In Christ, the Gospel is the very ground we walk on. To leave it behind is to leave the faith behind altogether. Christians are people who, by God’s grace and not by any merit of their own, have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness and welcomed into God’s family. If we don’t return to the Gospel again and again, we will fall into worldly thinking.

Many Christians who sit in a church on a Sunday morning can say that they have already found the answer to the question What Is the Gospel? They have understood the saving grace of God in the cross of Christ, have taken hold of Christ by faith, and now find themselves in Christ, clothed in His righteousness, adopted as children of the Father, and walking in the Spirit’s power. In other words, at a particular moment in time, they were born again.
Yet while the Gospel may be the beginning of the Christian life, it is not simply an initiation. No, it is a fundamental principle to which we return again and again, not because we must be saved again but because our standing with God and our hope of redemption, once established, remains forever founded on that work of Jesus for us.
So, even for those who have been saved and experience assurance of their place in God’s family, a ministry of reminder is necessary. We need to remember the essential truths of our faith. And we may do so by considering the Gospel’s source, its substance, its scope, and its ongoing significance.
The Source of the Gospel
Throughout Scripture, the Gospel is described specifically to be “the gospel of God” (e.g., Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1; 1 Thess. 2:2; 1 Peter 4:17). In other words, the good news of Jesus is not a manmade contrivance, but it is a divine revelation. It begins with God Himself.
In Galatians 1:11, Paul writes, “I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel”—or, as J. B. Phillips paraphrases it, “no human invention.” The Gospel ministry of Paul and his fellow apostles was not a matter of calling people to listen to what they had to say. It emerged from their responsibility to proclaim the message God had entrusted to them.
When we proclaim the Gospel, we’re proclaiming God’s message on His behalf. We’re saying to humanity that the God who made them in His image has presented, in His Son, the only means whereby they may find salvation and meaning.
And this Gospel is not a contingency plan. It’s not as if God had one bad go with Adam, and then another with the law, and now He’s trying it another way with Jesus. God didn’t send His Son to fix His own mistake. No, the Gospel has been His eternal purpose since before the world’s creation (Eph. 3:11). Long before Jesus was born in the stable in Bethlehem, God was unfolding His eternal purpose. Peter tells us that the prophets and even the angels knew that something was coming, but they didn’t yet know it in its fullness; they longed to see it because they knew that it had its origin in God’s heart (1 Peter 1:10–12).
Temptations will confront us to leave the Gospel story behind for one reason or another, for this or that strategy, for an exciting new idea. But the Gospel is not a human story that we can take up or put down as we please. Indeed, we proclaim Jesus because “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And so we must hold firmly to God’s message of salvation for us through faith in the Son.
The Substance of the Gospel
In Romans 1:17, Paul says that in the Gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed.” John Stott explains this “righteousness of God” well when he writes, “It is a righteous status which God requires if we are ever to stand before him, which he achieves through the atoning sacrifice of the cross, which he reveals in the gospel, and which he bestows freely on all who trust in Jesus Christ.”1 The four verbs of this definition can help us to grasp what the substance of the Gospel is.
This “righteousness of God” is first of all the “righteous status which God requires.” To stand before a holy God, we must be in a state of moral and spiritual perfection. Yet we can never attain such a state by our own power. The law shows us our imperfections, making it clear that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6 KJV).
But nevertheless, it is also a righteousness that God “achieves” in the death of His Son. In the cross, God satisfies His perfect justice by meting out the punishment for sin upon the sinless God-man, Jesus Christ. And because Christ has taken the punishment for sin, God pardons those who believe in the Lord Jesus even though we have sinned and deserve condemnation.
Thirdly, God then “reveals” this righteousness in the proclamation of the good news of Jesus. That’s why Christians are Gospel men and women. That’s why we want to be about the Gospel. That’s why we want to declare the Gospel: because in this Gospel, in this great story, is God’s answer to our problem.
And fourthly, God “bestows” this righteousness on those who come to Christ in faith. Our sin is counted to His account, and His righteousness is counted to ours, so that we stand before God with the innocence of Christ.
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One permanent solution might be to amend the Rules of Assembly Operations to require the Stated Clerk to propose a docket with minimum amounts of business time for each day of the assembly. A formula requiring two to four hours of business on the first day, eight on the second, and eight before 6 pm on Thursday would guarantee several more hours for critical business than the most recent dockets have done.

