The One Gospel and the Many Subsequent Glories

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

-- 1 Peter 1:10-12

". . . the subsequent glories," plural.

There is one gospel. But it teaches me so many new things about itself and the God it reveals every time I sit and stare at it (like those gaze-happy angels). I'm loving this about the gospel, about how every facet of the same diamond offers a different vision. In Christ, Jonathan Edwards says, we find "an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies".

In our first believing in the gospel we have all we need for all eternity, but there is always more to have, more to know, more to learn. God is the deepest of deeps, and in constant gospel-gazing we deepen in our knowledge of and affection for him.

"His death was not simply the messy bit that enables our sins to be forgiven but that can then be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God; the more we learn about the cross in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the One in whose image we are made and hence about our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives and service the living God is made known."
-- N.T. Wright

And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
-- John 1:16

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