More Information
Publication Date: 20 Jun 2019
Publisher: IVP
Words: 30000
Page Count: 112
Author: John Stott with Tim Chester
ISBN-13: 9781783599288, 9781783599295, 9781789742510

The Gospel

A Life-changing Message
By John Stott with Tim Chester
John Stott's bestselling volume, The Contemporary Christian: An Urgent Plea for Double Listening, updated and presented for today's audience
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9781783599288-grouped
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Summary of The Gospel

How can Christians effectively engage today's world while staying true to Scripture?

Calling us to listen well to both the Word and the world, John Stott shows how Christianity can preserve its authentic identity and remain relevant to current realities. With the God's Word for Today series, pastor Tim Chester has updated Stott's classic and bestselling book The Contemporary Christian and made it accessible to new generations of readers.

In The Gospel, Stott declares that Christianity is not a religion but God's good news for the world. To present the gospel faithfully, we must emphasize both the human need for true freedom and the historical work of Christ. Beginning with the question "What does it mean to be human?" Stott explains a biblical perspective on the human paradox: our dignity and our depravity. He then considers common objections to the gospel message, the importance of Jesus' physical resurrection, and what affirming that Christ is Lord means for all of life. The gospel is truth from God that has been committed to our trust.

The Gospel offers a trustworthy guide for readers to understand the essence of the Christian faith and share the good news in a way that connects with people around us.

Chapter 1: The human paradox looks at what the Bible teaches and what our experience endorses: the glory and shame of our humanness, both our dignity as creatures made in God's image and our depravity as sinners under his judgement.
Chapter 2: Human freedom: what is traditionally called 'salvation', seen in terms of 'authentic freedom'.
Chapters 3 and 4: The central themes of the death and resurrection of Jesus, securing our freedom. This section also looks at a number of objections and denials.
Chapter 5: The far-reaching implications, both for faith and for life.

Radical indeed is the discipleship which takes all of this and Christ's lordship seriously. It's nothing short of a life-changing message.
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Press Reviews

[Re The Contemporary Christian] Vintage Stott, with all that that implies. As usual, we find him digesting and deploying a wide range of material with a symmetry matching that of Mozart, a didactic force like that of J C Ryle, and a down-to-earth common sense that reminds one of G K Chesterton. This is really a pastoral essay, a sermon on paper aimed at changing people... an outstandingly good book.

...an expository treat... Bible-based and well researched, intimate and magisterial in style. Passionately calm and generous to a fault, a beautifully written contribution to what Stott calls 'BBC':'balanced biblical Christianity'.

- Dr J I Packer

I am delighted that a new generation will now be able to benefit from this rich teaching, which so helped me when it first appeared. As always with John Stott, there is a wonderful blend of faithful exposition of the Bible, rigorous engagement with the world and challenging applications for our lives.

- Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe's Church, Oxford, conference speaker and author of the bestselling God’s Big Picture (IVP)

Inter-Varsity Press is doing a very good thing by bringing John Stott's The Contemporary Christian back into print—slightly modernized, helpfully rearranged, and broken into short, reader-friendly books. The result is a boon to a new generation of readers who will greatly benefit, as many have before, from Stott's thorough grounding in Scripture, unusual help for living the Christian life and perceptive interaction with the contemporary world.

- Mark Noll, co-editor of A History of Evangelicalism

Imagine being a child overwhelmed by hundreds of jigsaw puzzle pieces - you just can't put them together! And then imagine a kindly old uncle comes along and helps you put the whole thing together, piece by piece. That is what it felt like reading John Stott's The Contemporary Christian series. For those of us who feel we can't get our heads around our Bibles let alone our world, he comes along and, with his staggering gifts of clarity and insight, helps us step by step to work out what it means to understand our world through biblical lenses. It's then a great blessing to have Tim Chester's questions at the end of each chapter, which help us think through and internalise each step.

- Rico Tice, Senior Minister for Evangelism, All Souls Langham Place, London, and co-author of Christianity Explored

Technology has enabled more voices to clamour for our attention than ever before, while at the same time, people’s ability to listen carefully seems to have deteriorated like never before. John Stott’s speaking and writing was renowned for two things in particular. He taught us how to listen attentively to God in order to live faithfully for God, and he to modelled how listen to the world sensitively in order to communicate God’s purposes intelligibly. He taught us to listen. That is why it is such a thrill to see The Contemporary Christian carefully revived in a new format as this series for a new generation of readers. As we read, may we listen well!

- Revd Mark Meynell, Director (Europe & Caribbean) Langham Preaching, Langham Partnership and author of Cross-Examined and When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend

John Stott's remarkable gifts are so evident here. He presents uncompromising truth with crystal clarity and sparkling turns of phrase. Here are biblical truths for all-of-life discipleship.

- Glen Scrivener, evangelist, speaker and author, and Emma Scrivener, author, blogger and speaker

I have long benefited from the work of John Stott because of the way he combines rigorous engagement of the biblical text and careful engagement with the culture of his day. The Contemporary Christian series presents Stott at his very best. It displays his commitment to biblical authority, his zeal for the mission of the church, and his call to faithful witness in the world. Stott's reflections here are a must-read for church leaders today.

- Trevin Wax, director of Bibles and reference at LifeWay Christian Resources, author of This Is Our Time and Eschatological Discipleship

[Re The Contemporary Christian, the original book] I was ten years into my ministry when The Contemporary Christian was published. I had already heard John Stott deliver some of the material in lecture form, but to have it in print was a real asset. It was a masterclass in presenting and applying the balanced biblical Christianity for which John Stott was renowned. It was extremely perceptive with its call for double-listening, and it was intensely practical, especially in the chapters on preaching and pastors. It was also unusually personal for John Stott, with his poignant appeal for 'young Timothys' which was penned as he celebrated his statutory 'three score years and ten', after which, he said, 'every new day is a bonus which I receive gratefully from God's hand.'

I am so glad that these timeless truths are now available to a new generation of 'Timothys'.

- Rev David Johnston, former Senior Minister at Hamilton Rd Presbyterian Church, Bangor, N Ireland

[Re The Contemporary Christian, original edition] An inheritance from an experienced and wonderful personality within the Christian world.

- A Customer

In my formative years as a young Christian, I was acutely aware of the fact that I faced many challenges to Christian thinking and behaviour. Few writers helped me understand how I should respond to these challenges and think and live as a Christian as much as John Stott did. The challenges of faithfulness to God's way are more acute and complex today than when I was a young Christian. In this little book you find the essence of Stott's thinking about the Christian life, and it is refreshing to read again and see how relevant and health-giving this material is for today. I'm grateful to Inter-Varsity Press and to Tim Chester for making Stott's thinking accessible to a new generation.

- Ajith Fernando, teaching director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka

It is always refreshing, enlightening and challenging reading from the pen of John Stott. I am totally delighted that one of his most significant works will continue to be available, hopefully for more decades to come. The way Stott strives to be faithful to the Word of God and relevant to his world—secularized Western society—as the locus for the drama of God’s action, is exemplary, especially for those of us ordained to the service of the church in our diverse contexts. I highly commend the Contemporary Christian series to all who share the same pursuit—listening intently to God’s Word and God’s world, hearing and obeying God.

- Bishop David Zac Niringiye, author of The Church: God’s Pilgrim People