the gospel is not about you.

this might be a hard pill to swallow but THE GOSPEL IS NOT ABOUT YOU. we hear the word gospel all the time. we know that Jesus died for us, we know that we are saved through Him. but do we really know the gospel?

in this episode, i reflect on my five-year journey as a christian and how the most transformational thing i’ve learned is that the gospel is not about me. i spent so much time striving to be perfect, thinking i had to earn my place with God, but that completely misses the point of what Jesus has done.

understanding the gospel means understanding grace. it means no longer striving to be good enough but learning to rest in the freedom that Christ has already given us.

what i talk about:

✨ how striving for perfection almost made me miss the gospel
✨ the difference between the old and new covenant
✨ what Jesus means for our lives
✨ who the Holy Spirit is and why He transforms everything
✨ why so many christians believe in grace but still live as if they have to earn it

scriptures i mention:

ephesians 2:8-9
"for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

john 14:6
"Jesus said to him, ‘i am the way, and the truth, and the life. no one comes to the Father except through me."

2 corinthians 5:17
"therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. the old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

john 16:13
"when the spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth."

galatians 5:22-23
"but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

romans 8:1
"there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

hebrews 8:6
"but as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant He mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises."


reflection questions:

1. am i living in the fullness of what Jesus has done for me, or am i holding myself back out of shame or the desire to be perfect?

2. do i see the Holy Spirit as my guide, or am i still trying to do everything in my own strength?

