The 10 point Gospel

The Gospel is the Good News and the Gospel is also "good news" for all of us. I am a Sunday School teacher. I teach pre-K/Kindergarten, which amounts to about ages 3-6. Right now my class is all girls and absolutely adorable. They all come from great Christian families with parents who I know are sharing the Gospel with them at every opportunity - that is a great blessing in their lives.

But what if that wasn't the case? I know that kids from Christian families still need to hear the Gospel every week and still need to learn about Jesus and how to live a life that follows Him, but it's a lot easier when you know that their parents are praying with them each day, mostly multiple times a day. But... What if my Sunday School class was full of unchurched children? What if I only had one Sunday to share the Gospel with them, how would I do it?

I admit to being behind on my blog reading lately, but in catching up I found a wonderful Adrian Warnock post to answer just this question:

My lovely wife taught sunday school for 4-7s today (which includes our children Charis and Joel. She explained the gospel, summarising it into 10 points. If the kids can understand this, why is it that certain people want to make it more complicated and won't accept this as it is?

1. Everyone has Sinned
2. God hates sin
3. Sin must be punished
4. Jesus took the punishment instead of us on the cross
5. Admit you have been naughty
6. Believe that Jesus took your punishment
7. Say sorry to God
8. Ask God to be in charge of your life
9. Be baptised (note the order here)
10. Receive the Holy Spirit

His wife has done a great job with this. Afterall, kids deserve to know about salvation as much, if not more, then the rest of us, but we can't just throw a Bible at them and expect them to read it and figure it out. This is simple and just in their kind of language. I would even say that rather then simple, it's elegant - but that's semantics.

Of course, as adults we want to debate and clarify and justify and create exceptions - it's so much easier to be a kid, isn't it?

In the days since he posted his wife's Simple Gospel, Adrian has posted his own "Grown-up" version, as well as some grown up debate by his readers: comments, clarifications and justifications...but his own expanded points are well worth reading (he is the John Wesley of the Blogosphere after all). We are, like it or not, Grown-ups and the simple Gospel may too simple for us because we need it to be clear and real and incredibly meaningful. I think that the Gospel can be underestimated in terms of what it requires. God's good news requires something of us and we must never forget that. God has offered us a gift of salvation, but we have to not only accept it, we have to live each day accepting it, going through each of those points, confessing our sins and accepting God's mercy, forgiveness and grace.