The 2022 Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly promises to be jam-packed with drama and deliberation, but there’s good news—the schedule proposed by Stated Clerk Bryan Chapell (https://pcaga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2022-49th-General-Assembly-Docket-10.2021.pdf) packs in more than three hours of extra business prior to the always-stressful, open-ended Thursday night session. (Fifteen and a half hours of business are scheduled this year by 6 pm on Thursday, whereas only a bit more than 12 hours of business were docketed in 2021.)
Though some of that business time is taken up with required reports and such (as always), commissioners who dread the drama and mad dash that looms as the clock ticks on Thursday can expect that more time for business may equal less drama and an earlier conclusion. Thursday is typically the last day of business unless the Assembly bleeds over into Friday (a thing to be avoided since commissioner travel means Friday attendance is always diminished). In 2021 the Thursday evening session did run into Friday, ending at 12:43 am, but the Assembly did not have to reconvene on Friday.
The relatively small amount of business done on the Assembly’s first two days has irritated commissioners in previous years. In 2021, for instance, barely 6 hours of business was done between Tuesday (a half day) and Wednesday afternoon when business ended at 4:30 pm for a worship service. Wednesday nights are reserved for free time, mostly for parties and social events. It would seem to require little imagination to see why small-town pastors or ruling elders (by Wednesday in their third day of burned vacation or lost wages) would find the traditional Assembly schedule to be inefficient if not irrational. And by late Thursday night nearly everyone, teaching and ruling elders alike, has had enough of a long and trying day…trying to make up for lost time.
The new schedule is much better, but much more could be done. First, assuming everyone not on a committee understands that Monday is a travel day, business could begin earlier or go later on Tuesday. The next two suggestions touch the third rails of worship and party time. Doing business on Wednesday night would mean hours of extra business time at the expense of partying and socializing. Canceling any of the optional worship services (only the opening one which must include the Lord’s Supper is required by the Rules of Assembly Operations) would also free up time. Neither of these options would be popular, nor would cutting out the mini concerts often appended to at least one of the worship services. The PCA General Assembly is first a court of the church, but it has grown to be much more than that.
One permanent solution might be to amend the Rules of Assembly Operations to require the Stated Clerk to propose a docket with minimum amounts of business time for each day of the assembly. A formula requiring two to four hours of business on the first day, eight on the second, and eight before 6 pm on Thursday would guarantee several more hours for critical business than the most recent dockets have done.
Back to the present—this year’s schedule is a great improvement, though the improvement may not be apparent given the large amount of controversial and time-consuming business this year’s assembly almost certainly has in store. Hours will still be in short supply, and so may be the patience of the participants.
Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, and board member of MORE in the PCA.

There is something incredibly transferable about the blessing of Psalms. The simplicity of application, the power of the imagery, the brevity of the written context – it all means you have something to share with others in conversation or with friends via text message. Psalms is a book that joins you in the most secret place of suffering or struggle, and yet it is a book that can spill out to others in the everyday activities of life. Share what you are blessed to see.

During 2022 I have been enjoying a slow walk through the book of Psalms. I have been working through the book one Psalm at a time. I have shared the journey via YouTube and sought to convey a detail and a point of application from each Psalm to help others enjoy reading the Psalm. I will attach the playlist below this post.
As we are now at the halfway point in the year, I thought I would pull together some reflections:

Slowing down and pondering a Psalm allows you to appreciate the artistic crafting contained within a Psalm. For instance, if I look at the short five verses of Psalm 70, I notice the key terms repeated in the first and last verses: haste, O God, deliver me; O LORD, help me. Actually, while I knew that Psalms can give a sense of completion by using similar terminology at the beginning and end, I have been surprised by how often that occurs. And the use of inclusio, or “bookends”, is only one of many types of artistry to be found in the Psalms.
Scribbling on the text of a Psalm allows you to notice the flow of thought more easily. Again, sticking with Psalm 70 as a simple example, there are two movements within the body of the Psalm. In verses 2-3, the repetition of “Let them…” shows David’s concern regarding those opposing him. He wants God to deal with them. Then verse 4 has the repetition of “May…”, which points to the positive request and anticipation. David knows that seeking God leads to good for his people. Judgment of them; the blessing for us.
Study intensity does not preclude devotional impact. I remember Gordon Fee writing about the need for exegesis and devotion. He noted that just as a church does not need an exegetically precise pastor who is lacking in devotional warmth as he studies his Bible in sermon preparation, the people in the pew should not be devotionally warm while being exegetically imprecise in their personal Bible times. Sometimes we fall into the trap of separating technical study from devotional reading. But when I scribble on a printout of a Psalm, note the structure, the parallelisms, the imagery, and even when I turn to a technical commentary to probe a specific issue, none of this precludes the devotional impact of the Psalm. The end goal should be that the Psalm speaks to my heart, affects my life, and potentially gets shared as an encouragement to someone else.

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