St. John Studies

Ok here is one of my “pet peeves.” People who present ideas out of context.

This is clearly illustrated with the use of video images.  We see people doing things on video but we don’t see what happened before they act and we won’t see happened after their action.  All we see is what is presented by the editor of the video and that is [of course] not the whole story.  However, that is what is intended when people present ideas out of context.  The point is to make an individual look a certain way so the “proper” image can be created.  But the problem is, that image is often not accurate.  It is “out of context.”

Matt Chandler feels that way about Christians and their faith.  He thinks too many Christians focus on their specific, individual experience of God and they don’t understand the “larger context” [the complete picture].  It is ok to feel close to God, to feel that God is your “best friend.”  But God is much more than that; He is the all-knowing, ever present, all powerful God of the universe, the God of beginnings and the God of endings.  The “best friend” God is what Chandler calls the God of “the Gospel on the ground” but the God of the universe is what he calls the God of “the Gospel in the air.”  Chandler insists that the Gospel is held together in both dimensions.  “The personal story and the cosmic story are two halves of one whole.”

Chandler chooses to begin his discussion with Chapter Five “Creation”. 

That is a huge task which makes him have to discuss creation science and evolution.  His book, The Explicit Gospel  is broken into small chunks, which makes it easier for me to comment on his ideas but this section (as you would imagine) is the longest and most “dense” mentally.

It makes sense to focus on creation because that is where we all begin and Christians believe God had a hand in it [A BIG HAND].  The world did not just begin; it had to have a starting point.  Chandler spends many pages discussing the various views of people who have thoughts about creation and labels himself a “historic creationist.”  “Historic creationists absolutely believe that after you get past verses 1 and 2, we are seeing literal twenty-four-hour days, as God grooms a section of land that was uninhabitable (“formless and void”) and prepares it for Adam and Eve and places them in the garden and gives them a mandate, ‘Go and make the rest of the world look like this.  You’re going to need a lot of help.  Have a lot of babies.’ ”

Not only does Chandler evaluate other views of creation but he evaluates the  onward march of “science.”  Science is not static because science is based on the proving of a hypothesis.  What is proven empirically is considered fact and that makes it real.  His main point is this: does scientific fact ever change?  It does, as hypotheses are confirmed or debunked.  That is the onward march. 

Chandler does not seem to have much faith in the scientific method.  Data is collected and that data is used to prove a hypothesis (or not).  Reality (according to science) is changing as we learn more.  Scientists tell us to drink three cups of coffee because it is good for our heart and then ten years later the scientific consensus is that one cup is enough and we should stop [now coffee is hard on the heart].  New hypotheses have been proven.

This section of his book is complex as Chandler seeks to show the reader that individuals who think they know how the world began only know what they know as far as science can carry them and science can carry them only so far.  After his discussion of creation and science he boils his ideas down to what we do have in the Bible: we have God proclaiming the start of the world and to be honest, God is more interested in declaring than explaining.  In the creation of the world the Bible is more historical than revelational: more interested in telling us what happened and why than it is or how it all happened.

One can read the first section of Chapter Five and begin to understand how Chandler came to be a historic creationist.  One can read the first section of Chapter Five and see Chandler cast doubt on science. 

The point he is trying to make is that man did not just get plonked down on earth one day and eventually man thrived.  It is important to wrestle with these ideas and he does.  It is also important for Christians who focus on their “gospel on the ground” experience with God to realize He placed us in the middle of the world in His image, to cultivate the world, to be its stewards and to expand God’s creative goodness. 

We have a larger mission here on earth than just to learn how to work with our own individual sins and do what God intends us to do to bear fruit in our own little circle of people.

Chandler’s point is the Gospel is bigger than the moment you trusted Christ. 

It is the story of the world.

That’s our context.

We all have a “perspective.”  Social psychologists say our perspective is based on perception, the process of taking in sensory stimuli and organizing it mentally into something that makes sense to us.  It could be collection of sights, sounds, smells etc., the human senses detect some type of stimulation.  Other factors are thrown in like past experience, cultural expectations, motivation, education etc.  The main point here is that this is a “grounded” view of the world.  We all have a perspective that is unique to us, based on how we “see” the world.  Actually, when one considers all of our factors of perception, no two of us take in information exactly the same.

Have you ever glimpsed the world from a “big picture” point of view?  Visionary people have that gift; they see reality as what it could be, not what it is.  They dream big dreams, connecting ideas together to create something that is larger than life.  In a like manner, I began to understand the Bible better when I finally was able to zoom out to “30,000 feet”*  Instead of seeing the sixty-six books of The Bible that sometimes seem disconnected, the Bible can be seen as a story of the creation, the fall, redemption and restoration.  Some would say this is the opposite of a unique “grounded” perspective, more of a shad point of view, a big explanation that provides a context for our uniqueness.

Chandler writes part two of his book entitling it “The Gospel in the Air.”  Part one was “The Gospel on the Ground.”  He presumes in part two that he will zoom out to the grand drama of The Bible.  Instead of    individua responses to God [whatever they may be], the focus is on a “wide angle view” of Scripture.

As I begin to comment on Chapter 5, “Creation”, I want to emphasize that having a vision is important.  Knowing why things are the way they are is what I call significant knowledge.  Having the ability to extract larger meanings about the particular things that happen to us is valuable.  Many of us have conversion experiences and often they seem so individualistic, but if we could just lift our eyes to the “Gospel in the Air” level, these occurrences are part of a much bigger picture.  Small stories are part of a bigger story, the story of God renewing creation, one person at a time.  Indeed, God wants to reclaim His world and He is doing that one person at a time. 

