St. John Studies

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” [First Corinthians 15: 3].

In my post of October 31, 2025 I ran the risk of offending some readers of this blog.  I felt the need to define the word Gospel.  The reason I did that was due to the nature of Matt Chandler’s approach to the Bible.  He is bold in his claim that many Christians do not know the “explicit Gospel.”  He is also bold in his claim that many Christians “assume” they know Scripture when they have only put minimal effort into the study of Scripture.  First Corinthians 15: 3 makes direct reference to the issue of “first importance,” that Jesus died for our sins according to the Word of God.  Chandler is “getting back to the basics,” “practicing the fundamentals” or “starting from scratch.”  He aims to correct the problem that has occurred in Christian evangelical circles:  too many believers think they  know the Gospel but they really don’t know it at all.  They have never taken God’s word into their heart. 

Before I go too far and offend again, there is a major difference in getting busy with Jesus and taking God’s word into your heart.  In this country we know how to get busy.  Christians spend a lot of time with fellow Christians doing wonderful things and those wonderful things are important, but we don’t spend much time in God’s word.  There is no doubt that we own Bibles; we just don’t read them.  According to New Yorker Magazine, the Bible “is the best-selling book of the year, every year.  Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that is that Americans purchase some twenty-five million Bibles every year, twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book.”  According to the Crosswalk blog, “the Bible is indeed the most owned book in America with nearly nine out of ten Americans owning a Bible and Americans own an average of 4.4 copies per household. However, it is also the least read book, with most Christians never reading the Bible from cover to cover” [Crosswalk, “The Bible is Consistently a Best Seller” accessed November 11, 2025].

Bible owners have a litany of excuses for not reading The Book; just type “reasons people don’t read the Bible” into your browser.  “I just don’t have time.”  “That language is difficult.”  “It is not exciting enough. I don’t like boring reading.”  “I just don’t understand the historical background of the Bible.”  The excuses people provide for not reading The Bible just go on and on, and some of them may be valid, but some of them are not [ I am just being honest and honesty hurts sometimes].

The basic problem amounts to this.  We claim to be people who know God but we don’t read His word.  It is like trying to fight a battle without a sword.  Not reading the Gospel is leaving too many people of Christian faith feeling lost, powerless and open to incorrect interpretation of Scripture. 

Chandler’s plan is to write a book with two over-arching approaches to Scripture and those approaches are what he calls “The Gospel on the Ground” and “The Gospel in the Air.”  Let me explain.  By Gospel on the ground, he thinks Christians need to know the Bible narrative.  Chandler sees the Bible as a story of God’s self-sufficiency that ends with man’s response to the Gospel’s good news.  God reigns supreme over every part of the story and He is continuing to reign on the earth today.  God is working in my life and the lives of those around me, what Chandler calls “the capturing and resurrecting of dead hearts.”

By Gospel in the air he means the Gospel from “30,000 feet up.”  Whereas the “ground” is the micro view, the air is the “macro view.”  Jesus’s life fits into the big picture of God’s plan for His world from the beginning of time to the final redemption of His creation; after all, Jesus appears in Revelation 21:5 when He says He is “making all things new.”  Chandler writes “When we consider the Gospel from the air, the atoning work of Christ culminates and reveals to us the big picture of God’s plan of restoration from the beginning of time to the end of time.” 

It is a mighty big “ask” to inspire Christians who barely read the Bible to begin to read it from two vantage points, but that is what Chandler is proposing.  He feels when Christians try to operate with the limited knowledge we have, we are going to have misunderstandings of Scripture, we are open to heresies and we may even attack our own Christian brothers due to false “Biblical” ideas.  Let me pause and ask does this sound like what some Christians are practicing today as they mix all types of Biblical ideas with full-throated efforts to gain political power?

It is no wonder that this is happening because lack of Gospel knowledge is allowing it.  As stated above, Christians want to be busy and there is nothing busier than attempting to help engineer American society into a Christian theocracy.  But is that the aim of the Gospel?  I don’t think so.  Chandler feels there is a need to get back to what is of “first importance.”  He wants to make sure that all who believe in Christ are on the same page here [God’s page].  There is a need for us to be talking about what God is talking about. 

To do that we have to open our Bibles and yes, read from TWO vantage points.

Matt Chandler has written a book called The Explicit Gospel.  It is important to probe his meaning of explicit which means “stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.”  It is also important to probe the meaning of the word Gospel.  Christians probably know that Gospel means “the record of Jesus’ life and teaching in the first four books of the New Testament.”  Maybe someone reading this post is a bit unclear on the meaning of “Gospel.” My intent is not to insult readers, just be explicit.

