Today, I’m happy to welcome a pastor-friend of mine, J.D. Greear, to the blog to discuss his new book, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. J.D. is pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh, NC. Gospel also includes a small-group companion piece called Gospel Revolution. 

Trevin Wax:  J.D., few people would be so bold as to call their book Gospel. (I can think of four other books with this title, but they’re all in the Bible!) But that’s what you’ve done. You’ve expressed in laypeople’s terms the type of confidence and security that comes from believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, what is the insight into the biblical gospel that has revolutionized your spiritual life in the past few years?

J.D. Greear: Ha, yes. I figured with a title like “Gospel,” no one could really critique it. I hope readers will forgive the hubris.

The burden behind the book is that many of us who grew up in conservative, evangelical churches have failed to avail ourselves of the power of the gospel. We know it as the forgiveness of sins but not as the power of transformation.

The Great Commandment leaves us in a dilemma: it tells us that God’s expectation of us is that we love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds. But how can true love be commanded? Obedience without desire is drudgery, both to us and to God.

What the law cannot do, however, the gospel does. It is only as we learn of the richness and beauty of God’s love for us that we grow in love for Him. The Spirit of God uses the message of God’s acceptance of us in Christ to produce in us what religion is entirely unable to produce: a desire for God.

Nothing we are commanded to do for God will change us as much as dwelling on the news of what He has done for us.This is where so many of our church traditions have gone wrong—not in emphasizing bad things but in emphasizing good things at the expense of the gospel.

Trevin Wax: You and I come from similar backgrounds – strict observance of the letter of the law, lots of focus on rules, church standards, check-list Christianity, etc. You’ve mentioned that, in the past, even some of your mission work and pastoring was done from this kind of mindset. What was the turning point for you?

J.D. Greear: Honestly, it was listening to Tim Keller preach at the Resurgence conference about 5 years ago. I don’t want to say it was all brand new, but in that moment it felt like so many things clicked—like Luther when he described how all in a moment a flash of light burst through all these truths sown into his mind over the years and he saw how every verse, every story, had always been about justification by faith. I saw how justification by faith had always been the point—not just for salvation but sanctification as well. All the verses I had learned as a child in AWANA, the mission trips I had gone on, and the John Piper books I had read in college had been pointing at standing in hushed awe of the God of the gospel, an awe that leads to worship and then to life change.

God wasn’t just trying to correct my behavior; He was recapturing my heart—and He wouldn’t do that through a list of what I was to do for Him but through the message of what He had done for me. Tim Keller certainly was not the first one to preach the gospel to me, but in that moment, by the grace of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, it all made sense. It was my “John Wesley listening to Luther’s commentary on Romans” moment. I get emotional just thinking about it. It’s one reason I was so honored to have Tim Keller write the foreword for this book.

Trevin Wax: As I read through your book (a second time!), I paid closer attention to the “gospel prayer” you use as a tool for spiritual formation in your own life. How has this prayer helped you, and why do you recommend it to others?

J.D. Greear: I didn’t write it all at once; it developed over the course of about a year and a half as I tried to grasp what it really means to align my thinking with the gospel. I taught it in several “versions” to our church before settling on the form it is in now.

Peace, joy, radical generosity, audacious faith, and unwavering trust are all the fruits of dwelling on the gospel. I have certainly seen that in the last 5 years. That is the “secret,” if you will, of the gospel: these fruits are not produced, at the heart level, by focusing on them; they come by focusing on Jesus. That is what makes the gospel truly a “revolutionary” message.

Trevin Wax: One of the statements from that prayer is “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” There are some who might interpret this line as sounding a little like a prosperity-gospel teaching. I can imagine a TV preacher twisting it to mean something like Be happy in Jesus because He loves you and is with you. How does the biblical gospel keep our need for God’s approval and presence from turning into a self-centered, sentimentalized view of status-quo living?

J.D. Greear: The prosperity gospel presents God as a means to an end. Cloaked in the language of faith, it teaches us to use God as a means to the things we really love. The true gospel makes God Himself the end. Faith’s desire is not a bunch of things from God; faith is seeking more of God Himself. After all, that’s what the forgiveness of the gospel is all about: not the rewards of heaven or escape from the punishments of hell but reunion with the God in whose presence is fullness of joy. So, in saying, “You are all I need for everlasting joy,” the point is not “You are all I need to gain access to other things that will give me joy” but “You Yourself are all I need for joy.” I hope I make all this clear in the book, but you’ll just have to buy it to see (smile). 

Trevin Wax: One last question… just out of curiosity. How in the world did you manage to get Tim Keller to write the foreword?

J.D. Greear: Ha! He told me that he doesn’t do that a lot anymore, but then I told him that my book was “simultaneously better than he ever imagined but more in need of his endorsement than he’d ever dared hope,” and that seemed to win him over.

In this TGC video, J.D. Greear, Greg Gilbert, and I have a conversation about finding assurance in Christ’s finished work for us, recovering the gospel as the best motivation for long-lasting obedience, and defining the gospel biblically.