Too often we are content with the “small picture.”  It is less taxing on the brain, much easier to comprehend.  If we think we understand the small picture, we feel confident and our individual experience seems very important [maybe unrealistically important].  However, when it comes to harrowing, depressing, even traumatic events, the “small picture” can be damaging, causing us to think we are the only one going through our experience, when in fact we are not. 

What I am saying is context is important.  Without it, we can be lost in an ocean of details, swamped by particular events.  With context, we can have a deeper understanding of what “it all” means.  I know there are ideas much bigger than mine, ideas that help me understand it all.

It is time to experience those.  It is time to go to…

“The Gospel in the Air”

*My apologies to Pastor Skip Heitzig who has a book called The Bible from 30,000 Feet Up.

Matt Chandler is one of the most influential and powerful voices in the American evangelical church.  He pastors a “megachurch” in Dallas/Fort Worth Texas called The Village Church, a church that is so large that it could be a good-sized town [not a village–it has 6,000 members!].

I write this to say that his voice matters to a lot of people.  In his book The Explicit Gospel he says that Christians need to have a strong Bible-based faith.  His desire is he wants to guard the purity of the Gospel so they can have what he calls a “genuine Biblical response.”  He feels that many Christians in our American culture today are “getting it wrong.”

I have been blogging on The Explicit Gospel since March 24, 2025 and in the midst of my writing, I decided I was not doing good work so I stopped writing on September 18, 2025 and began a “do-over.”  I have never done that before but I knew my posts were “half-hearted.”  Since October 22, 2025 I have rewritten each response to each section of Chandler’s book.  If you follow this blog (of course) you know this.  I am much happier with the quality of my comments and my stress level is more manageable at this point in my life.  I love writing on good books and this is a good one, a conservative one, but a good one.  At the end of part 1 of his book, it is time to take stock of the work so far. 

Not everyone loves Matt Chandler.  He has his detractors. He gets criticized for taking complex issues and making them simple.  He is an unabashed Calvinist and that also draws criticism from non-reformed evangelicals.  At times his ideas get very accusatory, confronting the reader with a heavy emphasis on sin and [to be honest] many people do not want to be confronted directly with their sins. 

My writing also needs to be critiqued.  I admit that it has been sporadic at times.  I try to honestly represent Chandler’s ideas by explaining them in my own terms with my own “spin.”  I have been setting a goal of three blog posts per month and I fell short in October 2025 when I was primary caregiver for my Mom.  She developed sepsis in October and eventually lost much of her cognitive ability.  October through January 2026 was a period devoted to hospitalization for her, rehab [unsuccessful rehab] and then admittance into a nursing home.  Mom has been one mile from my home [in assisted living] for the past three years and watching her deteriorate with dementia has been hard.  I have tried to care for her but at times I felt like I was making countless mistakes [I did try but I did not know what I was doing].  Now she is close to my brother and he is her caregiver but she is sixty miles away.  Having to go to a nursing home is difficult but thank God Mom is not aware where she is.  That is important because when Mom had her faculties she was always adamant: “Don’t send me to a nursing home”.   I feel less stress because the staff meets her needs and they are good people.  In May, I fell short [one blog post] because I was involved too much with the two acres that I own with my wife.  I am a gardener and landscaper and I just got too busy.  I had a chance to do things I have not had to do since caring for Mom and I put those things over St. John Studies.

It is also time to take stock of where we are in The Explicit Gospel.  We are at the end of Chapter 4, the last chapter of “Part 1” of the book, what Chandler calls “The Gospel on the Ground.”  Let’s remind ourselves what he means by “Gospel on the Ground.”  This concept means a person’s personal response to the Gospel, how the good news of Jesus Christ impacts human beings on this earth today.  Of course, I have completed my comments on Chapter One [“God”] where the focus was on the Almighty Father who created us all and we should reflect His glory and enjoy him.  Chapter Two [“Man”] who has a problem with sin; we are fallen and Chandler details how we reject God and worship things.  Chapter Three [“Christ”] who steps into our place, absorbs the wrath of God that we deserve and His grace gives us an opportunity at more righteous living.  Chapter 4 [“Response”] is about how we should respond to God and the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. 

Here is the short version of the past five blog posts.  Chandler thinks today’s Christians don’t respond to the Gospel message very well.  We try to leverage our position with God with the good works that we perform.  We should soften our heart to the Lord’s message but we don’t sometimes.  He asks too much and we harden our hearts and go our own way.  We are all sinners and God calls us to repent but many today do not want to do that.  Instead, we put on a “righteous show” for the world so we can look Christian.  American cultural influence is too prevalent in the church as we attempt to adjust the Gospel to something that is more “palatable, therapeutic and moralistic.”  Chandler feels that when we adjust the Gospel, it loses its power.  The last section deals with human actions, human performance.  Churches should not preach steps to salvation; churches should preach the work of Jesus Christ and how our response should be transformative.  If churches would do that, the focus would be on Jesus, not on us.

The main question that Chandler wants the reader to experience is this: “How am I responding to the good news of Jesus Christ?”  He cites the worshipper who is stirred up, willing to share the Word with others, submitting their life fully to Jesus.  Don’t “go to church, read your Bible, say prayers, do good deeds and read books like The Explicit Gospel through anything but faith in the Lord”.  So many Christians know the language of the Christian life but they are not living the Christian life.  They are pretending. 

