Digital Logos Edition
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the door to eternal life, but what difference does it make once we're inside God's kingdom? Jerry Bridges says the gospel is the very lifeblood of our walk with God. It is the key to our salvation, for sure, but it is also the power for our daily progress in holiness. The Gospel for Real Life will help you:
This volume also includes a study guide to help you experience every day "the unsearchable riches of Christ" that are available to us in the gospel.
The Gospel for Real Life is in reality nothing more than a clear, scriptural unpacking of the gospel—just what it is, all of the benefits it entails, all of the wonderful and various things that Christ accomplished in his work of redemption. It is heavy on the 'gospel' part, and hence, the 'real life' applications cannot but follow naturally. For when I really understand the gospel, there is no area of my life that is not dramatically impacted.
—Nathan Pitchford, Reformed Books.net
Dr. Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) was an evangelical Christian author, speaker, and staff member of The Navigators, an international, interdenominational Christian ministry focusing on mentoring, discipling, and building relationships. Bridges earned his undergraduate degree in engineering at the University of Oklahoma before serving as an officer in the United States Navy during the Korean War. He joined the Christian discipleship organization The Navigators in 1955, where he served as an administrative assistant to the Europe Director, office manager for the headquarters office, Secretary-Treasurer of the organization, and as Vice President for Corporate Affairs before moving to a staff development position with the Collegiate Mission.
“We don’t have to feel guilt-ridden and insecure in our relationship with God. We don’t have to wonder if He likes us. We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization that I am accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.” (Page 18)
“I believe a word that forcefully captures the essence of Jesus’ work of propitiation is the word exhausted. Jesus exhausted the wrath of God. It was not merely deflected and prevented from reaching us; it was exhausted. Jesus bore the full, unmitigated brunt of it. God’s wrath against sin was unleashed in all its fury on His beloved Son. He held nothing back.” (Page 54)
“God’s wrath arises from His intense, settled hatred of all sin and is the tangible expression of His inflexible determination to punish it. We might say God’s wrath is His justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin, is always judgment.” (Page 50)
“Propitiation, as we saw in chapter 5, addresses the wrath of God. It is the work of Christ saving us from God’s wrath by absorbing it in His own person as our substitute. Expiation, which basically means ‘removal,’ accompanies propitiation and speaks of the work of Christ in removing or putting away our sin. Such is the symbolism of the two goats used on the Day of Atonement. The first goat represented Christ’s work of propitiation as it was killed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. The second goat represented Christ’s work of expiation in removing or blotting out the sins that were against us. The object of propitiation is the wrath of God. The object of expiation is the sin, which must be removed from His presence.” (Page 67)