Everything about this book - cover style, title and contents says "this is a response to Steve Chalke's book The Lost Message of Jesus Christ."

With cover blurbs (front, back and inside!) from a who's who of evangelicalism Liam Goligher takes us on an excellent tour of what the gospel is.

The book is divided into three "Acts", each with several "scenes" - which form the chapters. Act 1 takes us from Eden and the fall to the sacrifices God commanded for the Day of Atonement. Act 2 shows us the predictions of the cross in Isaiah and the need for the cross in Psalm 51. We are then shown the events of the cross from Mark's gospel.

Act 3 takes us through the New Testament's teaching on the significance and achievements of the cross showing how Paul and others interpret the sacrifice of Jesus in terms of the passover, day of atonement and suffering servant.

Liam Golligher writes very well and the book is highly readable, easy to follow and theologically sharp.

My only reservation about it is that it's not really a response to The Lost Message of Jesus, despite the fact that everything about it seems ot shout that it is! Well that's not quite fair. I suppose it is a response in that it totally demolishes Steve Chalke's ridiculous charicatures of the doctrine that Jesus died as our substitute bearing the penalty of God's wrath for sin. And it shows that the Old and New Testaments clearly teach that.

But that was, really, not the main point of Chalke's book. The main point of The Lost Messgae of Jesus was that evangelical Christians, for all their insistence that we have a life changing, life saving, wonderful and brilliant piece of good news are rubbish at reaching out to and communicating with the most marginalised and vulnerable people in society.

Chalke's answer was to thrown out the baby of Bible doctrine with the bathwater of evangelical subsulture. Golligher's work admirably restores the baby to its place. But this alone is not enough. We also need to change the bathwater of evangelical subculture - which is, almost exclusively, middle class, respectable, white and not in social need. We have farmed out caring for the poor to the state - and, on the whole, the state has made a rubbish job of it. Where are the evangelical social activists of the C21st? The people who understnad the true gospel Golligher outlines and then live out its implications in society?

As a white, respectable (?!), middle-class leader of a largely white and middle class (though not particularly respectable!) church I need help with this. And for all its admirable statement of biblical doctrine the Jesus gospel really doesn't help me to answer Steve Chalke's question. and if we can't answer that question, if those who believe the biblical gospel aren't making any real strides to reach those who are despised by society and rejected by the wealthy, what right do we really have to claim any moral high ground?