Chandler does not “pull” his punches.  He writes “Some of you are so good that you have deceived yourselves.  God help you” [85].  The book of Mark has Jesus saying to his followers, delivering a message similar to Chandler’s “Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you.  For those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away” [4: 23-25].  Too many people sit in church [paraphrasing Mark] they look but they don’t perceive and they listen but they don’t understand and they will not be forgiven. 

Yes, some are sitting in The Village Church, Chandler’s own church “hearing but not hearing, seeing but not perceiving” [84].  “Tons of people” Chandler says… not listening to their pastor who is just trying to protect the Gospel, protect his believers and promote true faith.

I was raised in a Disciples of Christ Church, sometimes referred to simply as The Christian Church.  As lots of church members do, I took my church for granted, thinking that church-going just meant one hour in Sunday school and one hour in worship.  As I got older and began to have questions about church doctrine, I began to realize that my original home church had a social and missional focus for a doctrinal foundation.  Disciples emphasize justice, community, and service.  Education is important, along with racial reconciliation, disaster relief and global mission work.  Interpretation of scripture was what I would call “open.”   The Disciples of Christ church teaches that Scripture is authoritative, but Disciples do not impose a single required interpretation on readers of the Bible. Instead, they emphasize freedom of interpretation, contextual study, and unity rather than doctrinal uniformity. *  All this is fine, but if I would have to label my Disciples Church background, I would have to call it “liberal.”

I write all this to illustrate that this approach to Scripture is not how Matt Chandler thinks Christians should respond to the Gospel.**  This social gospel approach is not what he refers to as “Gospel on the ground.”  Chandler is interested in the individual level on salvation, what the Gospel means for me, my sin, my rescue and my new life in Christ.  What’s the problem with the social gospel approach?  It can all about works and to be frank, people can get all caught up in works and forget why they are doing the work. 

Let me illustrate.  I was once a member of a community of like-minded Christians who devoted two weekends a year discipling new “converts” [or should I say potential converts].  I went on a weekend retreat with these Christians and I was ready to learn about Jesus.  I literally soaked up every word that was spoken and every behavior that was exhibited.  I wanted what they had and I was excited to be there with them.  Chandler might say I was having a “Gospel on the ground” experience.  I completed my weekend and went back “into the world” with my new excitement for Christ and I was fortunate.  I have maintained my love for Jesus over the years.  

I was invited to go on weekends as a leader [or “walks” as they are called] and I accepted.  I was just as excited to share my experience with others as I was excited to receive it on my original walk.  The problem came when I saw the “behind the scenes” stuff.  Instead of knowing the important work they were doing, some of the more mature Christians were just enjoying having the weekend away from home and their normal routine.  The efforts that they put into the walk was just work, not spiritual work, but work (with a lot of fun).  The emphasis was not on the Gospel but on the work.  The more I was invited to participate in this event, I began to see that people seemed to lose their way.  They seemed to think their work was the Gospel.  It’s not.  The Gospel is the stimulus for the work.  Chandler calls this piggybacking the work of the church on the Gospel. 

“The Gospel is just fine without us; it doesn’t need us.  Furthermore, doing that results in preaching the church rather than preaching Christ…. Believing the news that God is holy, that you are a sinner, and Christ has reconciled you to God by His life, death and resurrection is what justifies you.”

Now before I go too far and say that all the work that we do is “dust” let’s put work in its place.  Holy work is “fruit of the spirit” and its not bad.  There are a lot of people who need help in this world, a hot meal, some money, some clean clothes and a roof over their head.  Sometimes the church is the place where they can get help with those things.  “Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.”  But the error occurs when the Gospel is lost in all that activity, even when that activity is fruit of the spirit. 

Overdoing good acts at the expense of the Gospel results in activism and activism sometimes does not communicate conversion enough.  It may be right to help those less fortunate, but some theology should be thrown into the mix.   Feeling sorry for those less fortunate is commendable but forgetting that people need to know about the personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ for all of us is a mistake.  This is what Chandler means when he warns that good works can replace the Gospel. 

Now does he go too far?  Maybe…  

The work of the church to help our less fortunate neighbors is what we should be doing, but how do we find that middle ground?  How can we do good work without forgetting why we are doing it?

Maybe turning to Acts and keeping a spiritual focus is the key.  Why did Jesus’ followers live in a community.  The Gospel encouraged that.  Why did they share their possessions with one another.  The Gospel made them people of belief.  Why were they on their mission to spread the word?  The Gospel inspired them to take on that mission.  Why did they begin to see signs and wonders?  It was all the “outworking” of the Gospel.

There is the Gospel and there is the response to the Gospel. 

Chandler says we should “know the difference.”

*Emma Price,  “Who are the Disciples of Christ and What do They Believe?”  Answer The Bible Website accessed on June 22, 2026.

**from his book The Explicit Gospel

“Only the unadjusted Gospel is the empowered Gospel.”

That statement should not be a surprise to any reader of Matt Chandler’s work.  In fact, in Chapter 4 of his book The Explicit Gospel he writes several pages about the “unadjusted Gospel.”

Many feel the American church is in trouble.  One in five Americans attend weekly.  Forty-one percent of Americans attend monthly and three in five never attend church at all.  Statistical analysis yields the following conclusions: 1. American cultural habits have changed: going to church every Sunday is not as important as it once was.  2. There is an ongoing disturbing trend that Americans do not trust institutions anymore [including religious institutions].  3.  Worship services today do not seem connected to people’s lives.*

I know this is vague, general language but my point is this.  What have churches done to counteract these problems?  They have “adjusted” their approach to spreading the Gospel.  Matt Chandler is having none of this.

