One of the biggest lies I was told growing up defined the entire Gospel as Jesus came to earth as a man, died on the cross for my sins, and rose from the dead so that my sins could be forgiven and I could live with him in heaven." That statement contains many true facts, but it limits the full work and intent of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Christians who go no further hamstring their life's purpose, fulfillment, and mission. My publisher has granted us permission to run chapter five from my soon-to-be-released book The Life You Were Reborn to Live: Dismantling 12 Lies that Rob Your Intimacy with God. If this chapter intrigues you, you can preorder the entire book.
“The kingdom of God is so shockingly opposite the way the rest of the world works that I need constant reminding of what it looks like and how good it is.”
Brant Hansen, Unoffendable
A faithful life in Christ depends in large part on your understanding not just the facts of Jesus’ death but the point of Jesus’ death.
There’s a difference between the facts and the point of an event.
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, Pravda, the state newspaper, was famous for its stories that might be factually true but were radically misleading. For example, one headline announced, “Soviet Runner Second, American Runner Third from Last.”
The race involved just three people, and the American won the race. But first place in a three-person race is, technically speaking, “third from last.” So the headline was technically true but wildly deceptive. The facts missed the point that the American defeated both the Soviet runner and the other runner.
When she was in high school, journalist, writer, and filmmaker Nora Ephron[1] took a journalism class in which the teacher gave an assignment to write the lede to a story as a way to help the students distinguish between the facts and the point. The teacher introduced the assignment by presenting the story’s relevant facts:
Kenneth I. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund “Pat” Brown.[i]
With that information, the professor asked the journalism students to write the lede. One suggested, “Margaret Mead, Maynard Hutchins, and Governor Brown will address the faculty on . . .”
But that was wrong.
Another started out, “Next Thursday, the high school faculty will . . .”
Wrong again.
The teacher proceeded to unveil the true lede: “There will be no school Thursday.”
For journalists, the lede refers not just to the facts but also to the point of the facts. With all the faculty out, the school can’t hold classes. What the students most need to know and want to know is that they don’t have to go to school that day.
If we know the facts about Jesus’ death at Golgotha but miss the point, we risk, in the words of C. S. Lewis, “running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood.”[ii]
One of the reasons we’re running around with fire extinguishers during a flood is that we don’t understand the lede about Jesus’ death. We get the facts right, but the point is wrong. We need to rethink what the point really is so we can learn what really matters.
Before we go on, ask yourself, What is the proper lede for the events of Good Friday that culminate with Jesus’ death on the cross at Golgotha?
A False Lede
Here is perhaps the most popular false lede about Golgotha. Every word in the following sentence is true, but it misses the point.
Jesus lived a perfect life, died on a cross, and rose from the dead so that our sins could be forgiven and we could live with him in heaven.
Take a closer look at Golgotha. Jesus demonstrates the lede for us by how he refuses to respond to cruel taunts. Amid the most beautiful, glorious, and magnificent accomplishment in the history of the world—one that will never be surpassed—people mocked Jesus as he was being crucified: “Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:40).
Talk about restraint! These people are saying to Jesus, “Prove your power. Why would you stay up there if you didn’t have to?” In their minds, Jesus’ refusal to back away from overwhelming suffering proves that he couldn’t.
But here’s the truth: Jesus wouldn’t come down from the cross because he was (and is) the Son of God. Staying on the cross to finish his work was proof of his divinity, not a refutation of it.
The old way of thinking that must be dismantled is this: “Why do something that hurts? It makes no sense. Prove you’re superior by doing what’s best for you.”
In fact, Jesus proved he was superior by doing what was best for us, not for him, demonstrating that he looks at life and obedience in a drastically different way than we do.
Everyone watching the crucifixion knew the facts: Jesus was being tortured, and in a physical sense his life was rapidly coming to an end. Only Jesus understood the point. Jesus is the only one to whom it made sense that he should stay on the cross instead of abandoning it, which he could have done. That reality points us to the true lede of Golgotha.
A True Lede
Here’s a lede that looks beyond individual comfort and explains why Jesus endured the scorn, shame, and torture of the cross:
Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived—not for our own interests, but to advance the kingdom of God.
I didn’t come up with this lede. The apostle Paul did. I’m merely paraphrasing what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:15: “He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
That is the point of Jesus’ death—no longer living for ourselves but for Jesus. Following the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, God sent his Holy Spirit to empower us in order that we might participate in his sovereign work to remake and reorder a fallen world. We live a life of worship and sacrificial service as he brings forth his new kingdom. That’s the full gospel.
