Come and Get It! (Lent 1-2013)

“Don’t touch the dinner bell!” was their family’s unspoken rule. When I was a kid, one of my friends had a big bell hanging on the side of her house. No one was allowed to ring that bell but my friend’s mom. Maybe the dad could use it too, but I never saw him touch it. I wondered if even he didn’t have the authority to ring it. That, of course, gave the bell an even greater prestige! (Maybe, though, it was just a sign of the times: she who cooked the dinner gets to ring the dinner bell.)

No matter where we were playing, my friend and her siblings could always hear the dinner bell and our play would immediately break up as they ran home in response to the wild clanging.

The Gospel is supposed to be that kind of thing.

People hear the Gospel; know what a great offer of forgiveness is being served; and come running to take full advantage of this.

Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:5-6 NIV)

In the opening statements of Romans, the Gospel calls all people to come to Jesus! Jesus—who has both a human nature and a divine nature—rose from the dead and the Good News is that now, by God’s grace, this resurrection to eternal life is available to all people who belong to Jesus Christ.

Because He died and rose again, believers in Christ can too. The Letter to the Romans proclaims the Gospel, rings with the Good News, and alerts us all to the Gospel’s invitiation to Come and Get It!

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Give it up for Lent: Apathy

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For further study, read Romans 1:1-7.

We get to ring the bell to call everyone to this Gospel. Rich, poor, hungry, content, beautiful, plain, educated, uneducated—all of us are summoned to the table of forgiveness to participate in the family of God. No one is excluded from the offer of reconciliation with God.

Questions to think about: