By Leah Ramirez | The Gathering | October 19, 2026

What happens when the Gospel confronts something we have believed for most of our Christian lives? What happens when the finished work of Christ begins to dismantle the very systems we have relied upon to measure our faithfulness to God?

I have been thinking about these questions quite a bit lately, particularly as we walk through Romans 5–8 in Behold School. And I am discovering, again, that the Gospel is not simply information we add to what we already believe. It is the announcement of something God has accomplished in Christ that fundamentally changes the foundation upon which we build our lives.

Paul understood this. He was a master builder, and his letters reveal a deliberate progression of thought. He announces what God has accomplished in Christ, fully aware that the announcement will raise questions and confront the religious structures his readers have trusted.

In fact, he seems determined to bring those questions to the surface.

Paul told the Corinthians that he had determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Consider that for a moment. This remarkable apostle, with all his knowledge of the Scriptures and the Law, had settled his allegiance upon one thing: Christ and Christ crucified.

And he would not retreat from that announcement, even when it offended the religious sensibilities of those listening.

Neither should we.

Jesus Is Not Interested in Preserving Our Religious Systems

In John 2, Jesus enters the temple and finds people buying, selling, and exchanging money. He makes a whip of cords, drives out the animals, pours out the coins, and overturns the tables.

He declares, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:16).

I find that language extraordinary. A house of trade. A place of transaction.

And isn’t that what religion can become? We offer God our obedience, our disciplines, our sacrifices, and our religious accomplishments, believing these transactions will secure something from Him.

We have turned covenant into a system of exchange.

But Jesus came to do more than rearrange the furniture of that system. He came to establish something entirely new.

When challenged about His authority, Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and that He will raise it in three days. They immediately assume He is speaking about the building. Even His disciples do not understand what He means until after His resurrection.

He was speaking about His body.

I find such comfort in that account. People were standing in front of Jesus, listening to His words, and completely misunderstanding Him. Even those closest to Him needed their understanding reinterpreted in light of His death and resurrection.

Perhaps we should allow for the possibility that we do, too.

There are things we have heard, repeated, taught, and defended for years that may need to be reconsidered through the finished work of Christ.

We can spend our lives regretting that we misunderstood, or we can begin rejoicing that we are seeing.

Why Paul Was Delighted by the Questions

During the first weeks of Behold School, some wonderful questions began arising as we studied Romans 5. Paul had been announcing our standing in grace, the gift of righteousness, and what God accomplished while we were still sinners.

And naturally, the questions began coming.

Are we saying sin no longer matters? What about obedience? Are we supposed to continue sinning so that grace may abound?

I knew Paul was intentionally creating this tension. In Romans 6, he would answer these very questions himself. But I felt the temptation to get ahead of him, to explain everything immediately and relieve the discomfort.

Partly because I did not want anyone misunderstanding the Gospel. And, if I am being truthful, partly because I did not want anyone misunderstanding me.

I went to bed one evening wrestling with whether to respond immediately or allow Paul’s argument to continue doing its work.

That night, I dreamed about Paul several times. In the dreams, I kept asking him how he would answer these questions. He never answered me directly.

But in the final dream, he looked at me, absolutely delighted by the whole exchange. He seemed to be enjoying the questions his presentation of the Gospel had awakened.

It was as though he were saying, “Isn’t this good?”

I woke with a renewed appreciation for what Paul was doing.

We cannot always rescue one another from the discomfort of having our old foundations dismantled. Sometimes the very questions that unsettle us are revealing the structures upon which we have built our confidence.

And God loves us too much to leave those structures standing when they obscure the sufficiency of His Son.

Have We Misunderstood What It Means to Take Up Our Cross?

Consider the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

Most of us have heard that verse as a summons to greater self-denial, greater discipline, and a more determined effort to put our sinful nature to death.

But now listen to Paul.

In Romans 6:6, he announces that our old self was crucified with Christ, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Not that our old self needs to be crucified. Not that we are in the process of accomplishing its death.

It was crucified.

Then Paul tells us to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

Do you see the tension?

Are we supposed to wake up every morning attempting to crucify the very self Paul tells us has already been crucified? Are we supposed to spend our Christian lives trying to accomplish a death that the Gospel announces has already occurred in Christ?

Or have we misunderstood something fundamental about what Jesus meant when He told us to deny ourselves and follow Him?

I believe we have often interpreted Jesus’ command as an instruction to accomplish what His death and resurrection have already accomplished.

And in doing so, we can end up spending our lives managing sin rather than living from our participation in His death and resurrection.

This does not mean obedience is irrelevant or that sin is somehow less serious.

Paul anticipates that concern in Romans 6:1–2. His answer to the suggestion that we continue in sin is emphatic: “By no means!”

But notice how he makes his case. He does not begin by telling us to try harder. He directs our attention to what has happened to us in Christ.

We have died to sin.

And we are alive to God.

The starting point is not our response to God. It is what God has accomplished in Christ. And when we begin to see what He has accomplished, our lives begin to respond.

The Offense of the Cross

Why were the apostles persecuted? Why was Paul’s message so offensive?

They were not persecuted for teaching people how to become better behaved. They were persecuted because they announced that something had happened through the death and resurrection of Jesus that changed everything.

And among the things it changed was the entire basis upon which we approach God.

Paul makes this remarkably clear in Galatians 5:11:

“But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.”

