A Mind Formed by the Scriptures and a Life Shaped by the Gospel

We should be shaping our whole lives like an athlete, cultivating a mind formed by the Scriptures and a life shaped by the gospel, not because we're earning something but because this is truly a better way to live--because we want to be able to see Jesus as more beautiful and more believable.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 171.

Our Commitment to Other Christians Should Reflect God's Commitment to Us

Nowhere does the Bible show us an individualistic faith where Jesus is only your personal Savior. This isn't just about going to church; this is about being faithful to the gospel. We're saying that the commitment that God has made to us through the sacrifice of the Son results in commitment to one another and sacrifice for one another.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 141.

The Gospel Never Excuses Us

The gospel, while it frees us from the burdens of our sin and shame, never excuses us. Our sin results in Christ's death, which both calls for us to be humbled by our sin and frees us from the burden of shame that once accompanied it.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 137.

All Grace

The gospel declares that our right standing with God and our continued life in his kingdom are all a gift of his grace. Life with God comes by grace. The cross is given to us by grace. We have life with God not because of anything we have or could have done or anything we have failed to do but because God has freely given it to us at Jesus's expense. We are safe, we are accepted, we are loved because God has made it so by his grace. Period.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 80.

Underestimating Our Sin Results in Underestimating God's Remedy

If we underestimate the depths of our sin, we will underestimate the cure. You don't bring a squirt gun to a bazooka fight, as they say, and we don't fight Satan, sin, and death with a Bible study, a worship song, a clean voting record, or a tithe check. Only something so dramatic as a holy God suffering and dying in our place can provide a cure.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 78.

The Cross Reveals What We Deserve

The gospel of grace is a message that can be heard only by those who are aware of their own brokenness and need. It's a message that's exceedingly difficult to hear in a culture that tells us that we deserve everything: happiness, low interest rates, affordable health care, a skinny body, and a fat wallet. The gospel of grace insists that we deserve none of this, and points to the anguish of God nailed to the cross as the proper measure of what we deserve. Without such a signpost, there's nothing amazing about grace.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 75-76.

The Triumph of God through the Death of God

Something beyond our comprehension went on within the Trinity, as the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, breathed his last. God punished God. God's wrath was poured out in all its fullness upon God. God suffered. God was forsaken. And somehow through it, God triumphed.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 58.

Hearts Afire with Wonder

Too often, we're given the impression that life after faith in Christ is met with a burdensome list of things to do, but there appears to be none of that burden in the book of Acts. Instead, people who've been hit with the gospel respond naturally with radically changed lives and hearts. The church and the ministries of the church are gospel centered when they flow from hearts that are afire with wonder at the glory and grace of God, revealed in the person of Jesus.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 23.

Three Complementary Perspectives on the Problems the Gospel Addresses

Our tendency toward pharisaism can be tempered by looking at God's scandalous grace. Our tendency toward individualism can be corrected by looking at God's kingdom, a transgenerational, global movement of new-making. And our tendency toward triumphalism and pride can be confronted with the crucified Savior, whose wounds are an eternal reminder of our sin and need.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 22.

The Perfect and Sufficient Gospel

There is no perfect way to do and be the church. There is only a perfect and sufficient gospel that informs and transforms every aspect of our lives, and fills every step of the journey with surprising joy, life, and hope.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 20.

Gospel Transfer

The gospel transfers us from the familiar territory of self-centered living into a glorious wilderness, a beautiful and strange place where we're invited to explore the wonders of who God is and what he's done.

--Daniel Montgomery & Mike Cosper, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 12.

Redemptive Redundancies

Praying the gospel involves "redemptive redundancies." I intentionally always come back to who we are in Christ and who he is in us. Like Luther said, we need the basics of the gospel every day because we forget the gospel every day.

--Scotty Smith, Everyday Prayers: 365 Days to a Gospel-Centered Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Kindle location 172.

The Gospel is Personal, but It is Not Private

Though the gospel is personal, it is not private. God's grace frees us to be quite specific with things going on in our lives, but it also compels us into deeper community with others.

--Scotty Smith, Everyday Prayers: 365 Days to a Gospel-Centered Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Kindle location 165.

God's Love Propels Holiness; My Pursuit of Holiness Does Not Propel God's Love

When rightly understood, God's love will propel you toward holiness and growth in grace. The order is essential: I am a new creation, accepted, adopted, and free; therefore I want to please God. We do not say: I will try to please God so that I may become a new creation, make myself acceptable, and hope that God adopts me and sets me free.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 163-164.

The Gospel Gap

If we do not live with a gospel-shaped, Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that hole will get filled with other things.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 6.

The Gospel Promises Life Before Death

We find it much easier to embrace the gospel's promise of life after death than we do its promise of life before death!

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 5.

The Gospel is All-Encompassing

[W]e have the tendency to think that our justification is accomplished by Jesus but our growth is accomplished by us. We treat the gospel as if it were the starting blocks of the race of life. We brace ourselves against it and push off, but then we're on our own. The speed at which we run is based on our own muscles. We become Christian legalists.

Transformational discipleship, from a biblical standpoint, is different. Rather than an initial posture of weakness, real discipleship involves a perpetual recognition of our great need. Because of this, the gospel isn't the starting blocks of the race; the gospel is the track itself. It's the basis for the way we run every day of our lives.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 147.

God Helps the Helpless

Leaders have also articulated that "God helps those who help themselves," which has motivated many people to work hard and expect God to "fill in the spaces." The reality of the gospel is that God helps the helpless. When we realize that we are utterly helpless without His grace and power in our lives, we are in a vulnerable posture that welcomes His transformation.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 141-142.

Adopted Orphans

The identity we have in Christ is a work done exclusively by God on our behalf. Just as an orphan child does not go out into the suburbs to seek a new family, we do not seek our way into God's kingdom. Rather, the Spirit seeks us out and then transforms our lives by the power of the gospel.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 102.

The Great Exchange

But there is one moment in the Gospels where Jesus does not use "Abba" in His reference to God the Father. When Jesus is on the cross, He yells out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" In this moment Jesus was being condemned for us, becoming sin for us; thus He could not enjoy the close relationship with Abba. He experienced painful separation from the Father so we can experience joyful connection with Him.

--Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation, Transformational Discipleship: How People Really Grow (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 101.