiation: how we escape His just wrath for corrupting and selfishly taking advantage of His world
• Union in Christ: how we are given a new identity
• New Creation: how we are changed

Each gospel metaphor conveys a unique blessing from the Father. All of the metaphors converge in the good news concerning Jesus and reveal how the Father, Son, and Spirit collaborate for our restored, renewed humanity.” – pg. 34, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

“Each gospel metaphor brings a grace-soaked correction to the five evangelistic concerns:

• Instead of preaching self-righteousness, we can point people to Christ’s righteousness, which is based on his performance not ours. 
• Instead of impersonal evangelism, we can share the hope of Jesus from our personal union with Christ. 
• Instead of being intolerant, we can lovingly tolerate differences between religions while also communicating the unique, redeeming work of Christ. 
• Instead of using right answers to gain approval or applause, we can share an enduring approval that comes through faith in the Father who adopts through the Son. 
• Instead of sharing a shallow gospel of information, we can communicate the deep, transformative gospel of new creation.” – pgs. 75-76

Enjoying the creativity of our Creator in how He lovingly speaks His good news to different types of people is His mission He invites us into.

For example, with a self-righteous do-gooder, we can share how the gospel reveals our justification instead of how much good we do: " ... You’ll never be moral enough for a perfect, holy God. I could never be moral enough, either, but the good news is that Jesus climbed down the spiritual ladder to die for all your moral failures, offer you forgiveness, raise from the dead, and if you’ll trust him, he will put you on his back, climb all the way up the spiritual ladder, and place you in front of a holy God, fully loved and fully accepted…’…’Is it really that easy?’…’Yes, it really is that easy.’ Give up on yourself and give into Jesus and you’ll find perfect acceptance.” – pg. 36, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

Another example could be with the successful professional, we can share how the gospel gives us union in Christ, an identity we can rest in rather than an identity we have to work for: “… 'the reason I do all this stuff for the city isn’t because I’m a great person. I’m not even a great pastor; it’s because I have a great God. I’ve had a profound personal encounter with Jesus Christ and he’s utterly changed me.’ Union with Christ prompted me to go public with the unparalleled joy of union with Christ. Sometimes, wonderful doesn’t wait. We talk about what we are taken with ... we all need fresh encounters with Jesus for our evangelism to ring with authenticity. We need fresh encounters with Jesus to remain our authentic ourselves.” – pgs. 45, 47, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing 

With the skeptical urbanite, we can share how we uniquely receive redemption in Jesus without being intolerant:  " ... In all major world religions, a way is devised to work our way to the God. The problem, however, is that we can’t keep all the rules and adhere to all the ways. We are imperfect. In Christianity, however, the God works his way down to us. He keeps all the rules; he makes the way. This is called grace. It is the fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions. So, sincere self-sacrifice, while noble, does not make one acceptable to a holy God. Rather, we need someone to sacrifice our failures to honor the God and to present us acceptable to him. This is precisely what Jesus did. No other religion offers this, where the God gets hurt on behalf of his people, dies, rises from the dead and then makes them acceptable, forgiven, and righteous.” – pg. 54, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing 

With someone who is broken like a suffering mother, we can share how we are adopted into the family of God, approved of and valued because of what Jesus has done on our behalf regardless of what we or anyone else thinks of us:  " ... The Father wants us to enjoy his approval more than the approval of others. He wants us to see how his love is superior to the love of others. ‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are’ (1 John. 3:1). The Spirit gives us a voice before the Father, the voice of a son not a slave. This is why it is so important we keep in step with the Spirit (1 John 5:25). The Spirit walks slowly, gently moving us from intellectual security to heart security, as the truth of adoption slowly sinks in. The spirit of our age moves quickly. We need to slow down with the Spirit, allowing him to grasp our hand and guide us into gospel meditation and prayer, where our adoption becomes a heart-convincing reality. If we slow down, we can hear his voice continually reminding us that we are sons not slaves, loved not judged. False masters and fleeting ideas quickly bombard us with lies, which is why praying throughout the day ‘in the Spirit’ (Ephesians 6:18) is such a powerful weapon for fighting off the fear of men. The fear of man whispers discouragement, but the Spirit brings encouragement. When Satan whispers disapproval, the Spirit champions undying approval.” – pgs. 64-65, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing  

And for a wandering addict in response to whatever fuels his or her appetite and crushes his or her hope for life to change, we can share the hope of new creation: In Jesus, the old man or woman is exiled, not you. In Him, you can become new in the Father's eyes and have hope for heaven breaking into the hell you've experienced on earth now. The new creation has come! "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

“Using the gospel for how we share the gospel, we can discern five ways to communicate a believable gospel: 

• (1) To those searching for acceptance in all the wrong places, we can point them to perfect acceptance in the gospel of justification. 
• (2) To those searching for fulfilling relationships, we can point them to profound, personal union with Christ. 
• (3) To those who struggle with tolerance, we can show them the uniqueness of Christ in the gospel of redemption. 
• (4) To those who fear disapproval or demand the applause of others, we can share the gospel of adoption, which offers an enduring approval and produces humble confidence. 
• (5) To anyone longing for a new start, there is the hope of new creation.” – pgs. 74-75, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing

Continue to learn about the good news you have been given in Jesus and enjoy your union with Him. Enjoy your identity in Him. We need to come out of the pressure cloud we have created ourselves, and step into the Spirit's prompting. We enjoy Jesus, announce His good news and trust the Spirit. 

Next post: Acts 29 New England Regional Part 4 of 4 | Intro to Gospel Counseling

 – Sully
 
Curiosity piqued? Something inside you being stirred? Go ahead and connect. For other updates, like and follow Emmaus City on Facebook.