What does he believe will save the church?  Here it is in a nutshell: “the power of the Gospel is not in the dynamic presentation of the preacher or the winsomeness of the witness….The power of the Gospel is the Spirit’s applying the saving work of Jesus Christ to the heart of a hearer” [77].  He cites Charles Spurgeon the 19th‑century Baptist preacher whose powerful sermons, deep devotion, and vast ministry work made him one of the most influential Christian voices of all time: “You cannot induce them to come; you cannot force them to come by all your thunders, nor can you entice them to come by all your invitations.  They will not come…until the Spirit draws them”.

Yet what do we see happening in the church?  Worship style is changing to the point that church music sounds more like a rock concert.  Church doctrine is adjusted to the point that congregations are moving toward accepting more and more alternative lifestyles [that is done to show the church has a true open door].  More liberal theology is being applied because it is more “palatable.”  Don’t preach about sin and hell because that is negative.  We need to expose the congregation to God’s all-knowing and all-accepting love for everyone.  More conservative congregations are politicizing the Scriptures.  The way to activate a congregation is to get them involved in the give and take of power politics.  It does not matter that the church members are openly supporting people who are not acceptable role models of caring Christian leaders.

Chandler’s response: “Every effort to remake the Christian faith leads to wickedness.  We can’t repaint the faith” [81].

Before you think I am an old “fuddy duddy” set in my ways, resistant to change, and a bit behind the times, I have attended many different types of worship services and I know that different people prefer different types of things.  I don’t care if the spirit moves a person during a praise-music worship song and I also don’t care if a person feels God in a quiet, reserved service that is formal and reverent.  Whatever works for someone is ok for them.  I don’t judge.  The problem occurs when a church makes changes just to get “butts in the pews.”  Church is changed from the inside out just to get a response from anyone who is resistant to God’s message.  The spirit is not moving within someone to get them to come to church.  The gimmick is what is getting them in the church doors.  Some would say, “who cares, as long as they get to church.”  I do understand that; maybe the gimmick gets them in and the spirit moves them after they are there. 

Maybe Chandler is a “fuddy duddy,” as he cites the dilemma of Peter, preaching the Gospel in Acts to people gathered in Jerusalem.  Peter knows he will be preaching to Jews and what is he going to do with the information that they were the ones who killed Jesus?   Is he just going to ignore the “elephant in the room” or is he going to address this issue head-on.  He addressed the idea directly and let the Holy Spirit do its work.  “You killed Him.  You crucified Him.  They were cut to the heart.”  The apostles said what are we going to do?  Peter said if they repent, baptize them in the name of Jesus and forgive them of their sins.  They will then receive the Holy Spirit.  And they did experience forgiveness and they did receive the Holy Spirit.

Chandler writes “what saved them?  Their faith.”  No gimmicky action brought about their salvation.  The church had not fed them any message.  They had not been sitting under a teacher for weeks.  There was no church they had been attending every week.  God just opened hearts and minds.  This took the pressure off Peter.  He did not have to construct a “seeker-sensitive sermon.”  He did not have to soften his message to make it more palatable.  It was just the truth delivered to people with open hearts and open minds–opened by God, not some congregational strategy.

Chandler is no fool.  He writes “Some people won’t like hearing this” [referring to the truth].  But some are going to hear this and be saved” [81].  He calls the gimmicks that churches use “relational evangelism” and like me, he is willing to admit that some need that approach to get them in the church doors, but “eventually [you are] going to have to open up your mouth and share the Gospel.  When the pure Gospel is shared, people respond.”  The unadjusted Gospel is the only message that is empowered by God; it is all about the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the securing of eternal life. 

In an age when the church is struggling and responding to declining numbers with many reinvention strategies to secure more followers, I find it interesting that Chandler holds to the unvarnished truth of the Gospels.  Telling the truth about Jesus is like a “smart bomb in the hearts of those the Spirit has given eyes to see and ears to hear.”

“The unadjusted Gospel is the empowered Gospel.”

* “Why Church Attendance Is Declining (15 Reasons) + U.S. Statistics (2026)” a blog by Enes Güneş, accessed on 5/31/2026

Several years ago, I discussed a book by Adam Hamilton entitled Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.  Hamilton took on several tough issues for Christians; abortion, acceptance or non-acceptance of homosexuals, inerrant Scripture etc.  He tried to be even-handed with his comments, positing that the tough issues are not black and white—they are mostly gray.  The author I am discussing now is not Adam Hamilton.  In his book The Explicit Gospel, Matt Chandler likes to quote Matthew 12:30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”  He states things like “The hearer of the Gospel must move, either toward Christ or away from Him.” [63].  He quotes Pastor Chan Kilgore who says “True Gospel preaching always changes the heart.  It either awakens it or hardens it.”  Sounds like you are either in or you are out.

No gray.

Chandler has already written about the American Christian cultural attitude of works, that many Christians today have “lost their way” by believing God expects us to check all the boxes on our daily faith discipline charts.  That somehow entitles us to be rewarded by God the Father.  He is definite in saying what he expects of Christians, and it is not a list of “works.” 

