Gospel Truth

I am reading another book on the gospel.  This book, The Explicit Gospel, by Matt Chandler--is quite different from Jesus+Nothing=Everything.  I've been thinking a lot about the Gospel...how immense it is.  Exploring it is like the four blind men describing an elephant from their particular experience of it, depending on where near it they were standing.  To Matt Chandler, the gospel is brutal , bloody, fierce.  And God in his understanding is terrifying and no one to be messed with or mistaken about.  I do not know where Chandler will end up.  Will he resolve the terror into something approaching the joy of the Gospel that others speak of?  Will he get God to an approachable place?  I do not know.  All I know is this book is NOT a comfortable read.  I am terrified of this God.  And mankind is completely insignificant: NOT the point of creation NOT created for God to have company;  NOT having rights to approach God or to think that he should owe us anything including an explanation for why he does what he does.

While I know that this view of God is true....It's not a truth I want to get close to.  I wonder how Pastor Chandler can love this God he has painted.  I am not saying this to be provocative. I am truly curious.  Does he worship and serve because he is terrified to do anything to upset or insult this God?  Granted, I am only halfway through the book....maybe all of these things I am thinking are miscomprehensions about the book; maybe I have missed the point....

What are MY thoughts about the Gospel at this point?  Honestly I'm confused.  Jesus is all the fullness of God.  Which means that that ferocious, fierce God of the OT--is in Jesus.  And it also means that the Jesus who played with kids and was tender with the broken....God in Heaven is like that too.  So what does that mean?  It means that God LOVED.  He loved us.  He Loved his creation.  And he would stop at nothing---hold nothing back--to fix it where it was broken.....He focused that ferocity and awesome power at the enemy: sin and death....and held out the hand of humanity to the people who depended on him for not just their next breath; but for any hope of surviving death.  Is he Good News?  Absolutely.  Sin is a tarred and feathered foe.  Death is a toothless snake.
And Jesus will be the eternal King promised to David.  He will ascend that throne and will receive the worship and awe that he was due all along.  And yet,, because God walked among us; I think he will continue to be friend....Our friend and magnificent King.