When commitment in a local church transcends the benefits we receive from it, it points to something deeper.
– Dever, Mark & Jamie Dunlop; The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive; Crossway; Wheaton, IL; Copyright 2015; Kindle Edition; Page 53
Believing the gospel is what released an explosive power in Jesus’ followers that caused them to live with radical recklessness and audacious faith.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page
Truly believing the gospel produces in us a concern for the poor, a love of Scripture, a desire to be in authentic community, a love for holiness, and everything else that is part of the Christian life. Those behaviors are the results of (or, fruits of) faith in the gospel. Believing precedes right behaving.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page
“Lovelessness,” “apathy,” and “habitual sin” are diagnoses of spiritual death. We go desperately wrong, however, when we think we can fix those things by correcting our behavior. Faith in the gospel is always God’s prognosis.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page
Love for God, Scripture says, flows from His love for us (I John 4:19). The only way that love for God and others grows in us is through faith in the story of God’s great love for us – the gospel.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page
Jesus is the treasure worth leaving everything for. Knowing Him will turn sacrifice into sweetness and duty into delight. Even when your commitment to Him leads you to a cross, He will be a treasure that shrouds that cross in joy.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page
The cross is painful and the costs of discipleship are severe, but the joy of what you have obtained in Him so far outweighs any sorrow for what you have abandoned.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 241
There are at least four things we find in the book of Acts about the church that “amazed” the community. Each of these put the gospel on display. Each of these will be present in a gospel-centered congregation.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 229-
The presence of a healthy local church in a community is the greatest catalyst for the evangelization of that community.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 229
You cannot confuse the effects of the gospel with the gospel itself.
– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 228