This discussion reminds me of something I posted a couple years ago: “Gospel Confrontation and Gospel Comfort.”  An excerpt:

We all need the gospel.

Some people think they are Christians because of a one-time decision that never bore genuine fruit in life. They need gospel confrontation: the gospel changes us.

Others doubt they are Christians because they recognize their sinfulness. They need gospel comfort: the gospel saves us.

The gospel should comfort the conflicted and confront the comfortable.

Yesterday, we began looking at Scot McKnight’s provocative new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), in which he gives us his answer to the important question: “What is the gospel?” I laid out four points of agreement with Scot’s proposal.

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.
2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.
3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are closely related but do not refer to the same thing.
4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

Today, I hope to articulate a few of my concerns regarding The King Jesus Gospel. I agree with Scot that we can’t afford for the church to be “in a fog” about the gospel, which is why I have appreciated books such as What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert, Recovering the Real Lost Gospel by Darrell Bock, and why I have attempted to delineate between true and counterfeit gospels myself. But I worry that there are some places where The King Jesus Gospel might lead to increasing fogginess rather than clarity. Here are three concerns:

1. Sharp Distinctions Can Lead to Subtle Distortions

One of my quibbles with the whole “keep the gospel and its implications separate” discussion within the gospel-centered movement is the unfortunate tendency for very important things to get diminished over time. A few months ago, I had a robust dialogue with John Starke on why we should never let the church (gospel community) out of sight when thinking about the gospel announcement of Jesus crucified and raised. I agree that certain distinctions must be made, and yet I want to stay true to the way the Scriptural authors hold the announcement and its purpose (creation of the church) together. Making too sharp a division is more problematic than keeping them too close together.

Now, Scot is essentially taking the “gospel and its implications” discussion one step further, separating even personal salvation from the gospel announcement. To be fair, Scot does not in any way seek to diminish the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The Plan of Salvation flows out of the Story of Israel/Bible and the Story of Jesus. The Bible’s Story from Israel to Jesus is the saving Story. Just as we dare not diminish the importance of this Story if we wish to grasp the gospel, so also with the saving effects of the story.” (37)

So far so good. But then Scot writes this:

“This Plan of Salvation is not the gospel. The Plan of Salvation emerges from the Story of Israel/Bible and from the Story of Jesus, but the plan and the gospel are not the same big idea.” (39)

From an exegetical standpoint, I agree that the gospel can’t be reduced to the Plan of Salvation. The gospel is the saving story of Jesus Christ, which results in salvation. It’s not the order of salvation itself or a plan for sharing the gospel. And yet, in 1 Corinthians 15, it seems clear to me that Paul has in mind Jesus’ work and its application to sinners. It’s both Story and Plan, not either-or.

In short, the Bible doesn’t separate the story from its significance for sinners. Both are included in the apostolic proclamation. Scot’s decision to so sharply distinguish between the gospel and its saving effects is ultimately unhelpful. It seems to set up categories needlessly, and even when we don’t intend to set up false dichotomies, we wind up with them anyway. Case in point:

“When the plan gets separated from the story, the plan almost always becomes abstract, propositional, logical, rational, and philosophical, and most importantly, de-storified and unbiblical. We separate ourselves from Jesus and turn the Christian faith into a System of salvation.” (62)

I don’t think we have to pit a propositional presentation of the gospel against the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We need the Story so that the gospel doesn’t get reduced to merely a System, yes. But both are important, biblical, and clustered together when it comes to the apostolic thinking about the gospel.

It’s clear that Scot is seeking to avoid reductionism. He writes:

“We are tempted to turn the story of what God is doing in this world through Israel and Jesus Christ into a story about me and my own personal salvation.” (62)

But I fear that he is being reductionistic on the other side of the debate, framing the gospel in such a way that personal salvation is minimized. Like N.T. Wright, Scot is saying that soteriology is not the gospel. But when I examine the sermons in Acts or the letters of Paul or even the preaching of Jesus, I don’t see Story and Soteriology separated. Instead, I see them so deeply intertwined that we can’t grasp one without the other.

Don’t get me wrong. Scot is not denying the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The apostolic gospel, the gospel that Paul ‘received’ and ‘passed on’ to the Corinthians, like every other apostolic church then and forever, is a gospel that has at its center that Jesus died ‘for our sins,’ and this death achieved the forgiveness of sins. As such, this story saves and brings people into the kingdom of God and ushers them into eternal life.” (88)

And he is right to see proper gospel proclamation as calling for a response. He goes so far as to state:

“There is no such thing as gospeling that does not include the summons to respond in faith, repentance, and baptism.” (127)

That’s the heart of an evangelist speaking, for sure! But even in his discussion of evangelism, he pits Jesus as Savior against Jesus as Lord:

“The gospeling of Acts, because it declares the saving significance of Jesus, Messiah and Lord, summons listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord, while our gospeling seeks to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as the Savior.” (133)

Even though he immediately follows up that statement by saying, “We are not creating a false alternative here,” I worry that most people will choose one alternative over the other.

