Guest Post by Dane Ortlund
That’s the title of an excellent book by our brother Jared Wilson, to be released this October from Crossway.
Jared graciously agreed to answer a few questions about the book.
Jared, tell us briefly a little about your own background and story that led you to write this book.
I grew up in the church, instructed in the faith, and was converted around age 12. But it wasn’t until my late twenties that God granted me the grace to see the gospel as encompassing so much more than my “ticket to heaven.” In a time of profound brokenness – in which I was suffering the consequences of my sin, the mess I’d made of my marriage, and contemplating checking out of the world altogether – the Spirit spoke clearly to my heart the message that I am “approved” by God in Christ. Like the prodigal son in the pig sty, I “came to my senses.” I call that my moment of gospel wakefulness.
Do we really need another book on the gospel? I thought we already have the gospel figured out. Shouldn’t we be moving on to talk about more practical and pressing needs than the same old message of the gospel?
Well, there is no more pressing need than the same old message of the gospel. And while I understand apprehension and even “gospel fatigue” (as it pertains to media and publishing), there is no more exciting, exhilarating, or versatile message than the simple good news. The gospel is identified by the Scriptures as power. And if it is power, if it announces and brings with it the inexhaustible riches of Christ, then not only can it not be worn out by use, it can’t be used up due to to impracticality or needlessness. And my book does actually apply the gospel to what many would call “practical and pressing needs.”
So what is “gospel wakefulness”? Are you saying there’s a lot of “gospel sleepiness” around or something?
Gospel wakefulness is my term for astonishment or amazement over what God has done for sinners in and through Christ Jesus. It is not synonymous with conversion, but for many it is simultaneous. It is a breakthrough moment, perhaps a quantum leap in one’s sanctification, when the gospel’s bigness and power strikes a believer in a profound and lasting way. In the book, I chart these moments through biblical examples, historical examples, and personal examples from myself and people I pastor. I think of it as revival on the individual scale, although in the book I discuss what may happen to a church that is wakened to the gospel.
You say, “How do we present the gospel in a nonroutine way in order to prevent people from becoming numb? My answer is counterintuitive. I think we do this by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement.” What do you mean by that?
I mean preaching the unchanging gospel as if it is great power for salvation. With passion, with conviction, with commitment, with feeling.
One of the themes of your book is the forcefulness, even the violence, required if we are to experience gospel wakefulness. Help us understand how returning to the gospel time and again doesn’t mean that we slowly stop exerting effort and gradually become more and more passive in our spiritual growth.
This is an important question, I think, because it can sound on the surface like a sort of Keswick theology or “let go and let God,” particularly as I argue that you can’t “put on” gospel wakefulness because it’s something that happens to you. Somebody smart once said the gospel is not opposed to effort but to earning. Understanding the way grace empowers obedience, then, is not about passivity, but about confident and humble obedience. From the other side of the problem, I’d say someone who is passive about their spiritual growth isn’t wakened to the gospel! Because it moves us. So in the book I have chapters on the spiritual disciplines and how the gospel not only promises the Spirit’s work of sanctification in our lives but also fuels our part in that work.
If I know, right now, that I’m not alive to the grace of God in the gospel, how do I begin to address that?
We can look without seeing, but we can’t see without looking, so the first thing is to look at the gospel relentlessly. The prescription is to fix our eyes on Jesus (as the NIV renders Hebrews 12:2). Or as 2 Corinthians 3:18 informs us, it is by beholding the glory of God that we are changed from glory to glory. So to that end, one of my favorite all-time quotes is a line from one of your father’s sermons: “Stare at the glory of God until you see it.”
Is there one thing you hope is resounding in the hearts of readers as they close this book? What, more than anything else, do you want readers to walk away with?
A saving, exhilarating, and enduring conviction of Christ’s supremacy and excellence.