GOSPEL GENEROSITY. The vertical response to the gospel is gratitude. The horizontal response to the gospel is generosity. In his book The Mission of God, Xxxxx Xxxxxx shows that the Bible story is “all about mission” – God’s mission is to save a people for himself through Xxxxx Xxxxxx. Xxxxx is the focus of the story, but his identity has missionary implications (Luke 24:45-48). This radical, God-centered perspective, Xxxxxx suggests, “turns inside out and upside down some of the common ways in which we are accustomed to think about the Christian life. It constantly forces us to open our eyes to the big picture, rather than shelter in the cozy narcissism of our own small worlds.” Implication: We begin to ask very different questions about our lives. • We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” When the real question is, “Where does my little life fit into this great story of God’s mission?” • We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives, when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation. • We talk about “applying the Bible to our lives.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be reality — the real story — to which we are called to conform ourselves? • We wrestle with “making the gospel relevant to the world.” But in this story, God is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel. • We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God wants for the whole range of his mission. • I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should be asking what kind of me God wants for his mission. In his book Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Xxxxxxx Xxxx, Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx gives this illustration: “Why is generosity the mark of being a Christian? Imagine a person who is deathly ill. The doctor announces to him that there is a medicine which can certainly cure him. Without it, he has no hope. ‘However,’ says the doctor, ‘it is extremely expensive. You will have to sell your cars, even your home, to buy it. You may not wish to spend so much.’ The man turns to his doctor and says, ‘What do my cars mean to me now? What good will my house be? I must have that medicine; it is precious to me. These other things which were so important to me now look pale by comparison to the medicine. T...