Transcript

0:09

Hey, my beautiful homegirls. Welcome back to the Lesser Me podcast with your girl Elodie. I hope you guys are having a good week or you had a good week, and I hope you're. You're going to have a good week because I don't actually know when this episode's going out. I am away this weekend, so it's the 5th of March that I'm recording this on the Wednesday, but I'm away from Friday and Naz is still here on Monday. We have like a church trip away, which spans over three days, and then he's still down on the Monday, so that means it only really leaves me tonight and Thursday to edit this, which I feel like is almost completely impossible considering after this I have a Bible study with my friends in which I'm going to be so late to. Anyway, I'll just say I hope you're going to have a great week because at this point it's definitely going to be going out on like Monday or Tuesday. I'm not going to stress myself out on it. But regardless, love you all and thank you so much for all the love on my two most recent episodes. We're gonna take a little step away today from romance. Naz is gonna be here next week, guys. Just keep waiting. I know you guys are really excited. I keep getting messages in my DMs. I keep getting comments being like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited for Naz. Okay, I get it. I know you guys don't really, like, want me here. I know you, like, you're really here for Naz, but that's okay. I'm here for Naz as well. But we are gonna take a step back from the romance. Even though I love to talk about, and I could talk about it for days, but what I could really talk about, forever in eternity, that actually is a core of my entire relationship and life in general. And that is the gospel. And this idea of this podcast kind of came about because I hit my five year anniversary as a Christian on. It was like the 26th of February. That time was a really blurry period for me. I was in just complete and utter depression. So every single day blend into one. Not to mention that we went straight into lockdown. Or like, when was lockdown announced? I don't know. But I know that like my A levels were canceled on the 1st of March, so it was like all the fear of COVID And then I was like, oh, is it really, like gonna happen? But then I remember hearing something of like this virus that was gonna hit in like, December, but then you kind of started hearing about it towards like, mid Jan, properly. So from like, mid Jan to March, like, everything molds into one. Especially when I was like, heartbroken and sad. So I actually have no idea the specific date in which I gave my life to Christ. But I knew it was late Feb. So obviously I've been reflecting over that period and just the period in general from, no, from not being a Christian to being a baby Christian, to maturing to where I am now. And I give God so much thanks for so many things. And I was thinking, oh, maybe it'll be nice to do an episode where I talk about the five things that I've learned a Christian so far. If you guys want me to do that, I definitely can. I maybe could even do a tik tok or something. But I was more thinking, okay, what's like, the core thing that I have learned when I became a Christian, or the things that I have slowly learned or been reminded by? Because I think one of the big things, like the time where I'm in right now, don't get me wrong, there's so much to learn about the Bible, so much learned about God, but I think they all come back to the core understandings that we have of God. I have inverted commas for a reason, because it's like we understand it, but we don't know it properly. Like, there's. There's things that we know in, in theory about Christ, in theory about the gospel, the Bible, the character of God, our identity in him, but we need that constant reminding of. Of those things. And I was like, what is that thing for me? And I, by the title, it was striving. Stop striving. The gospel is not about you. That is the biggest thing that I have taken from my Christian journey. And I really want to go into that today with just a little bit of my story, but just that period of reflection and encouragement for you guys to remember that, because I really do believe that that has been the catalys for my entire growth. And I'm going to explain why that is so. Obviously there's so many things from my understanding of the Word to prayer to, you know, understanding different characteristics of God and how he's redeemed me and loved me and brought me through hard times. He is always there for me, yada, yada, yada. But nothing has transformed me like just the core understanding of the gospel, because everything that I've said all links back to the gospel. And you might be thinking, okay, Cool. Like, I know the gospel. Jesus died for me. Whatever, Elodie. But what does that got to do with striving? The whole point of Christ coming was because our human default and what was instilled in humans, especially through the law and the old covenant was that constant pursuit of perfection and being without blemish. But now we have Christ acting the same as before, almost completely misses the point of the gospel and what we now have. Because I think a lot of people, when they think of the gospel, yes, like Christ's life was like him bringing the good news. But the good news, it was almost like the good news that hadn't yet come. It was like, I'm foretelling something that is to come. So, like, if I'm like, oh, surprise, we're going to Disneyland, that's good news. But you're not right away resting in the good news. You're not like on the plane to Disneyland. You're not entering Disneyland, you're not on a ride. You're not sat there eating donuts at Disneyland. So the good news is great, but that's not the completion of the good news. And Christ mentions that throughout his life, especially when he says that he's going to tear down the church and it's going to be rebuilt in three days. So he is foretelling what is to come. And especially when he talks about bringing his helper, the Holy Spirit, that I have to leave so my helper will come to you. And when he says, you know, you will do far more greater things than me. And he's explaining what is to come. So I think even in my mind, when I, like now, if I think of the word gospel, I think of like Jesus walking around with his little sandals preaching the gospel. But actually we are, we are in a better position than even the people who were around Jesus. And that is really hard to navigate because it would make so much more sense logically that I would have Jesus in front of me. I was walking with him. I was seeing him heal people. I was hearing his like, soft spoken voice. He was giving me a sense of peace in, in the midst of hard times. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, that sounds great. And I wish that I could have experienced Jesus in the flesh, but the Bible makes it very clear that there is more to come. And when Jesus was alive before his crucifixion and resurrection, he was still in the old covenant. And that meant that his followers were still in the old covenant and didn't have the full freedom that Christ came to give so that now comes on to my point. What is the gospel? Is the gospel that period? But we know the gospel is about Jesus died for me. Oh, but Jesus wasn't dead and hadn't rose yet. When we think about the gospel in the sense of Jesus in his sandals healing people, what is the gospel? And the gospel is Jesus taking our sins, taking our pain, taking our desire for perfection and crucifying it, becoming that for one that Jesus bore our sins and he became, he took it all on. That's why God couldn't even look at Jesus. Can you imagine? Every single sin from past, present and future was on Christ. He bore that so we could have a reunited relationship with the Father. That is what the gospel is. And that is why the gospel in of itself is about grace, unmerited favor that we don't earn and letting go of striving so it's entering his rest. That's why I find it so funny. Not funny, it's sad. But I like the conversations I have with my non Christian friends or people that are kind of dabbling in Christianity but don't yet understand it to the full extent when they think that Christianity is just about doing good. And I think there's a lot of you, most of you out here who are watching this, who are seasoned Christians and you'd be like, oh well, it's not just about that. There's so much more to it. But if we really look deep in ourselves and speak into myself as well, isn't there still a part of us that believes that, that there is that little tiny thought that says, oh, if I do this, I get this. It's the whole workspace mentality and hustle based mentality and capitalism essentially, essentially mimics the world's system in the sense of do good and get good. And don't get me wrong, we know God, the Holy Spirit transforms us from the inside out so that we can do good. But we don't gain blessing from doing good. We already have the blessing and the inheritance of Christ. It just takes us mentally understanding that and not leaning on ourselves to get there. I hope we're following along with what I'm saying. And the moment that I realized that that was what the gospel was was the moment that I experienced so much freedom. And I love this verse from Eph 2, this Ephesians 2, 8, 9. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. A lot of people know that first bit and like that was what I knew, but like it goes deeper. And this is my favorite part and this is not by your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast. And I have thought about this so many times. I've read this scripture anytime I'm doing Bible study. And the word gift in particular just throws out into my face. Because a gift isn't something you earn, but a gift is something you don't have to receive. So the gift is given to us. If I, you know, my nan, she gives me a 20 pound note on my birthday. Thanks, nanny. Love that. But I have a choice whether I want to fully accept that 20 pound note or either chuck it back in her face or put it in a drawer somewhere and forget that I had it. It's the same as God. When he gives us the gift of grace. We have a choice to walk in that gift of grace or to reject it completely. It's not that we have to be a better person to experience grace because the word grace is unmerited favor. So you are not a better person to earn unmerited. What's, what's unmerited? It means you didn't deserve it. But point blank, period. When you see Jesus talking to the Pharisees versus the Gentiles, you would think that he would be more on the Pharisees side because he's a Jew and oh, he knows the Word and he knows the Scriptures and so do the Pharisees. So they technically should have had more in common because he was so say a religious man, if you think from what the world sees about Jesus. But actually he clashed more of the Pharisees than he did with the Gentiles because the Pharisees thought that they could boast about what they got from God because they had a workspace mindset. Yet the Gentiles were more welcoming to the idea that they are not perfect and through Christ they were going to rest in his perfection and not their own. And obviously I've kind of talked about the Old Covenant a little bit, but I want to give like a little preface to those who don't have a core understanding of the Old Covenant. I could talk about this for days. Like I was talking to my friend the other day and we were talking about the Gospel and we always start with the Old Testament. And that might not make sense to a lot of people, but when you read the Old Testament, trust me, it just comes, it makes the Bible feel alive because it makes sense as to why Jesus came. And I'm kind of going to explain that briefly before we move on. So The Old Covenant, and I've got three points here. Number one, the Old Covenant requires sacrifices. It requires priests. So you need an intermediary and constant effort to stay in right standing with God. Number two, the New Covenant means Jesus became the perfect sacrifice. That's why we call Christ the Lamb, fulfilling the law once and for all. So you look at the Old Testament, you even look at Jews now in any Abrahamic faith, you see that they sacrifice animals in big periods of time. So like the Passover or when I studied Islam in rs, you see it with Hajj and you see it with pilgrimage, that they sacrifice animals because it washes them and cleanses them of their sins. That's what was in the Old Testament. But we believe as Christians that Jesus was that once and for all sacrifice, that we would no longer have the weight of the law upon us, but that the law would be completely fulfilled. That's why people say Christ didn't come to get rid of the law, he came to fulfill it because he was the once and for all sacrifice. And then, number three, we no longer work for righteousness, but we receive it through Christ.