Also giving your life to Christ is not a one-time event.  It is a commitment to serve God for the rest of your life. Going to church and praising God is not a hobby.  If you don’t submit your life to God and chase after His Son Jesus the rest of your days, forget it; you are wasting your time.  Chandler is not Adam Hamilton: “The religious, moralistic, churchgoing evangelical who has no real intention of seeking God and following Him has not found some sweet spot between radical devotion and wanton sin; he’s found devastation” [70].

This is hard language.  Chandler has high standards.

He continues his response to the Gospel in Chapter 4.  One might think he has skewered today’s legalistic Christian enough in the “Faith versus Works” section of Chapter 4 but he has more to say in “Response and Responsibility.”   The target this time is the hypocritical Christian, the one who hears God’s Word and reads God’s Word, but doesn’t live God’s Word.  They have perfected the veneer of the “believer,” but Christianity for mere appearances is not enough.

To make his point, he focuses on Isaiah 6; the most famous quote is verse 8 “whom shall I send, and who will go for us?  Then I said, Here am I!  Send me.”   Looks good on a t-shirt doesn’t it or maybe it could be of use at the bottom of a Christian’s personal stationary.  The problem with Isaiah 6 is that the quote is excised from the rest of the Scriptural context.  Isaiah is saying to the people that they are not getting the message.  Chapter 6 is not a call for action; it is a criticism of people who have a blind spot in their faith.

I once had a friend who has had one relationship after another, searching for “the perfect man.”  No one seemed to “tick all the boxes.”  As she moved from relationship to relationship she provided excuses for each disappointment but after six failed attempts to “couple,” maybe there is a clear pattern.  The problem is not the men; the common denominator in all of the failed attempts is the woman.  I never heard these words from her: “I have a problem.”   It was always the men.  God tells Isaiah “Here’s your ministry.  Go tell them, keep on hearing but they do not hear.”  In essence, the listeners are only partially aware of the truth.  The right words are being spoken but a common way to express this is, “it is like speaking to a brick wall.” 

So what is Chandler saying about some Christians in the pews?  We are just not getting the message.  In Isaiah 6, the people do not “get it” but the preacher is told to preach on.  Too often the responsibility for the response is placed on the pastor.  Chandler is very clear about that:  the responsibility of responding to God’s Word falls squarely on the shoulders of the people sitting in the pews.  What are pastors responsible for?  They have been given the job of proclaiming God’s Word and of course, they need to do that and they need to be faithful to God.  That is the measure of their success.  But too often it is the number of members in the church building, the number of visitors who come to church, the number of people who come forward to be saved and the number of activities that are broadcast to passersby on the church marquee.  Chandler disagrees. 

The pastor who is faithful to God’s Word and obedient to his calling is just as successful preaching every Sunday to nine people as the pastor who preaches to the mega-church of twenty thousand. 

Let’s put a framework on this discussion.  Do you think that God would be more pleased with nine people who are “all in” or twenty-thousand who are just going through the motions?  Chandler cites the parable of the sower of seeds: Matthew 13.  Where do those seeds land?  Some land on the path, some land in the thorns, some land in the shallow soil and some land in the good soil.  You can determine what this means.  The sower casts a lot of seeds that bear no crop.  The pastor preaches a lot of sermons that are not heard. 

Again, let’s return to the idea of responding.  After all, my comments on this topic are in Chandler’s chapter entitled “Response.”  How should pastors respond to this situation?  Chandler says continue to be faithful and obedient to the calling you have on your life.  Don’t water down your message just to attract more people.  How should church members respond to this situation?  Open your ears to the Word of God and respond with faith in Christ.  Live your life like you are in a kingdom not of this world because devout believers know they are not obedient to a king in this world.  They have a much higher set of standards.

Respond.  Either move toward Christ or away from Him.  Sadly for many, the move toward Christ will never happen. 

Too many sit in the pew but they will never hear.

“God began to gather kindling around my life.”

That’s how Matt Chandler describes his justification experience.  It was a process, not a dramatic response to some earth-shaking event.  Chandler certainly had a fortunate set of circumstances in his life, a group of men who saw some value in him and tried to help him find Jesus.

It is interesting that he described the process as starting a fire.  I have heard from others who experienced something like that, a patient pressure to make some move toward God that is steady and slow, full of stops and starts and sidetracks.  That is not the way it is for others.  Some are justified as they find themselves at “the end of their rope” (to use that well-worn cliché).  They have chased life with a pill or a bottle and found themselves face-down in vomit or alone in a frightening jail cell.  They have been stunned by a traumatic situation that has caught their attention and they think back over what led them to that spot and they know they need to cry out to The Lord for help.  They literally don’t know where to go next.  Chandler did not experience that.  It was a slow fire, started “with small pieces of grass and wood and once that’s caught, you put on bigger sticks, and then you put on bigger sticks and then you put on even bigger sticks” [The Explicit Gospel, 68].  Then God really lit Chandler up.

When you think about the point of Chandler’s section of Chapter 4 entitled “Clay and Ice, Cuts and Scars” he is saying that he found Jesus and of course that happened to me.  My way of “finding Jesus” was different from his but what happened next was also different.  Before God moved in his life, he writes eventually “I needed to know how everything fit; I needed to know why God would say such and such.  But when the Holy Spirit opened up my heart to Christ my Savior and God my Father and reconciled me to God, I didn’t need those questions answered” [69].  Chandler felt God’s grace and mercy and that was enough.  After experiencing God’s grace and mercy, he became what he called an “aggressive agnostic.”  He did not know what to do with his “gift.”  That period lasted for one month.  When that time was over, he came to grips with what his conversion meant and began he began to share the gospel.