Jesus died not just so you could go to heaven, but also so you would bring heaven to earth. What we need to dismantle and then learn is this: Life isn’t about securing personal comfort in eternity; life is about fulfilling our divine mission on earth. That’s the point of Golgotha.
The headline:
Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead.
The lede:
Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived.
The point:
God is remaking the world through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus and has sent his Holy Spirit to empower us to participate in building his new kingdom.
The Gospel Before the Cross
For those who think the gospel is summarized as “Jesus lived a perfect life, died on a cross, and rose from the dead to forgive our sins and open the way for us to live with him in heaven,” consider Luke 9:6: “[The disciples] set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news [the gospel] and healing people everywhere” (emphasis added).
When the disciples were preaching, Jesus was still very much alive. The disciples couldn’t have preached about the cross or Jesus’ resurrection. What was “the gospel” if they weren’t talking about those facts we often see as constituting the entire gospel?
In Luke 9:2 we read, “[Jesus] sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Remember, this is prior to Jesus’ death. What, then, were they proclaiming? Namely, this—a new world has come! God is calling the world back from rebellion and hatred toward worship and love. Our call is to now advance God’s kingdom—his influence, his reign—instead of living simply for ourselves. Our task is to turn people to live for God instead of for themselves.
If we make personal salvation the lede (“trust in Jesus so you can be saved”), we miss the point. The statement is true, but it’s not the full gospel. It’s focused on self. Jesus died to make us kingdom-centered. So the distorted facts of the incomplete gospel read like a Pravda headline proclaiming that the winning runner is actually third from last. It’s a true deception.
Here’s what we must dismantle—our definition of the gospel as primarily “God will save us” as we go on to embrace the more complete statement “God will enlist us.” Our sermons tend to be centered more on “Christ died for us” than “we must live for God.”
Both are true, of course. Both are essential and glorious—and Christ’s death is a necessary precondition of the other. Christ did die for us (let’s worship him forever!), but the point is that he did so in order that we can live for God.
Drafted
Knowing the true point of the gospel helps me accept my place in God’s work with humility. It frees me from the crushing burdens of being jealous of others and feeling unappreciated. Why? Because I’m embracing the truth that God’s work isn’t about me; it’s about him! When I live like this, I’m not even thinking about what people are thinking of me.
I’m a lifelong football fan—college football first, pro football second. I even like to watch the pro football draft. It’s exciting to see young men achieve lifelong dreams. There’s a helpful analogy here.
Every draft selection is for a purpose. Each player is chosen not just to be on the team (i.e., get into heaven), but to play a particular position. If you see a player who is five ten, 160 pounds, you know he’s not being drafted to play offensive lineman. He’s almost certainly a punter or kicker. If a player is 325 pounds, he’s not going to play cornerback.
When God drafts us, he has a role in mind, far more than us just wearing the team jersey for eternity. He’s not selecting us to sit on the bench and cash a paycheck. There’s a position he wants us to play.
With that analogy, here’s what we must learn: Jesus didn’t die just so that your soul would be saved; he died so that your life would be invested. The glory of the moment isn’t putting on the jersey on Friday night draft night; it’s stepping onto the field on Saturday or Sunday afternoon and doing your job.
Life in Jesus is far more radical than most of us realize. Dying to self and rising to service causes offense for many in our world today. The failure to understand the need to unlearn this self-first dynamic makes difficult passages sound more problematic than they are. Take Titus 2:9–10, for example: “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted.”
If you only read the headline but miss the lede and the point, this will anger and offend you. How dare Paul talk about slavery like this? Out of context, it sounds like he was condoning it. Why didn’t he tell slaves to rebel? Why didn’t he organize the church into a first-century emancipation organization? For starters, the social structure supporting slavery at the time might have made that strategy lethal for slaves.
In the book of Philemon, Paul told an owner that his slave was a brother, not a servant, and he should be set free. Proclaiming to a believing slave owner that a slave must be freed demonstrated in this context that Paul believed that owning someone was inconsistent with following Christ.
But for our purposes here, when we get the lede and the point, we understand what comes next. Paul’s primary purpose in writing this command to Titus was revealed in the fifteen words that occur at the end of verse 10—the point revealed in Paul’s “so that”: “so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (emphasis added).
