Perrydox.com is devoted to the pursuit of truth, whether plain or paradoxical, whether simple or sublime, or simply absurd yet absolute.
Painting the Puzzle
Puzzles and paintings are entirely different ways of forming pictures. Puzzles are preformed, precise pictures. Everything fits into its predetermined place. You even have the picture on the box picturing the end result. In this analogy, Jesus is the picture, and the gospel accounts describing Jesus are the puzzles.
The epistles and our lives are more like paintings. Believers are struggling with the goal to paint what the puzzle looks like. Part of this art work is painting ourselves striving to live the life of Jesus. Or, maybe more accurately we are painting Jesus living our life where it is no longer us who live, but Christ Jesus living in us (Galatians 2:20).
The gospel is our essential lens for seeing any book or letter in the New Testament (and even most of the Old Testament). This is teaching and living the cross. The cross is more than the death of Jesus, just as the gospel is more than the cross. Because the sacrifice needed a perfect lamb, the cross involves Jesus’s life. Because the resurrection is essential to the gospel, the death of Jesus requires the reanimation of Jesus. Because Jesus came to set up his otherworldly kingdom, the cross is the otherworldly throne.
If we use the gospel as our “theological lens”, then it has profound implications and explications.
1. It forms the template gospel thinking.
2. It forms the foundation of preaching.
3. It forms the applications of daily living.
4. It informs the hearer what’s essential.
5. It informs the hearer how to form their own template of thinking.
When we read, read through the gospel. Then start painting Jesus as our lives.
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