The foolishness of the Gospel

I strongly believe that in order to taste the power of the Gospel, we must embrace the foolishness of it. The Gospel is foolishness to modern sensibilities.

The claim of the Gospel is that God created all people from one man, and that the sin of that one man consigned the whole created order to futility. It is also the claim that the One who created all things became part of that creation as a human baby in order to redeem that creation. He withdrew when His followers sought to make Him king by force, and He went willingly, even deliberately, to the most horrific and unjust death. The Gospel announces that this One, who created the world, and became a human baby, also died, then rose from the dead - but unlike any other resurrection: He laid his life down, and He took it up again. Not only that, the Gospel announces that His resurrection body could both touch and be touched - and yet could enter locked rooms, and ascend to heaven without any ladder. The Good News doesn't stop there. It goes farther to claim that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father, rules over all things, and will return to take possession of all that is His, and to execute His wrath on those who have scorned Him.

This is the Good News that Paul announced to Festus, who then exclaimed, "Paul, you are out of your mind . . . (Acts 26:24)" Festus was right. When we accept the Gospel on its own terms, we are either out of our minds, or possessed by the most wonderful revelation of divine love and sovereignty. But it is not respectable.

The affirmation that the one by whom and through whom and for whom all creation exists is to be identified with a man who was crucified and rose bodily from the dead cannot possibly be accommodated within any plausibility structure except one of which it is the cornerstone. In any other place in the structure it can only be a stone of stumbling. . . . (Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian p236)