As we approach Holy Week, let us seek to quieten our souls and attune our hearts as we prayerfully reflect on the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Perhaps like myself, especially for those who have been Christians for a long time, you may have celebrated Good Friday and Easter several times, and after a while, it becomes just an annual tradition or custom, or a mundane and common event that comes and goes, something that is more meaningful for pre-believers or new Christians. Let the words of this article by John Piper speak to you as he exhorts us to “never let the gospel get smaller.”
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1687_Never_Let_the_Gospel_Get_Smaller/
DesiringGod.org, 17 Mar 09
Here is a simple exhortation that I have been trying to implement in our family:
Seek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller. Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.
The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart,
- grace gets bigger;
- Christ gets greater;
- His death gets more wonderful;
- His resurrection gets more astonishing;
- the work of the Spirit gets mightier;
- the power of the gospel gets more pervasive;
- its global extent gets wider;
- your own sin gets uglier;
- the devil gets more evil;
- the gospel’s roots in eternity go deeper;
- its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger;
- and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder.
So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.
Pray that it won’t. Read solid books on it. Sing about it. Tell someone about it who is ignorant or unsure about it.
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel … For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Cor 15:1-4)
