The Gospel in a Nutshell?
Message
A close friend
of mine challenged his fellow seminary brethren: "In 25 or less words of your own, tell
me what the Gospel is. No quoting
from Scripture or your favorite confession
or theologian." What would
you say? Here are a few of my
own attempts in poetic form. Definitely a challenge to cover all I want or even
should say in so few words. Nevertheless, chances
are that the top of our heads have something to do with the bottom
of our hearts in this matter.
Jesus is Lord!
Father
Son
Spirit
God is One!
(3x3x3 trinitarian
chiasm)
Christ
crucified!
Covenant
fulfilled.
Messiah raised!
Thy kingdom
come.
(paired parallelism. 9
words)
death dead
dying, shattered
thrones.
Israel
restored,
Nations praise
Jehovah!
vitality revived revitalizing, Humanity's
crown.
Cosmos
arrabon,
hope for
inheritance!
Grace, Love, Peace
reign
now
(expanded spin on previous
version. 25
words.)
Posted by Eric Pyle at February 11, 2006 8:58 PM
Passing Thoughts
I suppose someone might rightfully charge me with the unforgivable sin of not mentioning "the forgiveness of sins" in my three Gospel poems. This is a valid concern. The forgiveness of sins is undeniably in the very heart of the gospel. I suppose my reason for not mentioning explicitly, is that I was fairly confident it would be expressed by others on the surface, so I wanted to take a different angle: to describe in its broader covenantal scope what the Gospel and "the forgiveness of sins" tell us about God and his redemption in terms of the things we might tend to leave out in our culture.
Posted by: Eric Pyle | February 11, 2006 9:15 PM