Most of us were taught the gospel as a transaction. You sinned. Jesus died. Accept him, and you're saved.
That's true, as far as it goes. But it's about as small a version of the gospel as you can hold while still calling it the gospel.
If that's all you were ever given, you might end up feeling like the Christian life is something you completed once at sixteen, and now you're just trying to live consistent with a decision you made years ago. That isn't bad news exactly. It just isn't quite the news Jesus came to bring.
The actual main point
Here's what I want to say in this article. The main point of the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, isn't the transaction. It's the relationship. Every story, every law, every prophet, every psalm, every letter is pointing toward one thing.
Our lives were always meant to be lived with God.
In relationship with him. In reliance on him. In all of who we are. In all that happens to us. We were made to live with him by our side.
The transaction matters, of course. Without the cross, none of the rest is possible. But the transaction was never meant to be the destination. It was meant to be a door, and the door opens to new life.
Paul, who wrote so much of the New Testament, put it this way: I desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He could have written about hundreds of theological questions. He had the training. He had the audience. He chose, again and again, to keep coming back to one thing. A person. And what he's done for us.
When we get distracted
This matters because we get distracted easily.
Christians can get pulled into all kinds of side arguments. The age of the earth, which is genuinely interesting but isn't the main point. Whether to celebrate Halloween. Which translation is the most accurate. Whose worship style is right. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Some of these conversations are worth having. None of them are worth losing the main thing over.
That's the move that's so easy to miss, because the further we drift, the less we recognize what we drifted from. We can argue about the age of the universe and forget that the God who made it wants to live with us here and now.
The foundation we lay matters. Build it on the latest culture-war argument, and it cracks at the first sign of trouble. Build it on Jesus, and on the love he actually has for you, and it holds when everything else doesn't.
Lavished
Paul wrote this to a young church in Ephesus:
He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.
The word I'd want you to notice is lavished.
Picture the ocean. It's vast, and deep, and wide, and unending. Did you know that much of the ocean is still undiscovered? Scientists keep finding new creatures every year, because we can't get instruments low enough to see what's down there. The ocean is bigger than what we know about it.
Picture God's grace like that. Unending. There isn't a certain amount of sin that turns it away. There isn't a depth of failure that puts you out of reach. The grace doesn't run out, doesn't get rationed, doesn't get weighed against your performance. It's lavished on you. Like an ocean.
That's the gospel.
What this means
The gospel isn't a transaction you complete and move on from. It's a doorway into new life with God, who has been after you the whole time, who is more patient than you can imagine, and who will never tire of you.
If you're trying to figure out what the gospel really is, start here. Don't start with the rules. Don't start with the side debates. Don't start with the apologetics.
Start with the fact that you were made to be with him. That he is more than enough for all that you want and need. And his love for you far deeper and more real than you could ever imagine. That everything else, every other piece of the Christian life, is downstream of those truths.
The point isn't just that you got saved and go to Heaven when you die.
That's only half the story. You don't have to wait for Heaven to have Him.