The problem he says is “I was not theologically built out.”  He had a thirst for God and His Word but he did not know the Bible very well.  I remember my conversion experience [on an Emmaus Walk].  I came back to “the world” with a desire to devour the New Testament, which I did.  I was searching for answers.  I had traveled the path of a workaholic, neglecting my spouse and my son.  All that mattered to me was the “atta-boys” I was getting from work and believe me; in those days I was getting quite a few confirming responses.  That was what being a “man” was all about…getting confirmed at work, getting pay raises with increased responsibility and climbing that ladder of success.  Putting God first…what was that all about?  Dedicating my life to my spouse…that did seem a bit important, but I thought she was doing ok.  My son was doing well in school and did not demand much of my attention when I was home [I did my share of traveling and working late so I was not home that much].  My spouse was taking care of him for me.  Ok, you can see where this is going.  I needed a major course correction and that is what happened. 

I wound up in the same place as Chandler when I realized I too was not “built out.”  I had a desire to not only live the life of a Christian man but I needed to know why I needed to do to live that life.  All these years of living and how did I miss this?  Chandler says this is a dangerous time.  I understand that danger.  Justification is just the first step of conversion.  Justification should be followed by a growing desire for sanctification.  When one makes a salvation commitment, that is not enough because God wants more.  I will write that again: GOD WANTS MORE.  For many who find Jesus, they are not ready to give God more. 

I had a very close friend who began to see friends “stack kindling” around him and he began to share with me his interest in God.  He began to come to church. He married his “live-in girlfriend” and he even started coming to my Sunday school class.  But he was in that place that Chandler calls “dangerous” because the Word will cause our hunger to increase or we will harden to God’s grace.

I remember having a conversation with this friend and he said, “I want to make a commitment to church but I like drinking a lot.  I like the way it makes me feel.  I don’t want to give that up.  It means too much to me.”  He had hardened himself to God.  Many many Christians are not into this “growth thing.”  They go through the motions of going to church and maybe join a Sunday school class.  The only time they experience the Word of God is when the Pastor reads it during church service.  When they are called to sacrifice time to serve others, they will [if it fits their busy schedule].  Making serious commitments to the work of our Lord is out of the question [what would people in my social circle think?].

Chandler calls the vast majority of people in the church today “hobby Christians.”  They really have no intention of seeking more of God and yet that is exactly what God wants.  Through the process of seeking Him, we learn to serve others, we learn to become more Christ-like and we can lead others to a relationship with The Father.  Our kingdom is not of this world.

Make no mistake, God wants to have a relationship with us.  He wants us to want Him, love Him and certainly need His wise counsel.  Chandler writes that the Word of God cuts into the soul of every man and woman; for some it “cuts to the quick, breaking open like freshly tilled soil” while “others it bruises, leaving marks scarred over”. 

There is no in between.  God wants more and He will not stop asking.  What is our response?  Sadly too many just rest on their salvation and they become stagnant over the length of their lives.  Others repudiate Him and fall into their old ways [maybe only “putting on” the veneer of Christianity, maybe not].  Some turn their backs to God altogether.

Yes, some believe God’s promise of life and they take up His challenge. 

When God comes calling, they are not afraid to say yes!

Matt Chandler has challenged Christians. He states that Jesus hung on the cross for us. Jesus bridged the gap between God and man (we can approach the Father directly). He atoned for all our sins that fateful day on Golgotha, making a sacrifice that was unjust (we deserved to be on the cross, not Him). He did nothing wrong while He was on earth, yet on that hill outside the walls of Jerusalem divine justice and mercy intersected, prophecy was fulfilled and Jesus modeled self‑giving love and sacrificial obedience.

As I continue my comments from Chandler’s Chapter 4 entitled “Response,” we see how some believers have responded to the call to be more Christlike.

“Faith versus works” is how Chandler describes what some Christians try to do today. God is wanting us to respond to Jesus’ sacrifice by being faithful “but we want to make donations (works)” [65]. Chandler makes his point by turning to the Old Testament and Levitical Law, the centuries-old idea that animal sacrifice is what God wants us to do to atone for our sins.

Chandler imagines God speaking to man saying “I don’t need your (sacrificial) bull. I don’t want your goats…I am trying to communicate to you how disgusting and how horrible your sin is before me…instead of feeling the weight of that and actually repenting, you just keep doing what you’re doing” [65].

Christ’s sacrifice demands a response from man and that response should be what Chandler calls “the response of faith.” But instead of having faith, we want to compile our list of the good things we do and present that to God; surely He will forgive us our sins because we are so nice. We want to open our checkbooks and donate; surely that will please Him as we are feeding the needy, clothing the poor and supporting good Christian ministries with our hard-earned money. Chandler says we are like the Levitical priesthood, we offer our good behaviors like they laid animal sacrifices on the altar. But there is a problem, that altar is closed. The last and greatest atonement was made by Jesus Christ.

This is confusing for many Christians because Chandler seems to be saying that the good work we do as Christians is not that good. Of course, doing good things to help others is beneficial, but the problem is how we are doing it. It is as if we are trying to “leverage” God. If we do enough good things, He has to reward us. Yes, what this amounts to is we think we can “work” our way into heaven.

Additionally, this attitude is grounded in the idea that we can “fix” things. I have suffered from this myself as I have felt that I had the ability to cure myself of chronic sin. It is a “self-help” approach to life. If I have enough will-power, I can cure my problems. If I consult people smarter than I am and I have enough knowledge, I can figure out what to do. If I exert enough energy, I can fix myself through increasing my strength. But I can’t do what I need to do without God.

