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The Gospel Growing up and living in the south, there is a phenomenon that I get to experience very rarely. It�s the beautiful occurrence of snow. The only problem is that if and when it actually snows, the amount that falls is very minimal. So when you go to build a �southern� snowman, instead of getting a pure white snowman, your snowman gets a nice mix of leaves, sticks, grass, and mud blended together with the snow. The same is true if you try to make a snow ball. You scrape pure white snow off the car in the driveway. You pack it into a tight little ball and then you roll it down a hill and let it gather snow as it rolls. However, once it finishes rolling, what started off as a pure white snow ball has now met the same fate that the snow man met. The snow ball is now covered in leaves, sticks, grass, and mud. While its still a snow ball, its no longer in the pure form that it once was in. Every now and then, we need to stop long enough to pick up our gospel snowball. Examine our version of it with God�s version of it and then begin to pick out our man-made leaves and sticks that have become mixed in and intertwined with it. We need to pick up our version of the gospel, shake it, dust it off and then roll it back down the hill again. We got to be careful though, because there will be a temptation to just throw away the current snow ball and go make another one from the fresh snow laying on the dash of the car. There will also be a temptation to simply put some fresh snow over the leaves and sticks to cover up the ugly form the snow ball has taken. We need to pick up our version of the gospel and lay it aside the gospel of the New Testament. Then pick out the junk that has been added on to our version of the gospel. Often times this same fate falls upon the gospel of the New Testament. What was once a pure gospel, has now been mixed with other things on its roll through time. It has become diluted over two thousand years and is essentially a hybrid form of the gospel. It has become like the snow ball. It has become combined with the surrounding culture of the world and the culture of the church, representing a shadow of the pure truth that it once had. Often times it has been replaced by man�s version of it. Other times it has sadly been exchanged by the church for their version of it. So what is the gospel? It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the beautiful story of a Savior who stepped off his eternal throne and descended to earth to bear my sins on a rugged cross. It is the love story of a God of grace who came to redeem the world from sin. That is the gospel. Nothing more and nothing less. Anything else is a add-on that dillutes the purity of the Truth.