Reflection: The Gospel is the Power of God
The gospel does not merely express, contain, or result in the power of God. It is the power of God (Romans 1:16). It is the power that saves us from idols, sin, death, hell, and ourselves.
But by nature, the gospel is offensive and scandalous to human minds because it is designed to please God and him alone. That explains why efforts to pervert, dilute, or modify the gospel have persisted for ages.
The gospel offends our pride. It tells us that we cannot save us from ourselves. We need a Saviour. Living in our fallen nature in the fallen world, we are not only part of the cosmic problem, we are the core problem. The gospel therefore gives no credit to us in the design, process, and outcome for salvation; it is all the work of the Triune God for us.
The gospel also offends our wisdom because it saves us through something many consider as utter foolishness, i.e., God becoming man and dying a humiliating, disgraceful death on our behalf. We are supposed to believe in something that goes against scientific knowledge and personal experience, i.e., Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a glorious new body and he would never die again.
Without a divine revelation, and illumination for us to understand that revelation, it is impossible to believe in what otherwise sounds like an outlandish concoction of a cosmic salvation project.
Prayer: Father, the gospel shows us that we have zero contributions to the solution of our biggest problem, our sinful self. Help me not to forget that I am merely a sinner justified undeservedly by your grace alopne, meritoriously by Christ alone, effectively by the Holy Spirit alone, and evidently by faith alone.