The Gospel- From Beginning to End

The Scripture passage I just posted over on the sidebar, 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, portrays the entire Christian life as rooted in the gospel. The Christian life begins by hearing the gospel and receiving it. But the gospel is not just what one accepts at the beginning of the Christian life before moving on to supposed bigger, better, and more exciting things. The gospel is also what we "stand" in now, at the present. Keep in mind this is the same gospel. The gospel message by which we were converted is the same message we live out our life in now, however far along in the Christian life we may be. This gospel is also, Paul says, the means of our "being saved". Far from being only the message that "saved" us long ago, after which we continue into sanctification through some other means (will power, etc.), the gospel Paul presents is that which is present with us throughout our Christian life, from beginning to end, saving us all along the way. A read of the entire letter to the Corinthians shows clearly how functional the gospel message was to Paul. All the glorious realities about the work of Christ in his death and resurrection come to us through the application of those realities to the disordered lives of the Corinthians. For Paul, the gospel message doesn't just convert us, it informs all of our living with the realities of what Christ's death and resurrection purchased for us, and how we must live as a result. The gospel, then, is that which the Christian heard, received, stands in, and is being saved by, "if", as Paul says, "you hold fast to the word I preached to you-unless you believed in vain." Paul thus calls the Christian to cling tightly to that same message originally believed; the same one he preached, which we received, by we stand, by which we are being saved. For if we do not hold fast this good news from beginning to end, we will not be saved, but will have believed in "vain". Hear the words of God spoken through Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9:
"I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge-even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you-so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."