What Makes the Gospel Good?

I'm reading a John Piper throwback, God is the Gospel. In it, Piper asks a simple question:

What makes the gospel good news?

Gospel means good news. But why is it good?

Over the years, people have said it's good because:

We gain forgiveness

We gain life

We gain hope

We gain peace

We gain security

We gain joy

It shows how much God loves us.

And while those things are good, they are only the gifts. They are not in themselves what makes the gospel so good. The first six items listed are things. They are meant to point us to the ultimate good. The last item, while it is true that Jesus' death shows God's great love for us, that isn't the ultimate goal of his death and resurrection. If the gospel is only about us, and the things that we get, we end up in a state of idolatry. We worship self, we worship things.

But what is the gospel about?

Or should I say, Whom?

It's about God. The gospel is good because it gives us God! God is the good news. God is the gospel.

You get it now?

Piper writes,

"The goal of the gospel is not our ease or wealth or safety in this age, but our dependence on Christ and our delight in his glory" 

The gospel is about Jesus. It's about seeing Him. It's about savoring the Savior.

He continues later, commenting on the too frequent misstep of labeling the good news to be about our value:

"Love gives us what is best for us, and what is best for us is knowing and enjoying God" 

Would the good news be good if we didn't get God? Or if we saw God but couldn't enjoy Him because we trembled in fear of His wrath? Of course not! Yes, Jesus died for us. God so loved the world that His only Son died for us. But He died so that we could see Him and His glory and have unfettered access to the Father!

What love is this, oh my soul!

I was thinking on all this today, as I let my tongue roll over the words of Psalm 119, verse 154, that impressed itself into my heart last night:

I rejoice at your word like one who finds a great spoil.

Is this how we feel about the word? What about the word made flesh?

And then I was bent low on the floor, guitar over my knees, thinking on how time in God's presence is the good news in which I live, praising, praising Jesus. I wrote in my journal,

Today I was just on my knees with my guitar and I didn't want to leave. Jesus was showing Himself as so sweet to me. I sang my heart out the whole way to work. My heart is just full. Savoring the Savior - there's nothing better on earth, and nothing else in heaven. Selah! Think on that one!