The Gospel itself is angular. It always has been. It always conflicts. It always challenges every generation. It challenges different generations in different ways.
Interpretation
The Gospel presents its truth in a way that confronts each generation with differing challenges and conflicts.
D. A. Carson's quote suggests that the essence of the Gospel is not straightforward but rather multi-faceted and often contentious. It indicates that each generation faces unique challenges posed by the Gospel's teachings, implying that these teachings require careful contemplation and response that varies over time.
In practice
In a debate about morality, one might introduce this quote to illustrate how beliefs evolve.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.
Mob rule is always extremely dangerous for the future of democracy.
It is only by doing good to others that one attains to one's own good
I like to explore different ideas of race, how the concept of race has evolved in the country. It's one thing I enjoy talking about, but I don't feel compelled to talk about it.
Where persons love little, do little, and give little, we may shrewdly suspect that they have never had much affliction of heart for their sins and that they think they owe but very little to divine grace.
But yet I'll make assurance double sure, and take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live.
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