Proclaiming the Gospel

From chapter 4, which is J. I. Packer’s classic introductory essay for John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. (The quotes in this quote are from Owen.)

What does it mean to preach ‘the gospel of the grace of God’?  …According to Scripture, preaching the gospel is entirely a matter of proclaiming to men, as truth from God which all are bound to believe and act on, the following four facts:

1. that all men are sinners, and cannot do anything to save themselves;
2. that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is a perfect Savior for sinners, even the worst;
3. that the Father and the Son have promised that all who know themselves to he sinners and put faith in Christ as Savior shall be received into favor, and none cast out - which promise is ‘a certain infallible truth, grounded upon the superabundant sufficiency of the oblation of Christ in itself, for whomsoever (fewer or more) it be intended’;
4. that God has made repentance and faith a duty, requiring of every man who hears the gospel ‘a serious full recumbency and rolling of the soul upon Christ in the promise of the gospel, as an all-suffcient Savior, able to deliver and save to the utmost them that come to God by him; ready, able and willing, through the preciousness of his blood and sufficiency of his ransom, to save every soul that shall freely give up themselves unto him for that end.’

The preacher’s task, in other words, is to display Christ, to explain man’s need of him, his sufficiency to save, and his offer of himself in the promises as Savior to all who truly turn to him; and to show as fully as he can how these truths apply to the congregation before for him.

Comments

[rosemary]

I really like the phrase "to display Christ." Goodness; what might happen if we believers would actually display Christ?