And Hebrews 8: 15:00

6 says, but as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the Old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. What this is saying in layman's terms is it's better there is more fruit and more joy and more peace and more restoration when you trust in a perfect God over trusting your imperfect self to somehow behave perfect. Christ knew the quality of our hearts, which is why he came on earth. I think that is such a powerful depiction of not only God's love for us that he would come to our ghetto world and take not just the body of a man, but the pains of a man, the hunger of a man, the temptation of a man to know what it's like to be in lack, to know what it's like to be hungry, to know what it's like to be angry, to be frustrated. And yet he was without sin. But I think it's also now, as a believer, when I think of things that I used to struggle with as an unbeliever or maybe something that I've never struggled with at all. Say drug addiction, for instance. If I think of drug addiction, even though I've never experienced drug addiction, I've. I can psychologically understand what it's like to get to that point of a drug addiction. I can think to myself, oh yeah, if I had a really hard life or maybe something in my mentality wasn't right and I had no one to lean on. A lot of these people are lonely. They don't have proper family systems. I think that that in my mind that makes sense as to why someone gets led to that point. I believe it's the same with Christ when he looks at us and as sinful beings, even though we are no longer sinners. But I might get onto that later if I have a chance. If not, we will do another episode on that. We need to go into this whole rhetoric that we are sinners. We are not sinners, okay? We were once sinners and now we are alive in Christ. The old has gone and the new is here. And we are transformed by the renewing of our mind. We are ambassadors for Christ, but anyways, we'll go into another time. But we were once sinners. And Christ recognizes the sin that goes on in our lives. And because he was man, because he was flesh, he has a much better way of resonating. Even though he was God, he was God, which means that he was still able to theoretically understand, but him literally taking that on was a humble way of saying, I understand you. So that's the old covenant. And when we have Christ, I think. I think we. We undermine it. I think I do it every day. We all do it every day. Like we're. No really sit and think, wow, like this is the man that died for me. This is the Heavenly Father that sent his one and only son to die for me. And this is the Holy Spirit who was gifted to me through unmerited favor to guide me and lead me. But let's like not go on to Holy Spirit yet. Jesus and what he means for our lives. Another three quick points that I want to read out. Number one, Jesus made us right with God. We do not have to work for his love. It is already given. Number two, Jesus is our rest. We do not have to strive for perfection anymore. And number three, Jesus calls us into freedom. He does not just save us from sin, he gives us a new identity. Which is why again, as I said about the whole sinner rhetoric that we like to take on as almost like this false humility that we are oh so humble before God. God calls us heirs with Christ, so you're an heir with Christ. And you're a sinner, so you're an ambassador for him, but you're a sinner. So you're saved by grace and not by works. But you're a sinner. That's still defining you as a Sinner. And it's like when people say, oh, I'm a sinner, but I'm desperately in need of God's grace. You already have it. Yes, you. You remind yourself of it every day. And God gracefully reminds you through His Holy Spirit of it every day. But God does not like trickle grace into our lives. It is just fully given. We have unlimited, without bound grace given to our lives, which technically means if we receive it, then we no longer were the thing that we were before we received it, which is a sinner. We are no longer a sinner. We are someone who walks in grace and favor from God. And John 14, verse 6 says, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. And this leads on perfectly. 2

