Albert Einstein was boarding a train one day, clearly preoccupied with something. While the other passengers were settling into their seats and preparing for the journey ahead, Dr. Einstein was frantically scanning the floors, lost in a search. One of the train crew noticed this and asked the brilliant scientist what he was trying to find. Albert responded that he had lost his ticket. The conductor waved the renowned Einstein off, assuring him that he need not look for his ticket because he knew exactly who he was. This was the man, after all, whom Time magazine would eventually label “the man of the twentieth century.” His discoveries in physics would astound the world and change how we view the universe.
But still, Dr. Albert Einstein continued his quest for the ticket, looking between the seats and down the aisles, ignoring the conductor. Some moments later this same man reiterated that Albert didn’t need to worry about finding his ticket, because again, everyone knew who he was, and surely this world-famous professor and Nobel laureate would not try to scam his way onto a train. “Relax, Dr. Einstein, we all know who you are,” the conductor said.
With a frustrated sigh, Professor Einstein responded, “It’s not that I don’t know who I am, I know exactly who I am. I’m looking for my ticket because I don’t know where I’m going.”2
The “Who Am I” and “Where Am I Going” Questions
Einstein’s response to the train worker unearths for us two fundamental questions that every human being must face: (1) Who am I? and (2) Where am I going? Identity and direction lie at the core of humanity’s soul. Fail to find the answers to these core questions, and life will be devoid of any possible meaning or satisfaction. Humanity’s problem is not that men and women aren’t looking for the answers to these questions; it’s that most of them will spend their lives filling the blank spaces of their souls with the wrong answers.
So where can the right answers be found? Saul of Tarsus, a devout Jew, realized later in life he had been pursuing the answers for identity and direction in the wrong places. A well-educated man and very religious, he had been proud of his status as being from the same tribe of Israel that birthed her first king. As a religious Pharisee, he no doubt thought his identity could be found in his pedigree, education, and religion. He says so in
Paul admits that he had spent his life pursuing the wrong answer, yet on a dusty Damascus road one day all of that changed when his life was transformed and revolutionized by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now in Christ he had found identity. That’s why he told the Corinthians that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation (see
The gospel of Jesus Christ answers all of the questions and longings of our soul. Who am I? I am a child of God in relationship with the creator of the universe (
Moving Toward the Zoe Life
Since the gospel addresses our most basic needs and essential questions, God is most honored and life becomes alive when we have as our sole operating system the gospel of Jesus Christ—or what we will call in this book, the cross-shaped gospel. This is what Jesus taught His disciples when He announced that He had come “that they may have life and have it abundantly” (
The Greeks had two primary words for life: bios (we get such words as biology from here) and zoe. Bios has to do with pure existence; you know, inhaling and exhaling. Zoe, on the other hand, refers to life on a qualitative level. Zoe describes a life rich with meaning, value, and significance. One of the great tragedies of life is that most people have bios life but not zoe life. According to Jesus, zoe living is found in Him and therefore in the gospel.
Most of us will live longer than the disciples did here on earth. By today’s standards, these men died relatively young. Very few of us, however, will have truly lived like they did, having that zoe life of value and significance. These men whom Jesus handpicked were so consumed by the gospel that they changed cities and their world. Along the way, they established churches that didn’t just exist from season to season but communities of people who were all plugged into the zoe life that the gospel provides. Like their fathers in the faith, these churches would turn the world upside-down for the glory of God. I want this for myself, and I hope you do too.
When it comes to living the cross-shaped gospel—a zoe life of significance that both worships God and helps those around us—most Christians are only halfway there. One part of the church of Jesus Christ has removed the horizontal beam of the cross and focused solely on the vertical—their relationship with God. Others who claim to love Jesus have detached the vertical beam, focusing instead on the horizontal beam—their relationship with others. Like a surgeon with an injured hand, both sides have discovered that their ability to engage their world for the glory of God has been severely impaired.
What we need is a two-part gospel—a holistic gospel, a gospel that loves both the Father and His Son, the Redeemer Jesus, and at the same time declares that love as it seeks the souls of the lost. We need to serve God and our fellow man. We need that two-part harmony!
Where Did We Go Wrong?
If asked to present the gospel, how would you go about that? When I’m asked to give the gospel, someone expects me to give a clear presentation followed by an invitation for people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Now, I don’t want to diminish this at all. In fact, the apostle Paul says that this is of first importance (
However, what I want to suggest is that this is not all that is meant by the gospel in the Scriptures. Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles knew that the gospel had profound social implications as well, creating bold new paradigms for both how people related to one another and how they engaged their world as well. Yet church history has revealed that the force of the gospel has been severely blunted, and lives negatively impacted when we have divorced the horizontal dimensions of the gospel (our need to love and engage others) from the vertical (our need to love and engage God through His Son, Jesus Christ). Unfortunately, this separation has become the norm. It was Charles Spurgeon who once said that “One recurring tragedy of the Christian church…has been the separation of social ministries and spiritual, evangelistic ministries.”3
George Whitefield and the Gospel
One of the greatest proclaimers of the gospel in church history was the English evangelist Geo
