Book Review
The Gospel For Real Life
by Jerry Bridges

As pastors who desire to be faithful to the inspired Word and the Savior, how are we to lead our churches in faithfulness to the gospel? How can we help our people understand the liberating power of the cross in everyday life? Jerry Bridges endeavors to answer this question in his book, The Gospel for Real Life. His overarching challenge to believers is that we are to preach the gospel to ourselves everyday. He makes this statement: “The reality of present-day Christendom is that most professing Christians actually know very little of the gospel, let alone understand its implications for their day-to-day lives. My perception is that most of them know just enough gospel to get inside the door of the kingdom. They know nothing of the unsearchable riches of Christ” (p. 17). He then expounds these glorious riches of the gospel in a way that is winsome and theologically astute.

The genius of Jerry Bridges is that he writes a deeply robust theological book without intimidating the reader. He does a wonderful job of weaving the practical and the theological into a book that focuses on the truths of the gospel and how we incorporate them into our lives.

Bridges begins with the total depravity of humankind. His argument is that most people do not understand the magnitude of sin and the grandeur of God’s holiness and wrath. Expounding on man’s inability to secure his own salvation, Bridges explains with clarity the active and passive obedience of Christ and the doctrine of imputation in a way that is easy for the reader to understand. Bridges also explains such concepts as God’s justice, propitiation, the scapegoat, atonement, ransom, and reconciliation in simple terms that are, nevertheless, faithful to the biblical text. Our people need to know the definitions of these biblical truths. Bridges addresses them with clarity and in a way that the “person in the pew” can understand.

Particularly noteworthy is his treatment of the sometimes controversial doctrine of propitiation. Bridges defines it as Jesus deflecting God’s wrath from us by bearing our sins on the cross and provides this further clarification: “I believe a word that forcefully captures the essence of Jesus’ work of propitiation is the word exhausted. Jesus exhausted the wrath of God. It was not merely deflected and prevented from reaching us; it was exhausted. Jesus bore the full, unmitigated brunt of it. God’s wrath against sin was unleashed in all its fury on His beloved Son. He held nothing back” (p. 54). By addressing the topic of propitiation in some detail, Bridges introduces this bedrock truth to his readers in a way that awakens our gratitude to Christ. As I read this portion, I stopped and thought about my sin, guilt, and condemnation as an ill-deserving rebel who has committed cosmic treason against the Sovereign of the universe. As an object of God’s wrath, I deserve the “unmitigated brunt” of God’s wrath to be exhausted on me. Yet, as my substitute, Christ bore that wrath, exhausting it in my place so that I could be a recipient of God’s mercy. This deals a crushing blow to my pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency. I wonder how conflict in the church would be different if we as believers preached the gospel to ourselves everyday by thinking through the implications of the atonement – especially propitiation.

Other topics Bridges develops include: original sin, total depravity, the atonement, imputed righteousness, justification by faith, regeneration, adoption, eternal security, and sanctification. His audience, we must remember, is not the seminary trained pastor, but the Christian who desires to experience freedom from the grip of sin, who may be trapped in legalism, and who wants to understand how to practically preach the gospel to himself everyday.

Bridges closes his book with a chapter on glorification and sanctification. If there is a weakness in the book, it is the abbreviated treatment of sanctification. In fairness to Bridges, however, he has addressed these issues comprehensively in other exceptional works such as The Pursuit of Holiness and The Practice of Godliness. Overall, The Gospel For Real Life serves as a brief systematic theology without being overwhelming and cumbersome. In my local church, I am taking a group of men through this study in hopes of introducing them to systematic theology in “bite-size chunks.”

Pastors, what will grow our churches? Is it pragmatic, seeker-sensitive paradigms to meet the felt needs of spiritual consumers? Is it doing good to our neighbors without the offense of the bloody cross? Is it preaching evangelistic messages every week in order to see droves “come forward” to escape hell? We must not truncate the gospel; rather, we must explore the unsearchable riches of the amazing grace of Christ as we lead our people to preach the gospel to themselves everyday. God grows His church through the proclamation and the living out of the gospel. In his straight-forward, yet winsome way, Jerry Bridges challenges us to do that, and in doing so has blessed my heart.

Sean Cole, M. Div., is Pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Sterling, Colorado.