Book Review: A Gospel Primer for Christians

Stop reading this review and go buy this book.  Then after its on its way, come back and read this.

I was excited when I saw this book on the Westminster Bookstore website.  There are two reasons why I wanted to buy this book.  First, I hoped it would deepen my own understanding of the gospel and be a resource I could use over and over again for my own personal walk with Christ.  Second, I hoped I would be able to use it in family worship.  After reading this book I have found it to be valuable in both ways. 

A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love is a book not to just be read once and put on a shelf.  It is written so the believer might preach the gospel to himself or herself each and every day.  The truths of the gospel are not just powerful and transforming at the time of conversion, but are designed by God to continue to produce fruit in saints’ life as his or her understanding grows.  Pastor Vincent makes this clear in the introduction, “God did not give us His gospel just so we could embrace it and be converted.  Actually, He offers it to us every day as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness.  The wise believer learns this truth early and becomes proficient in extracting available benefits from the gospel each day.”  What Vincent has done by writing this book is to help the believer in extracting these benefits.

The book is divided into four parts.  Part one is entitled, “Reasons to Rehearse the Gospel Daily.”  Here Vincent gives 31 impacts the gospel should have on our life.  These include a cure for distrust, enslaved by Christ’s righteousness, perspective in trials, and mortifying the flesh with fullness.  All of this is written in the first person so it is as if we could speak these reasons to our self as a reminder.  I decided to put a small number next to each section so I would read one of the reasons each corresponding day of the month. 

Part two is entitled, “A Gospel Narrative — Prose Version.”  In this part Vincent simply lays out the gospel in prose.  It is no more than eight pages long so it does not take long to read.  I have been reading over this each day with my devotional time so I might continually preach the gospel to myself.

Part thrre is entitled, “A Gospel Narrative — Poetic Version.”  This is the gospel, just in the form of a poem.  Vincent has done a great job at helping the reader make the gospel memorative.  I think this part might be especially helpful in teaching young children the gospel.  I think it would be very appropriate to even put it to song.  How cool would it be if Sovereign Grace took these as used them as lyrics to a song!

Part four is entitled, “Surprised by the Gospel.”  Vincent here gives teestimony to the gospels work in his own life.  It is encouraging to hear his struggles, even as a pastor, over justification and sanctification.  I think this section will offer much encouragement to many believers who can easily fall into the trap of trying to keep themselves in God’s good favor. 

One of the great features of this book are the footnotes.  Read the footnotes, all of them!  I am not a big footnote guy, but in this book all the footnotes are Scripture where you can find the truth VIncent is talking about.  It is truly a powerful aid and brings the truth of God’s Word to the forefront.

Like I said at the beginning, buy this book.  Buy it because you want a gospel-centered life, buy it because you want to teach the gospel to your kids, or buy it because you want to use it to disciple someone else.  You won’t be disappointed, you might even be surprised by the gospel.