The issue was whether righteousness and belonging were secured through Christ or through adherence to the Law.

Paul refused to make the Gospel Christ and something else.

Christ and circumcision. Christ and religious performance. Christ and our ability to maintain the required standards.

His announcement was Christ.

And that announcement offended the very systems people had trusted to establish their righteousness.

I wonder how much of our Christianity has been built around preserving those same kinds of systems.

We are comfortable with someone offering us twenty-one steps to becoming more righteous. We can follow the steps, measure our progress, and feel some sense of control over the outcome.

But announce that righteousness is a gift, that our old self was crucified with Christ, and that the Holy Spirit Himself has come to dwell in us, and suddenly the questions begin.

What about obedience? What about discipline? What about holiness?

Those are important questions. But we must not allow our concern about them to diminish the announcement of what Christ has accomplished.

The Gospel is not Christ plus our ability to make His work effective. It is the announcement of His accomplishment, into which we are invited to enter by faith.

We Were Never Designed to Be Our Own Source

To understand self-denial, I think we must return to the Garden.

In Genesis 3, humanity reaches for the possibility of determining good and evil independently of God. At the heart of the temptation was the suggestion that we could become our own source of wisdom and life.

And isn’t that the very independence that continues to express itself through our religious striving?

We attempt to establish our own righteousness. We measure ourselves against the Law. We construct systems that allow us to assess whether we are doing enough.

But even when those systems use Christian language, they can leave us relating to requirements rather than relating to God Himself.

Jesus came to deal with something far deeper than our outward behavior. He came to deal with the independence that had entered the human story.

Through His death and resurrection, He has brought us into an entirely different way of living.

Paul explains in Romans 7:4 that we have died to the Law through the body of Christ so that we may belong to Another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Notice the purpose.

We did not die to the Law so that we could become independent. We died to one order so that we could belong to Another.

This is covenant. This is union. This is a shared life.

And the fruit of that relationship is not something we produce independently of the One to whom we have been joined.

Jesus is not asking us to deny our God-given humanity. He is calling us to surrender the illusion that we can be the source of our own life and righteousness.

The Gospel Must Become Good News Again

I shared something on Sunday that is deeply personal to me.

There was a season when the Gospel had stopped sounding like good news.

I had spent so many years within religious systems of measurement and performance that I was exhausted. I remember looking at people who did not know the Lord and wondering whether I even wanted to introduce them to the kind of Christian life I was experiencing.

That is a difficult admission after so many years of ministry.

But the burden I was carrying had very little to do with Jesus. It had everything to do with the systems I had attached to Him.

And as the Lord began opening my eyes to the finished work of Christ, something began changing.

I was no longer trying to secure through religious performance what Jesus had already given me.

I began to discover the joy of relating to a Person rather than attempting to satisfy a system.

Recently, while visiting my parents, I had several long conversations with my dad about these things. My father is an artist, and after spending time thinking about our conversations, he created a drawing for me.

It was an intricate, somewhat confusing arrangement of lines and pathways. I could not quite make sense of it.

When he explained that the artwork represented our theological conversations, I laughed. I had thought I was being so clear!

But I have been pondering that gift ever since.

Perhaps understanding the Gospel does involve a little bit of maze work. Perhaps it takes time for the truth not only to enter our understanding but to dismantle everything that has been standing in its way.

I want to give people room for that process, just as the Lord has given me room.

We do not have to understand everything today. But we can remain willing to have our understanding reinterpreted in the light of Christ.

We Have Been Joined to a Person, Not Another System

Near the end of our time together, we turned to Colossians 2 and 3.

Paul warns against self-made religion, asceticism, and regulations that have an appearance of wisdom but lack the power to transform the flesh.

Then he turns our attention toward the answer:

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).

And then:

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

There it is again.

You have died.

Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

We can spend the rest of our lives measuring how well we are performing, or we can begin to believe the announcement that God has made concerning us in His Son.

And in doing so, we discover that the Holy Spirit is more than capable of leading us into the life of obedience, holiness, love, and freedom that Jesus has made possible.

I am not suggesting that we stop reading Scripture or praying or practicing spiritual disciplines. I love the Scriptures. I love prayer. But those things are no longer the source of my righteousness. They are ways of enjoying and participating in the relationship Christ has brought me into.

The order matters.

We do not practice these things to become acceptable to God. We have been accepted in Christ, and from that place we are learning to live in communion with Him.

And that is the invitation of the Gospel.

Let Him Overturn the Tables

We ended Sunday with a prayer that I want to extend to everyone reading this.

Jesus was zealous for His Father’s house. He overturned the tables where worship had become trade.

And I believe He is just as committed to overturning the transactional thinking that has found its way into our understanding of the Christian life.

We have become temples of His Spirit, the dwelling place of God. We were made for communion, not religious commerce.

So perhaps our response today is not another promise to try harder, to pray longer, or to become more disciplined.

Perhaps it is simply to surrender the systems we have trusted and allow the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to Jesus.

Father, overturn every table we have established where Your house has become a place of trade. Dismantle every confidence that competes with the sufficiency of Your Son. Give us eyes to see what You have accomplished in Christ, and the courage to believe You, even when that means surrendering what has felt familiar and safe.

Let our allegiance be to Christ and Christ crucified.

And may the Gospel become such good news to us that we cannot help but share it.

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Watch the full message: The Offense of the Cross | When Christ’s Finished Work Confronts Religion | Leah Ramirez

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