9 Marks of a Healthy Church

News!

Two Sundays ago - the importance of how we are taught. Last Sunday- the importance of what we taught. Today we will carry on looking at the importance of what is taught

9 Marks of a Healthy Church The Gospel!

It is particularly important for the church to have a sound biblical theology of the Gospel. A healthy church is a church in which every member young and old, mature and immature unites around the wonderful Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. A good biblical understanding of the Good News should inform every sermon, every act of baptism and communion, every song, every prayer, every conversation. The members of a healthy church should pray and long to know this Gospel more deeply.

What the Gospel is not The Good News is not simply that we are okay Romans 3:9-18 The Good News is not simply that God is love The Good News is not simply that Jesus wants to be our friend All have sinned: Rom. 3:23 Economic : Gal. 3:13 Relational: 2 Cor. 5:19 Legal: Rom. 5:9. Military: 1 Cor. 15:24

So what is the Gospel? The Good News is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in His image to know Him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from Him. In His great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law Himself, and taking on Himself the punishment for the sins of those who would ever turn and trust in Him.

He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice and that God’s wrath against us had been exhausted. He ascended and presented His completed work to His heavenly Father.

Our response to the Gospel He now sends His spirit to call us through this Gospel message to repent of our sins and trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ we are born again into a new life and eternal life with God.

The heart of the Gospel 2 Cor. 5:21 At the very centre of the gospel message stands the great exchange of Christ’s righteousness and our sin. His substitutionary death in our place is the heart of the Gospel message.

Four points to remember God is holy, perfect and sovereign creator Humans are a strange mixture, wonderfully made in God’s image yet horribly fallen, sinful and separated from God. Jesus is the God-man who uniquely and exclusively stands between God and man as a substitute and resurrected Lord

Man must respond to the Gospel and must believe this message and so turn (repent) from his life of self-centredness and sin.

Repentance and Believing Repentance involves acknowledging that you are a sinner. Asking God for forgiveness based on the merits of Christ and committing to live a life of purity Believing is trusting the Lord Jesus for salvation.

‘A half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth’ (J.I. Packer). Fundamentally, we do not need just joy or peace, or purpose. We need God Himself We need the Gospel in its totality. If we understand the Gospel less radically and present the Gospel less radically as well, we simply ask for false conversions and increasingly meaningless church membership lists and a sinful society. We give birth to rice-Christians.

What Zimbabwe needs today is not political. What Zimbabwe needs today is Spiritual. Zimbabwe needs the Gospel. Zimbabwe needs a healthy church A church grounded on Expositional Preaching. A church rooted in a firm Biblical Theology. A church solidly built on the foundations of the one and only true Gospel.

The church is the agent for the spread of the gospel. Does the church have a clear understanding of the Gospel message? How can Zimbabwe be transformed. As the church in Zimbabwe, we need to respond to the Gospel and repent and trust in God.

A healthy church knows the Gospel! A healthy church lives the Gospel! A healthy church shares the Gospel! Do you know this gospel? Do you live this gospel? Do you share this gospel?