Gospel-centred Life and Ministry

Sermon by Ps. George

The preacher talked about the importance of a gospel-centred, gospel-driven, and gospel-based life, and deliberately/consciously leading such a life. As believers, we cannot let go of the gospel as it the basis of our ongoing relationship with the Father where through the Holy Spirit, we obtain the constant knowledge/guidance of how to lead a godly life.

Once we accept Christ, the gospel must not become a past event but an ongoing experience (1 Corinthians 15:2 mentions that people who believe are being saved by the gospel) that affects our personal, church, work, and family life. Every relationship that we have must be affected by the power of the gospel. This will lead to a gospel-centric church and network of churches, which in turn will lead to a gospel-centric society and finally a gospel-centric nation.

The preacher gave a software analogy of being saved and leading a gospel-based life. When we come to Christ, we uninstall the worldly ways (sinful tendencies such as sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed/covetousness, anger, malice, slander, obscenity, lies), we get a new operating system (gospel), and install new applications (compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, goodness, divine knowledge, servanthood, self-control, endurance, godliness, and brotherly affection). In this context, the verses that we reflected on were:

• 2 Peter 1:3 onwards
• Colossians 3

Other noteworthy things are that the installation of Christ-like values happens through the Holy Spirit, Word of God, and the community of God (church). If our system crashes, we have system administrators such as elders; carnal minded friends cannot guide one another to a gospel-based life as they are still controlled by the flesh and not the Spirit.