Here is the truth about what God wants. We can sacrifice all we want, we can do all the good works we can fit into the day and we can apply all the self-help formulas that we can read about but God wants heart change. God wants us to love Him so much that we don’t want to sin any more; we love Him more than the sin. Chandler writes that it is like the alcoholic who declares he is free of alcohol on Sunday but on Monday he wants to drink and feels he needs to. He is in agony because he knows he can’t. Is that freedom from sin? It’s not. The alcoholic has not had a change of heart.

“Acts of sacrifice, in the end, don’t do anything. They do not cleanse your conscience, and they do not set your heart on the things of God” [Chandler 67]. Chandler knows that too many Christians listen to their heads. The mind has an agenda all its own, but the heart is on a different track. The heart is attuned to The Holy Spirit and to hear the Spirit requires silence. God’s messages most often come in a whisper, a Holy Spirit whisper. Good works are worthwhile, but they are not designed to cleanse our hearts. What Christians should always focus on is the good news of the cross and if we maintain that focus, real heart transformation can occur.

We live in a hustle-bustle world that values doing things. That is our culture. What is needed is patience, gentleness and quiet. When we begin to work that into our lives we can hear the gentle and trustworthy words of the heart, a heart formed by The Holy Spirit.

Chandler closes the “Faith versus Works” section of Chapter 4 with a quote from Paul as he writes in Romans 3: 28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” His last sentence of this section says it all: “The only acceptable response to the Gospel is nothing less than a heart of faith.”

Easter 2026 has come and gone.  I know it is a cliché but God has a formidable sense of timing.  For Easter I reposted a special message and as I continue my discussion of Matt Chandler’s book The Explicit Gospel, I am confronted with the need to discuss man’s response to the Gospels.  After the resurrection, God is calling for us to respond to the cross.  Personally, maybe God is calling me for my own response to the Gospels.

Again, what a formidable sense of timing…

We celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus the only Son of God and what that sacrifice did for us, and now to use another cliché, “the ball is on our court.”  Chandler is still talking about the Gospel on the ground in the fourth section of the first part of his book so let’s do a quick review: section one was about God, His holiness, perfection and rightful authority.  Section two was about man’s sinfulness and rebellion.  Chandler is very hard on mankind; we are hopeless lost sinners in need of help [some people object to his “tough” approach].  Section three is about Christ, His life, death and resurrection and what that does for us sinners.  Jesus is the solution for us, holding out hope from God when we had no hope. Jesus bridges the gap between God and man.   After the cross, we can talk to God directly.  After the cross, Jesus is our advocate who sits at the right hand of the Father, someone who understands the problem of sin that we all have and the need for our forgiveness and God’s grace.

So what do WE do now?  Let’s go back to that ball; oh yes, “it is in our court.”

How do we respond?

Here is the short answer.  We should repent of our sins…

Now that I have reviewed what I have commented on so far in The Explicit Gospel, it is almost as if Chandler is calling his readers to the prayer rail.  He wants all of us to confess our sins.  More than that, he is telling us we need to confess our sins. 

God has provided the “good news,” that a pathway to more righteous living is possible but no one is obligated to take that pathway.  We have a choice.  In His divine design, God has allowed us the same privilege of choice that He gave Adam and Eve.  We can continue to live in our sin or we can repent, truly repent.  You might wonder about the word truly.  Why write “truly” repent?  My reasoning  is based on that times that I have repented of my sins in my life [kinda…].  I really did not repent because I knew I would revisit my sin at a later time.  I enjoyed it too much.  At the time of repentance I was miserable and I needed salvation, a reprieve from my guilt, but it was not honest repentance.  Honest repentance is a deep desire for God to help us, change us, to help us walk away from the sin.  Again it is our choice.  He wants us to choose Him because we love Him more than we love the sin.

Secondly, God wants us to have faith in Him.  He will give us all that we need.  I have friends who are about to take much greater chances that I do as a Christian.  They are missionaries and they have been so for some fifty-odd years.  At the age of seventy-four they are ready to embark on another mission to a Muslim country.  They are not one hundred percent sure of what they will find when they get there, but they have faith that The Lord will provide.  More than that; they know He will.  That is what Chandler is talking about.  Besides repenting of our sins, he says we need to have faith that God will provide for our needs.  That is a big leap for many of us.  We want to know what God has in store for us: a bright future, all the money we will need [an excess would be nice], a job that provides great status in our community, but most of all, we want CONTROL over our future.  We want to direct our future, not allow God to do that for us.  We want to know where we are going and by the way, we want to make sure we have ample provisions when we get there.