Corinthians 5: 20:42

17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come, the Holy Spirit. I think we undermine the Holy Spirit. And it's something that I have really grappled with, I'd say, over the last two years. Not grieving the Holy Spirit. My mum said this to me, to be honest. She told me how she herself has had the kind of conviction from God to not be grieving the Holy Spirit, to not forget his role that he has in our everyday lives. And I think when I became a Christian, if I'm being really honest, I didn't understand who the Father was. I didn't understand who Jesus was, I didn't understand who the Holy Spirit was. And by that I mean they all kind of blurred together in my brain. And I don't think that that's a bad thing because as you mature in understanding of God, you'll be able to separate it a bit easier. But with the Holy Spirit, I think it's the one that people kind of find the most abstract and hard to understand. Jesus died so the Holy Spirit could live within us. When he resurrected, he resurrected into a new covenant, which meant that people didn't have to go either through a priest to get to God or through Christ to get to God. And that might be like, oh, well, ity. That doesn't really make sense theologically. No, because Jesus went back to heaven. I don't have Jesus sat next to me right now. So does that mean that I don't get help? No, that's not what it means at all. And that's why Jesus said that he would give the helper. And the helper is the Holy Spirit, meaning I have God resting inside of me through God's spirit, His Holy Spirit. And three points to explain who the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit is our helper. He guides, convicts and empowers us. Number two, the Holy Spirit transforms us. He is the one who produces the fruit of the Spirit, making us more like Christ. And number three, the Holy Spirit gives us power. We are not meant to live the Christian life in our own strength. The Holy Spirit is literally your best friend. And I'm not saying that Christ or the Father isn't your best friend. And I'm not saying that if you don't like mention the Holy Spirit in your prayers that you're just gonna lack in all things. Because the Bible, yes, is technical at times, but there's also abounding grace. But I think just that recognition that God is with you wherever you go, and that is through God's Spirit, which is called the Holy Spirit. If you have that recogn and you know that the fruit within you is brought out from the Holy Spirit, I think you instantly change your perspective of striving. Because I think my problem was is that I massively focus on Jesus, which is a really good thing. Let me not, you know, make that sound bad, but I was looking at Christ on the cross and I felt guilt because I was like, man, he died for me. And look at what I'm doing, messing up all the time. I'm depressed and I'm not recognizing how good he is. Why am I, like, so ungrateful for what Jesus did for me? And I need to like, sort myself out. So Jesus had a reason to die for me. Otherwise, like, what a waste, you know, like I was like, man, like he got hurt so much and I bet one of those weapons was for me. And I'm here living scot free, not being crucified, but he was crucified, even though I'm not changing. And it was only really when I really understood the concept of God living through me. And every good thing that I produced didn't come from my own works, but it came from my understanding of the Holy Spirit. So now when I look at the cross, I see a gracious God who sent his one and only Son, who died a death that he didn't deserve, but he lived a spotless life. But he became not spotless. He became a lamb who was slain for me. And I have the Holy Spirit, who every single day transforms me by the renewing of my mind, who gives me peace in hard times, who reminds me of the goodness of the cross and the goodness of what I now have because of of the cross. So Now I have an understanding of all three, and I see the grace and the love and the place in my life of all three without feeling the guilt of, oh, Christ died for me. I must fix up. The father's gonna be really angry at me because I'm not doing XYZ. But that's not the gospel at all. And John 16, verse 13 says, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. We love that. We love the Holy Spirit, and I don't think we give the Holy Spirit enough air time. But when you understand the Holy Spirit, I. I mean, for me, it massively changed my life. It really did. And I'm not even gonna say for me, because it's in the Word. Like, this is not. Like, I'm just speaking my truth. Like, this is the truth. The Holy Spirit changes your life, and the Holy Spirit helps you recognize the other two entities of God. If you don't understand one, you're going to find it hard to understand the rest is what I always say to myself. And I want to end this with three questions to my homegirls, and that is number one. Do I truly understand the gospel, or am I still trying to earn my place with God? I think we can all say yes. I think some of us in different ways than others. But I think if we really talk openly, we all have a problem with that somewhat. Imma just be real. And the second one is, are you living in the fullness of what Jesus has done for you, or are you holding yourself back out of shame or desire to be perfect? Some deep questions, y'all, but I hope that this was of help. I wanted this to be kind of a shorter podcast. It's only 30 minutes long, which I'm kind of proud of myself because this girl is always yapping for about an hour, but I was like, I didn't want it to be over the top. I want to break it down, have more of a teaching session, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. Next week will be with Naz, which I'm so excited for. Yay. I love you guys so much. I pray you have a blessed week, because I know this probably going out on Monday, so have a blessed week, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.