Many of us too often live our lives on a scale that is far less than eternal. We are not living, as Dallas Willard says, an "eternal kind of life." We are trained and taught that the Christian life is about winning at work, finding healthy relationships, controlling our finances, and/or having great sex. I firmly believe the Bible speaks to all of those things, but the Church is starving (starving!) for the glory of God. We too easily forget that what Jesus has done for us covers the scale of eternity, that it is the division between an eternal heaven and an eternal hell, that God is infinite and our sin is a condemnation-worthy offense against an eternally holy God. We forget that the grace of God in salvation for little ol' us is universe-sized HUGE.

We believe in and we settle for much less than what Paul calls in Romans 10:1 "the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God."

Our sights are set too small.

On that note, check out Jesus Creed author Scot McKnight's "Christianity Today" article on The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel.

In short:
1. The robust gospel is a story.
2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons.
3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem.
4. A robust gospel has a grand vision.
5. A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday.
6. A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything.
7. A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God.
8. A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church.

Read the whole thing for explanations and context.
I could quibble with points here or there, but in general it is quite good. And the call for a big gospel is always good and necessary.

In a similar vein, check out this great post from Bob at In the Clearing.
Bob writes:

we don't even know what we really need. We think we need healing, or that we need a loved one to get right with God, or that we need to beat an addiction, or to forget a nightmarish past. But what we really need, above and beyond all that, is to know Christ, the height and depth and length and breadth of his love, and the power of his resurrection, and yes even the fellowship of his suffering.

And here's the thing. I don't truly understand any of this and I'm willing to bet you don't either. I don't understand my own need. I don't understand Christ. I have not been so "renewed in knowledge," as Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, that Christ is truly all in all to me.

If we are really to understand our own need, we will have to learn with a keener and more ruthless insight just what sin is and what sin has done to us. Sin leads to death, but there is an author of life who has conquered sin and death, and he did so at the cross. To even grasp one thin thread of this knowledge, like the woman who grasped the hem of Christ's garment, is not only to be healed, but to be saved.

Here's my point: the solution to the problem identified by Frangipane is the cross of Christ. Look upon that scene. Perhaps we cannot fully grasp the full worth of that which took place at Calvary that day, but we can see at least that it is awesome and majestic and world-shaking and paradigm-shifting and presumption-shattering beyond all human kin, and that it is, as John Piper says, the sweetest thing we've ever seen, "the light which is the joy of all our joys."

He shares this quote from Francis Frangipane:

People give their lives to Jesus Christ for many reasons. Some need physical or emotional healing; others are in search of peace and forgiveness. Whatever our condition, God meets us in the valley of our need. Indeed, the Lord reveals Himself to man as heaven's answer for our needs. He is a "father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows." He even makes "a home for the lonely" and leads "out the prisoners into prosperity" (Ps. 68:5-6).

God uses our need to draw us to Christ. Yet, the consciousness of our need narrows our revelation of God, limiting His activity in our lives to the boundaries of our struggles. Thus, many Christians never awakened spiritually to the deeper call of God, which is to attain the likeness of Christ. We are forgiven, healed and blessed, but we experience a ceiling on our spiritual growth.

Is your gospel scaled to eternity?

(A version of this post also appears at The Gospel-Driven Church)