Book Review: The Rest of the Gospel by Dan Stone and David Gregory
Several years ago, I was really struggling with the grace message. Jesus had begun to capture my attention with various scripture passages about grace and Life in Christ, but I was pushing back. I was wrestling with what He was showing me because it was different than what I had learned in church.
Eventually, God began to open my heart, and I became much more intrigued by what He was showing me. Some of it really began to make sense to me, but I was having a difficult time putting it all together. I had a lot of questions.
Then, I read The Rest of the Gospel by Dan Stone and David Gregory. Suddenly, the lights started to come on for me! It all began to make so much sense.
I could not put this book down. I could not stop highlighting things that I was reading. I went back and read certain lines and chapters over and over again.
As the title indicates, the authors are making the argument that most churches are only preaching part of the gospel.
Without the full gospel message that we see in Scripture, we are left with only half of the good news.
THE DOUBLECROSS
Stone and Gregory compare the full gospel to two sides of the cross. The first side of the cross or the first half of the gospel is that Christ died for you.
CHRIST DIED FOR YOU
This is the part of the gospel that we hear all the time. It’s the message that “Christ died FOR our sins.”
And it is really good news. Jesus did come to die for our sins. Having our sins forgiven is absolutely necessary to remove the barrier between us and a holy God.
Accepting God’s grace for the forgiveness of our sins assures that we will spend eternity in heaven with God. It’s great news, but it doesn’t tell us how to live the Christian life. That’s a problem.
Here’s how the authors put it…
“What we discover is that the truth that we are forgiven doesn’t tell us one thing about how to live the life… So, we go out and try to live the Christian life, but we can’t quite pull it off. Instead, we sin a little bit or a lot, and then we get forgiven before we go to bed that night. Or we get forgiven on Sunday at church… So our preoccupation is with ourselves and our sins… We’re on a roller coaster because our performance goes up and down and we never can measure up.” (pp. 37-38)
But thank goodness that is only half of the gospel message.
YOU DIED AND WERE RAISED WITH CHRIST
Jesus dying for your sins was not the only death that occurred on the cross. Your old self also died with Jesus as well.
Paul talks about this in Romans 6 where he says,
3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death…5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him. (Romans 6:3-6a)
Our “old self” was in Adam. We were in bondage to the power of sin and death. It was a part of our nature. Jesus had to do something about that.
Here’s what Stone and Gregory say about this.
“The source of that life had to die. You can’t put Band-Aids on it. It had to die. It had to be cut off. God had to cut off the old man at the root or he would continue to produce his sinful fruit. So God crucified you with Christ.” (pg. 41)
What good news! Your old self is dead! You have been set free from your old, sinful nature that kept you in bondage and produced sins in your life.
The even better news is that after crucifying your old self, God raised you up with Christ and made you alive in Him!
In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul outlines that dead sinful nature that we had before Christ, but look at what he says in verses 4-6.
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-6)
You are not who you once were! You have been made into someone new.
“God raised our new man from the dead – God birthed in us an entirely new spirit, holy and righteous – so that He could unite Himself to our spirit and live His life through us. Whether we knew it or not, at salvation Jesus Christ came into us and we became one with Him. He now lives in and through us.” (pp. 104-105)
This is the full gospel message. Not only did Jesus come to die for our sins so that we could go to heaven. He crucified our old self and raised us up as a new creation in union with Him.
Now we know that we have what it takes to live the Christian life…Christ in us! And in our union with Him, we are holy, righteous, and filled with His power. We live from a place of victory!
As God began to open my eyes to see all these truths, and the many others presented in this book, it began to change my life. Dan Stone and David Gregory were able to take what is found in Scripture and put it together in a way that made sense to me. It was foundational for my understanding of the grace message.
STILL MY FAVORITE BOOK
I’ve read a lot of other books on grace and Life in Christ, but The Rest of the Gospel is still my all-time favorite. I’ve gone back and read it several times, and I find something new to highlight every time.
If you are looking to grow in your awareness of all you have in Christ, I highly recommend this book.
I’ll close with one of Dan’s ah-ha moments that he wrote in the book.
“It took me 21 years after getting saved to catch up to what already was. I said, ‘Oh my goodness. Look how God has been seeing me for 21 years, and I’ve been bogged down in this flesh conflict, continually trying to make myself new, and losing.’ The losing ceased when I stopped trying to become who I wanted to be, and saw that I already was.” (pp. 104-105)
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