What Chandler proposes to do with his book is be very clear that too many Christians today just don’t know much about the Gospel.  He writes “people have heard the Gospel but didn’t have the spiritual ears to truly hear it, to receive it” [12].  What has happened to many Christians is they have heard a version of the Gospel [from the pulpit] but they have not taken the time on their own to probe the meaning of the Word through ongoing discussion with others or ongoing personal study.  They assume they have a knowledge of God’s word.  Again, Chandler writes “the Gospel has been merely assumed, not taught or proclaimed as central.  It hadn’t been explicit” [13].

Chandler cites example after example of people who have been raised in the church but they don’t have much knowledge of God’s Word.  I like the way he describes these people: believers who practice “moral, therapeutic deism”.  The idea behind this notion is that if we “clean up” our behavior, we will earn favor with God.  God may have entered a person’s heart, but after that, the believer takes over. There is no longer a need to rely on God for spiritual growth. Some would see this as even more complex; moral therapeutic deism is really the siren call of the American idea of self-help.  Believers need to concentrate on self-actualization and self-fulfillment.  God is relegated in the process as your cheerleader as you do all the work to be the best you can be.

That is not the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. 

What is wrong with this version of the Gospel?  There is too much self-reliance and not enough Jesus reliance. 

What is wrong with this version of the Gospel?  Jesus is not in the center of it all as He should be.  I turn to the Apostle Paul who expresses his debt to Christ in Galatians 2: “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” Paul’s reference to the law is to Jewish law, the Pharisee’s 1st Century version of moral therapeutic deism [that is a “stetch”, but maybe you get my point].

If Christ died for us to achieve righteousness through self-actualization and self-fulfillment, He died for no purpose.  We don’t need him.  He is not central to the process.  The driving force of our transformation into more righteous beings is not through the Helper, the Holy Spirit or the Divine Counsellor; it is our self-centered efforts at self-righteousness.

This is the way I was raised in the church so when Chandler expresses his disappointment in believers who don’t really know the power of Jesus Christ as expressed in the Gospel, he is disappointed in me.  Church attendance, Sunday school membership, going to Bible Study on Wednesday night, journaling, Bible reading plans, committee membership at church, choir singing etc., all that does not matter one bit if I don’t have Jesus Christ as the center of my life.  That is why I am working on new posts for his book.  I have realized that I have just been typing thoughts to create blog posts and I have not been taking the time to ask why.  [Maybe I am admitting I did not have Jesus Christ as the center of my writing]. When I am under great pressures in life [as I have been lately] I forget to draw upon the Gospel for my needed strength. I chafe at my inability to have peace in my life.  I long for control when I cannot have it.  I go “through the motions” of live expecting some righteous reward and it is not forthcoming.  This can destroy my faith.

I forget that my Lord and Savior are with me, in my time of trouble and that all will eventually be well according to His purposes, not mine.  My life is not all about my desires.  It is about Christ and what I can do to further His Kingdom.  I should live by faith but instead, I have a desire to live in the flesh.  Life should be a “bowl of cherries” and lately it has not been.  How should I handle this season of troubles?

I should have even greater faith.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,   because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” [the book of James].

When times are wonderful, we should praise God.  When times are troubling, we should praise God.  We owe all that we have in this life to Jesus Christ.  There is not condemnation for any of us, for Christ has set us free.  It is not our doing; it is due to His sacrifice on the cross.  When we try to live a perfect life, expecting a perfect result in the afterlife, we are not living a life based on the explicit Gospel.  We are living a life based on self-righteousness.  Jesus never tells his followers to have pride about their faith; he models humility in his obedience of His Father’s will.  He preaches about God’s chosen ones as those who are patient, gentle, humble and meek.

I quote Chandler’s words about his reliance upon Jesus: “My sin is in the past: forgiven.  My current struggles: covered.  My future failures: paid in full all by the marvelous, infinite, matchless grace found in the atoning work of the cross of Jesus Christ” [15].

The explicit Gospel:  His work, not mine.

“The Post You Don’t Want to Read…” has been replaced by a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book “The Explicit Gospel.’ The do-over post is entitled “How a Pastor Can Get Fired” on February 9, 2026.

“Admitting We are Sinners ” has been replaced by a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book “The Explicit Gospel.’ The do-over post is entitled “Getting What We Deserve” on February 6, 2026.

“The Roots of Worship” [July 9, 2025] has been replaced with a “do-over post” which you can read. I am not pleased with the half-hearted effort I have put into St. John Studies this past year. I am reposting my comments on Matt Chandler’s book “The Explicit Gospel”. The do-over post is entitled “The Roots of Worship” posted on January 16, 2026.