Paul wasn’t primarily concerned about his readers’ comfort or even their freedom, but rather about the advancement of God’s kingdom. Admittedly, this is scandalous to our sense of personal justice. Everything Paul wrote about marriage, parenting, gender roles, lawsuits, and church order falls under this same rubric—what will advance God’s kingdom the most? Individual comfort, rights, and privileges cannot compete with Paul’s passion to heed Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek first [God’s] kingdom” (Matthew 6:33, emphasis added).
I don’t want us to minimize the importance, glory, and good news of salvation. Far from it. I just want us to learn to marry salvation and service so we don’t miss the point of salvation. The genius of Paul’s thought is that he married salvation and service—not service to be saved (which is why we often undervalue the notion of service), but service because we are saved.
If we want a brilliant faith and a brilliant church, we must marry salvation and service. Some churches and denominations focus on one, and some on the other: “The gospel is about salvation”; “the gospel is about service.” Both positions are true, but not exclusively.
Service doesn’t save us. But salvation doesn’t sideline us. We’re not saved just because we serve. But we should question our salvation if there is no service.
Come Down from That Cross!
Why is self-centered salvation so important to dismantle and others-centered service so important to learn?
If you are God’s child, the day will come when some people will say, “Come down from that cross!” and think they’re doing you a favor.
In your pain or predicament, some of Jesus’ words may seem harsh to you. They may seem to undercut your immediate happiness and push you toward discomfort, perhaps even guilt. Though our Lord couldn’t have been clearer—“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:38)—they will say to you, “God loves you so much that he must want you to come down from the cross.”
Self-centered salvation compels you to see God’s will through the lens of personal benefit, entitlement, and personal comfort. There was no personal benefit to Jesus on the cross. There was no sense of entitlement that could keep him on the cross. There was no comfort bleeding out of him as he died on that cross. The cross had nothing to do with his own salvation.
But he stayed on it all the same out of his commitment to serve.
A physician told me about the challenges she faces as a general practitioner these days. Sometimes she feels that her office spends just as much time fighting insurance companies and wrangling over inadequate Medicaid reimbursement as they do treating patients. To meet her expenses, she often sees fifty patients in a day. She graduated from med school in her thirties with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, but because she is a doctor, everyone assumes she is rich, entitled, and privileged. They suggest she should only be making less than half of what she earns or should even work for free. After all, what kind of Christian seeks to profit off the illnesses of others?
This particular spin on her motives is grotesque, but it gets worse. Many of her patients go onto WebMD before the appointment and already have diagnosed themselves and talk condescendingly to her if she disagrees. They’ll question her credentials, imply that she has sold out to Big Pharma, and threaten her with one-star reviews. And then there are the clever drug addicts who know how to present certain symptoms to get painkillers and will respond with dreadful anger if they don’t get the prescription they want.
On top of all that, if she makes one mistake or misses one diagnosis (remember, she’s seeing dozens of patients a day), she’s likely to be sued for millions of dollars and threatened with the revocation of her license to practice medicine.
It would be easy for her to think, I don’t need this! and just walk away. She’s doing a good work but is accused of operating out of bad motives. She willingly exposes herself to all kinds of pathogens but is accused of being selfish.
Who could blame her for wanting to come down off that cross? She’s a well-educated person. She could do better. She could perhaps be happier and less frustrated and work fewer hours—except this is what she is convinced God has called her to do, along with the four weeks a year she volunteers at a medical mission overseas (even for this some accuse her of having a white savior complex).
If you’re a Christ follower who knows God has called you to do what you’re doing, you won’t listen to the crowds that tempt you with, “Come down from that cross.” Instead, you’ll listen to Paul’s words to Timothy: “Endure hardship . . . discharge all the duties of your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).
Teachers, coaches, police officers, child protective services workers, pastors, and the like, take note. Just because the pay is low and the expectations high, and the people you serve are as likely to resent you as appreciate you and may even try to sue you instead of paying you, it doesn’t mean you should jump off the cross. If the point of Golgotha is my eternal destiny, my cross isn’t relevant. I can come down from it and nothing is lost. But if you understand the lede of Golgotha, instead of saying, “You’re right, I should come down from this cross” you’ll say, “No, I cannot do that. I belong to God, and that’s why I bear this cross.”
Without grasping the point of Golgotha, I’ll think, This hurts, and it must stop. If I’m not celebrated, I’ll go elsewhere. If my rights aren’t respected, I’ll move on.
With the point of Golgotha firmly established, I’ll think, Jesus told me to take up my cross daily and follow him. Just because I’m getting tired of the same old cross doesn’t mean I should come down from it.
If you live primarily for yourself, you are not living the Christian life. I’m not saying you’re not a Christian. That’s for God to determine. I am saying, definitively, that you are not currently living the Christian life as Jesus and Paul define it.
You have been called to something bigger, more glorious, and ultimately far more fulfilling than simply resting in your own salvation and certainly than building your own kingdom. Whether your kingdom is centered around personal wealth, romance, comfort, family, or retirement, if it’s primarily your kingdom, you’re missing the mark. You were made for more than that kingdom. All of us are called to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).
No Small Matter
To know the truth but not live the truth is one of the greatest tragedies of all time. That’s why it’s tragic when Christians don’t understand the right lede.
William Law warned, “There is nothing more . . . to be dreaded than the neglect of our Christian calling; which is not to serve the little uses of a short life, but to redeem souls unto God, to fill heaven with saints, and finish a kingdom of eternal glory unto God.”[iii]
Jesus didn’t go to Golgotha just so you’d go to church on Sunday morning and give a little bit of your money in the offering plate. He claims your life—all of it. We must live entirely different lives. A Dallas pastor spoke of an older woman in his congregation who kept working well into her seventies. It wasn’t to pay off a mortgage (that was already paid for); it wasn’t to go to Europe (she never left Texas). It was to support fourteen Compassion kids.
Paul Buursma was born in 1983 with a hole in his diaphragm. The doctors gave him just a 2 percent chance of surviving infancy at that time, given the critical nature of his condition. And yet Paul lived to be thirty-two years old.
Thirty-two very good years.
In a wheelchair. Facing the impacts of cerebral palsy and a lifelong restrictive lung disease.
He volunteered at Goodwill, worked the dining hall and campus store at Calvin University, had a stint as a greeter at Russ’ Restaurant, and welcomed visitors to the local children’s museum and the world-renowned Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.
But more importantly, he had a heart brimming with God’s love and an ear-to-ear smile for everyone who would pause and interact with him. The celebration of his life following his death was a true celebration. Paul wrenched every opportunity from the limitations he was given and lived a life of service to God and others. I’ve met plenty of people who would be singularly focused to the point of obsession: “Get me out of this chair!”
Paul Buursma’s plea was different: “Father, keep me in your will.”
I don’t know what your cross is, but I know what your calling is. You don’t have to be “healthy” to serve God. You don’t have to be particularly talented. You don’t have to be rich or smart or unusually holy. You just have to be available. You must believe that the full gospel isn’t just about going to heaven; it’s about all of us opening our hearts so that God can display the power of heaven on earth through us as he remakes the world.
That’s why I believe how you define “the gospel” is one of the most important tasks you will ever undertake. You may need to dismantle prior understandings and learn what the apostle Paul and Paul Buursma leaned into. Thousands of summer camps across the United States seek to get their young campers saved—and I say good for them! But how many are seeking to get them enlisted? Isn’t that what it means to become a disciple?
Pause
Pause for just a moment. It’s very likely that something in your life at this very moment feels like a cross, and it’s just as likely that someone is saying, “Come down from that cross!” Maybe you’re the one saying it. Maybe half of your prayers have been, “God, take me down from this cross.”
What are you going to do with this new lede?
Are you going to come down from the cross just because it hurts?
Ask yourself, What am I living for? Is it my kingdom, or is it God’s? Consider how you spend your money and your time, and ask yourself, What gets me excited? Are you living what William Law called “the little uses of a short life,” or are you trying to “finish a kingdom of eternal glory unto God”?
What’s your headline?
What’s your lede?
What’s your point?
Let’s dismantle a self-centered description of the gospel and learn to make the point of the gospel the very thing God’s inspired writer of Scripture called it: “[Jesus] died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).
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[1] Nora’s many movies include You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle.
[i] Cited in Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Crown Business, 2014), 73–74.
[ii] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Spire, 1976), 119.
[iii] William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (Dutton, 1909), 101.
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Names: Thomas, Gary (Gary Lee) author
Title: The life you were reborn to live : dismantling 12 lies that rob your intimacy with God / Gary Thomas.
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My wife and I want to be ambassadors for this book, but the prerequisites demanded by Team Galley, the program chosen as a filter (or channel) for ambassadors, consider us unqualified. REALLY. We tried and flunked. Being ambassadors is a "true headline" but misses the lede. Are there other ways we can be helpful to the cause?