Gospel Shaped People

How do you live out the Gospel in life between the world that is and the world that is to come?  How do you live out the Gospel between Sunday morning and the following Saturday night? How do you live out the Gospel in life between cultural engagement and Christian distinction or between community in the market place and Christian community?

The central challenge for Christ followers is embodied in Jesus’ commandment from Luke 10:27 (ESV):  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Two questions must be asked and answered by serious minded Christians:
1. How are you following this command?
2. To what degree are you following this command?

I would like to offer a way to asses this in your life. Divide Jesus’ command into two scales.  A” love of God” scale and a “love of neighbor” scale.  Both “love” dimensions can be examined in our lives by asking three questions in each scale:
1. What do I believe? (Do I think like Jesus?)
2. What do I need to do? (Do I act like Jesus?)
3. What do I need to become? (Am I becoming like Jesus?)

Do people see a profile of Jesus Christ when they observe your life? The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4:19 (MSG)  Do you know how I feel right now, and will feel until Christ’s life becomes visible in your lives? Like a mother in the pain of childbirth.

Here’s the big question.  What specifically does a follower of Christ look like? What are the characteristic or marks that for a profile of Christ in us?

I suggest that the essential focus of the spiritual life boils down to loving God as the first priority and loving others as ourselves.  Having Christ formed in us is primarily about a healthy growing relationship with God and with others.

I appreciate what Tim Keller says. “Gospel shaped people are enabled to form deep community, however, only in deep community can we became Gospel shaped people.”