Lastly we should be ready to be transformed.  If we repent and develop faith, get ready to be used.  God will find a way to use you to accomplish His mission on this earth.  The irony of this is that His mission should become our mission.  Chandler has written so much on this in his book so far.  We want to serve Christ but we want to serve Him on “our terms”.  In recent years, something has happened to the Church in America.  I [and many others] have labeled it cultural Christianity.  At the risk of being too simple, Jesus boiled down our faith to the “greatest commandment”:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all of your soul and all your mind and all your strength.  The second is this: love your neighbor as yourself.”  Simple yet elegant.  Easy to remember but this Scripture encompasses a lot.  Yet in America today, many just don’t get the message.  Instead of God transforming us His way, many feel righteous worshipping politics [power],  morphing the church in ways that Americans can feel entertained in God’s sanctuary, and yes [as Chandler says] pastors water down God’s word to make it totally warm and fuzzy [more people will attend that way].  God wants to grow us.  To use Scripture from Galatians 5: 22-23 as my basis, He want us to show the world visible evidence that God is working in our lives.  We have just experienced Easter when Jesus hung on the cross in our place.  At the end of His life, the Temple curtain was torn from the top to the bottom.  We can have joy in the torn Temple curtain.  We are no longer separated from the Holy of Holies.  God put His Spirit within us in the form of The Holy Spirit.  Maybe that is one of the greatest miracles.  We have a direct connection with God, the Father.  If we respond to the Spirit, God will grow us in directions that are pure God, not some versions of Christianity that are driven by an American lifestyle.

So we are ready to see what Matt Chandler has to say about Man’s response to the cross.  He feels the Gospel has such power that it necessitates reaction.  Jesus’s death of the cross demands response.  Chandler says the Gospels make us move toward Christ or away from Him.  “The explicit Gospel invites belief by demanding it. 

Let me close by referring to Chandler’s opening comments on his intro to Chapter Four.  He is a “no holds barred” writer.  Readers either like him or hate him.  He lays it all out:  “we are stained with sin from conception; we are rushing headlong into the fires of hell before we can even walk” [64].

It sounds like we are bound for hell doesn’t it?  Then Chandler offers a recalibration of our destination:  “Jesus lays his body across the path; there is no ignoring Him.  If it’s headlong into hell we want to go, we have to step over Jesus to get there.” 

This should get our attention.

But will it?

[This is a special Easter repost from the past.]

Is that not what Christ does when He goes to His death on the cross?  He rescues us from our sinful nature.  He gives us a chance at the best life we can have on this earth.

“You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” [Matthew 1: 21].  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” [Luke 19: 10].  “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” [1 Timothy 1: 15] and “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son as the Savior of the world” [1 John 4: 14].

Does that sound like a rescue religion?  It sure does to me.

Stott* discusses the first goal of rescuing humanity, the one we celebrate this Sunday.  We celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.   Just as Jesus is resurrected from His undeserved death, we can also be born again from our sin burdens if we have faith in God.  We can become new people in Christ because He bore our sins.  He took our punishment.

We have all heard these words so much.

These words are fundamental, basic…

But when I was a “new” Christian I was not sure about the significance of this act.  I just lived my life even though I knew I was doing things that were not the best.  I put career over God, career over my spouse and career over my son.  That’s how I operated.  I had fallen into some very bad habits.  I had weaknesses in my moral life; I had mastered the art of presenting a public persona to the world but behind that public persona was a very different person, someone who had serious character flaws.

I needed to do better.  I needed to fix my problems.  This was basic…fundamental.

There is nothing more “basic” than the idea that Jesus came to save us from our sins, to show us how to live a better life.

Another basic idea is the fact that Jesus is the reconciliation between sinful man and a Holy God.

Jesus serves as the bridge.

Jesus is the lifeline that God throws to all of us.

Stott writes about what the Apostle Paul says about this “It is quite clear where this reconciliation comes from.  God is its author he [Paul] says and God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself” [81-82].  Most beginning Christians are not ready to wrap their minds around the idea that God gave Himself to propitiate Himself, but that is what happened.  God needed to be appeased and He sent His own Son [a part and parcel of His own being] to do the work.   “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life” [John 3: 16].

Propitiation does not seem “basic” and for many it can seem insane, so many new Christians dwell on John 3: 16 because it is easier to understand.

Another word that Christians hear a lot is atonement.  Stott writes that atonement “denotes either an action by which two conflicting parts are made ‘at one’ or the state in which their oneness is enjoyed and expressed” [82].  This is not made by our effort; God makes atonement for us through the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The Apostle Paul says “We have received this gift.”  Alienation, enslavement and selfishness are real problems that many of us have.  Atonement cancels out those problems.  “Sin caused an estrangement; the cross, the crucifixion of Christ, has accomplished an atonement.  Sin bred enmity; the cross brought peace.  Sin created the gulf between man and God; the cross bridged it.  Sin broke the fellowship; the cross has restored it” [Stott, 82].  Many give their lives to Christ and take a worker attitude into their new religion; that is ludicrous because the gift is too great.  None of can ever do enough to say we earned the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.   We can never repay the debt.

This Sunday is a special day, a day preceded by horrors too great for any human being to bear, but instead of focusing on the horrors, we should focus on the victory.  “Jesus’ resurrection proclaims His victory over sin and death.  Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. Then He was resurrected, proving He is who He says He is and that He accomplished what He came to earth to accomplish.  Jesus Christ is fully God, fully human, and our only Savior. It is because He is risen that we can trust in His sacrifice for our sins and receive new life in Him. His resurrection also demonstrates that His promise to resurrect us one day will come true. *”

It is spring, a time of new life as trees begin to leaf out, flowers begin to pop through the soil and yards turn from brown to green.  Easter is a time when we celebrate the new life that Jesus has given to us. As you read Paul’s letter to the  Ephesians [2: he describes God’s great gift “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.   For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

The timing for this post could not have been any better, a “Basic” explanation of the significance of Easter right before Easter.

The death of Christ and His resurrection.

He begins anew.

And we can too…

*Comments in this post are based on John Stott “Basic Christianity”

**Why Do We Celebrate Easter?”  Gotquestions.org website accessed 4/13/2022