Revise Us Again

Frank Viola, in his new book, Revise Us Again: Living from a Renewed Christian Script, says there are three gospels at work in the church today:

The Libertine Gospel: Jesus is my Savior, I believe in God, I go to church, I am a good person, and beyond that God doesn’t care much. The libertine gospel has a minimum of content, a maximum of freedom, and massive dose of belief that God loves us — and that love often is confused with the Western sense of tolerance.

The Legalist Gospel: Jesus is my Savior, the Bible is my book, I go to church, I watch how I live, I watch how others live, I have to call attention to those who are not living up to the Bible … and one my favorite words is “must.” God’s love is tied to behaviors.

The New Creation Gospel: this is Frank Viola’s contention: Paul focuses on the spiritual realities that have occurred in Christ. It sees things through God’s eyes. Jesus is Lord of the universe. The gospel calls us into the kingdom order. Paul focuses on acceptance in Christ and what happens when people live in Christ — it can’t be reduced to intellectual assent or to demands.

How would you characterize the various gospels in the church today?

So Paul’s gospel has a first-second-third order: our identity in Christ, the behavior of those who are in Christ, and a call to live out the identity.

The essence of the Christian ethic then is to be/become who you (already) are.

This book is about revising our “script” — and he digs into the kinds of scripts that many Christians are seeking to live out but which are not fully consistent with the Bible. Revising…
• Our Awareness of The Divine
• Christian Code Language
• the Holy Spirit’s Ministry
• Christianeze
• the Lord’s Voice
• Our Spiritual Expectations
• Our Attitudes
• Our Chief Pursuit
• Our Message
• Our Semantics