This course was designed to introduce (or correct) what the Christian Gospel is. Here’s the spiel in the front cover:
“Gospel” literally means “good news”. But whether it’s because of the scandals the church has brought upon itself, the lack of clarity Christians often have in explaining the Gospel, or that familiarity with Christianity has bred contempt towards it—whatever it is, the Gospel isn’t really seen as “good news”.
But for those in Jesus’ day, and in the days after his death & resurrection, the message of the Gospel was one that penetrated the heart, brought freedom & forgiveness in struggle, and hope for the future.
What we’re going to do over the next 3 weeks is get back to the original message that Jesus brought by looking at one of his parables. Each week you’ll be asked to read a few chapters of a book, “The Prodigal God” by Tim Keller that unpacks this parable, and then we’ll get together to chat about three things: what the problem is, what Jesus did to x it, and what this means for now & the future.
You’ll have plenty more questions than we can cover in this course, but these next three weeks will lay the foundation for answering those three. Our hope is that over the next few weeks you can get back to Jesus’ message: that in him God was reconciling the world to himself.