The Gospel As the Binding of Our Stories

I remember walking down the dusty paths in the back of my house with a friend of mine. We were about 12 years old. She was one of my few Christian friends. I kicked a stone in front of me as I listened to her complain about her church.

“The pastor is just so focused on teaching us the gospel,” she said, “it’s become so boring. He’s actually spending an entire adult Sunday school class just teaching about the gospel.”

I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. We just need the gospel to become saved. Once you’re saved, you don’t need it anymore. That’s elementary stuff. We need deeper theology.”

I cringe now just writing this story. There’s a lot I could dive into here—our youthful pride, our lack of understanding—but I want to sit those two girls in front of me and tell them how vital the gospel really is to every moment of their lives.

The gospel is what ties the first words in Genesis to the last words of Revelation into one beautiful, coherent story. The gospel is what tethers you to Scripture and binds each of us into God’s story. The gospel is the foundation of every doctrine of Christian theology—without the gospel, it is all meaningless and terrifying. The gospel isn’t just your doorway into faith, but the vehicle that drives you through to the end of the road. When we step out of that vehicle, we’re walking away from Christ altogether. 

We don’t realize it, but we are like Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin said of him, “only Pooh doesn’t [remember] very well, so that’s why he likes having it told to him again. Because then it’s a real story and not just a remembering.” Like that silly old bear, we don’t remember very well at all; we need the story told to us over and over so that it’s not just remembering for us, but feels like a real story again. We need to immerse ourselves into the words of Scripture to remind us of God’s Word to be reminded of this gospel story and how it ties into our everyday lives. We don’t just need the gospel when we first believe, when we evangelize, or when we sin. We need it when we’re joyful and celebrating and when we’re folding laundry or doing dishes. 

I think about that memory now as a parent, and I realize that those girls didn’t come up with those ideas on their own. I didn’t have believing parents, and all my Sunday School memories are of moralistic teachings—be like David, Samson, and Noah. But my friend did have believing parents, and I can’t help but wonder if her complaints were first in her parents’ mouths. 

My children are all under four years of age. I’m still figuring out what it looks like to make the gospel a part of our entire lives. I struggle to remember to preach the gospel to them when I discipline them or answer their thousands of questions. I’m praying that God would guard me from teaching my children that the gospel only matters for salvation and evangelism. May God guard my lips. 

In order to teach my children that the gospel permeates our entire lives begins with first teaching it to myself. I need to recognize my own need for the gospel before I can communicate that to my family.

The gospel shouldn’t just be a page of our story, but the entire, overarching narrative of our lives. Everything we do should proceed from faith. But in order to do so, we must first know and remember this story.