In post resurrection terms, it seems to me that we ought to define the Gospel as either only who Christ is, or we should make it all that Christ has achieved. Even 1 Corinthians 15, on reading the whole chapter includes salvation from sins and union with Christ. I’m inclined to say that the best Gospel message is Jesus and all that He achieves, but I’m also ok with just Jesus and then going on to define what He accomplishes.

I guess my only qualifier with Derek’s answer would be that since we have a full Gospel presented in Scripture, doesn’t Jesus + anything become a reductionist Gospel unless it is Jesus + everything? Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks for leading me back to the extreme Jesusness of the Gospel via your Piper/Wright commentary.

I just wanted to say that this was a really good post and I encourage you to keep putting out stuff that challenges us like this. Especially with the frankly prevalent yet un-Biblical emphasis on the cross over the empty tomb in most Gospel representations I’ve seen and heard. As you stated, this is not to take anything away from the cross, but nonetheless a well-needed and appropriate word to evangelicals. Thank you.

this is natural though. When one starts to critique something that desparately needs critique–the religious right–the natural step is just go to the religious left. There really is a third way and it’s less reliant on the efficacy of our big central government to fix our problems.

David Bryant is a classic evangelical whose latest work puts the issues that this fellow and Wright have you thinking about in a wonderful – and accessible to lay people – format. I commend it to you.

Instead of being justified by faith alone, these leaders effectively say that we’re made right with God by being theologically articulate and precise, and by knowing the right definitions of theological buzz words. They take a teaching that’s designed to throw open the doors of salvation and use it to slam the door in people’s faces. They use it to exclude believing Roman Catholics, the uneducated, the very young, seminary students with deep questions, and those who are most concerned about Jesus’ teaching on poverty.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he called them “foolish” for getting confused about salvation by these false teachers, but his curse fell on the teachers who heaped up burdens for being saved, not on the Galatians who got confused about salvation. Paul’s point was that since they already had faith in Jesus, they were already right with God, even though they didn’t yet understand justification by faith alone. People can have real saving faith and not understand “justification by faith.” If they’ve been confused by bad teaching, they might even think they disagree with the phrase, and yet still be right with God by faith. We’re saved by Jesus alone through faith alone, but we’re not saved by the purity or articulateness of our faith.

This small group of Christian leaders who recklessly throw around the word “heresy,” who claim that people must use their language and agree with their way of explaining justification in order to be saved, are piling up unnecessary requirements the same way Paul’s opponents did. They’re increasing their own wealth and power while making others live in fear. They’re cutting whole groups of people off from the church and off from the fellowship and financial assistance that Christian churches deserve from one another. Recklessly crying heretic might be worse than crying wolf; if it gets too bad, it could even be the wolf crying wolf.

I disagree with Derek on a lot of things too, and several times as Tony was doing the interview, I would have liked to start debating him about something or other. But overall, the reason I like him is because he makes me think. For some people, provoking thought is no good because it’s assumed that provocative answers question biblical assumptions. But it seems that the more we wrestle with each other’s different biblical interpretations, the Holy Spirit can work in and through us to bring us closer to the Bible’s intent.

Regarding the gospel… I’m more concerned about lining up with the apostles than I am with Webb, 9Marks or anyone else.

As I read the comments on Said At Southern and on the 3 posts pertaining to D.Webb and the Gospel on NineMarks’ blog I was asking myself the same question you asked, “Would these guys let Paul’s definition stand if he werre interviewed?”

When I read most of the reformed blogs I frequent, I generally don’t read posts and find that there is a fundamental misunderstanding and un-contextualized criticism However, I think that that is exactly what people are doing when they criticize Webb’s definition.

Some of the criticism I’ve read, connecting him to Brian Maclaren, N.T. Wright, Blue Like Jazz, as well as calling his music ‘inmature’ because he dares to point out tension in the notion of ‘just war’ and an uneasiness to support it, shows the height of soap-box ‘nit-pickery’ and, as I said above, fundamental misunderstanding and unwillingness to put his words in the context of his many many many songs and statements both public and recorded that he believes that the Death and Ressurection of Christ is the means of our atonement through faith by God’s grace.

Many have criticized Derek for taking stances on many issues, such as war, being a republican, poverty and the ‘american dream’ that may differ from the typical evangelical churchgoer. I have been made uncomfortable many times while listening to his song on ‘mockingbird’ where he contemplates war, often times arguing against him to my wife in the car line by line! I say this to draw attention to his comments about what he understands to be his ‘prophetic’ task. He pointed out that he sees his role as an artist to shine light on things that don’t get pointed to or examined by many of us. I have been a Republican since I became 18 and I support our troops and their mission, and have since day one. I have stood behind the President and defended his actions in invasion since day one. The sad truth, which makes me shameful, is that I never examined my stance thoughtfully or prayerfully till I heard that song. He did his job in drawing my complacency to light. I had to think it through and I can answer his song to my own conscience. Derek’s mission was accomplished!

Concerning this as well, he stated in the interview that he is often at the end of his critiques as well: that when he speaks through his music, he is not left out of the criticism. (He showed this also in his comments about the ccm industry also!) Many who criticize some of the more ‘contraversial’ things he says fail to ever take this into account. They assume he’s on a soapbox ripping the average church-going republican (much like Don Miller’s comments about Big haired preacher men and modern evangelicals) BUT Derek explains that this is not his modus operandi.

I wish the people who heard his explaination of the gospel and used this as an opportunity to rip the guy over all the other things they don’t like about him, would have carefully listened to his statements in that portion of the interview.

I am not even a die-hard fan of derek webb. A friend of mine only recently introduced me to him. I just find the hub-bub to be overboard and excessively ungracious.

That is, except for your post here. Thank you for pointing out the context of the Gospel in many passages from many of our inspired biblical authors. I appreciate you being part of the interview and I have enjoyed many of your posts in the past. Keep it up.

God Bless,
Ron

BH- CARL PETERSON