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This morning we’re in the seventh week of a series that I’m calling Practical Christianity, in which we’re taking a look at how believing the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, shapes our day to day life. My desire is to see your life transformed by the power of God’s love and grace, to see you put your hope in him, to be made new, to be saved. I want to see you work out your salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13. And that is why we’ve talked about how the gospel transforms your love life, your parenting, your work life, your relationship with money, your friendships. But I want to be careful about something. The gospel is not just about you and God. It is not just about what the gospel does in your individual life. The question this morning is this: is the gospel the hope of the world? What difference does the gospel make for your neighborhood? For Glastonbury? For Hartford? For America? For the world? This is where the rubber meets the road. If this church closed its doors tomorrow, would it matter to this town? To this world?

Let me begin by reviewing the three elements of the gospel on which I have been focusing:

1) Salvation and justification by grace – Although we have been created in the image of God, we have all been separated from God by sin, and all around the world people are trying to connect with God. But the gospel teaches us that our acceptance before God is not on the basis of what we have or have not done, but only by repenting of our sin and trusting in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Key passages we looked at included Romans 3:20-24 and Ephesians 2:8-9. Essentially, this means that you are accepted; therefore you obey, as opposed to you obey in order to be accepted.

2) New life – The gospel means that we have been born again (see Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3), and the rest of our life is about learning to live into this new nature. When we are born again, we are given God’s Holy Spirit in us, the power we need to overcome the struggles of this world.

3) A certain hope – Our deepest desires and needs are met not in anything or person in this world but in Jesus Christ and the hope of eternal life. We have been adopted into His family and are now heirs of all that is His.