Sharp distinctions can sometimes lead to subtle distortions. Baptists who too sharply distinguish between repentance and baptism can unintentionally minimize the importance of baptism. Christians who too sharply distinguish between the gospel and its purpose (the church) can unintentionally minimize the importance of the church. And too sharply distinguishing between the gospel and personal salvation can lead us to unintentionally minimize the importance of justification by faith alone. That’s my next point.

2. Don’t Neglect the Power of Justification by Faith Alone.

It’s hard to imagine Scot McKnight agreeing with Martin Luther that the article of justification by faith alone is the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls. I am not calling into question Scot’s view of justification or his Protestant credentials. I know that justification is part of his theology. He affirms the penal substitutionary view of the atonement. He even argues for double imputation as a result of union with Christ.

My concern with The King Jesus Gospel is not that justification is denied or distorted but that it’s not as central in Scot’s understanding of the gospel as it was for the Apostle Paul. Granted, I am not equating justification with the gospel. The gospel is what saves. Justification is how one is saved. But surely these things are inseparably connected. Otherwise, how do we interpret Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where a denial of justification by faith is tantamount to denying the gospel itself?

Of justification, Scot writes:

“The Plan of Salvation leads to one thing and to one thing only: salvation. Justification leads to a declaration by God that we are in the right, that we are in the people of God; it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness. If it did, all Christians would be more just and more filled with goodness and drenched in love.” (40)

It seems that Scot thinks we’ve overemphasized justification at the expense of the broader, all-encompassing good news of Jesus as the climax of the Old Testament story. But I sense that Scot is underestimating the power of justification by faith alone when he says, “it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness.” For Scot, the solution is to look elsewhere for results. In my mind, the solution is to be better grounded in the reality of justification by faith alone, which – when properly understood – awakens our affections to the goodness of God shown to us in the face of Jesus Christ in such a way that we are led to a life of goodness. In my opinion, we need more emphasis on justification nowadays, not less.

3. A View of the Story That Is Not Soterian?

One of the central claims of The King Jesus Gospel is that evangelicals have missed the biblical gospel by reducing it to a plan of salvation. We’ve made our own personal salvation so central that we deserve the label “soterians.” Scot wants us to frame the gospel according to the Old Testament storyline rather than according to our need for salvation. He writes:

“The apostles were not like our modern soterians because they did not empty the gospel of its Story, nor did they reduce the gospel to the Plan of Salvation. In fact, the apostles were the original, robust evangelicals. It all has to do with how the gospel is framed.” (117)

Agreed. That’s why I mentioned yesterday that one of my points of agreement with Scot is that we need the Story in order to make sense of the Jesus announcement. But then I read this:

“Gospeling was not driven by the salvation story or the atonement story. It was driven by the Story of Israel, and in fact makes most sense in that story.” (134)

And this:

“Look again at that gospel summary in 1 Corinthians 15: there is nothing direct about being reconciled to God or to others, nothing direct about being declared righteous, nothing about God’s wrath being pacified, and nothing about being liberated from our entrapments to sin, self, the system, and Satan.” (134)

It seems to me that this kind of statement does not take into account Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ’s death was “for our sins,” which has Old Testament echoes of Isaiah 53 and which Paul unpacks in more detail in other texts. “For our sins” is freighted with soteriological meaning.

The heart of my differences with Scot’s proposal is not in defining the word “gospel.” It’s not in the gospel announcement’s need for the Story. It’s in the way we read that Story. There’s the rub. The reason I think it’s ultimately unhelpful to distinguish between a story gospel and a soterian gospel is because I think the story is soterian, that is, the grand narrative of Scripture is telling us about God’s glory in saving sinners through the cross and resurrection of His Son. The heart of Israel’s story is hope for salvation delivered by the coming Messiah-King.

When I read the Old Testament narrative, I can’t get through the Pentateuch and not tremble at the thought of standing before God without an animal sacrifice. I can’t read the story of Judges without shuddering at the pervasiveness of sin and the need for a Messiah-King. I can’t read Isaiah and not recognize my need for a righteousness that comes from outside myself.

Scot reads the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 and wants to emphasize that Jesus is Messiah and Lord. I see the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 as the gospel presentation by which we are being saved. The big story that the Bible is telling is a story of salvation – its promise and provision through the coming kingdom of a crucified Messiah. And this is why pitting the Old Testament storyline against atonement theology makes little sense to me. It’s not just that I view the gospel as a soterian. I view the story that way as well.

Conclusion

Overall, The King Jesus Gospel has been one of the most thought-provoking, challenging, and stimulating books I’ve read this year. Scot McKnight is prompting some good (sometimes strong) conversations. I hope that this review has been a charitable exercise in encouraging one another along as we seek to be true to the original gospel of the apostles.

Scot McKnight believes that the most important question the church can ask today is: “What is the gospel?” If the church is “in a fog” about this question, we will not be a gospel people – a community of faith that lives according to the gospel and announces the good news to the world around us.

Scot’s new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), seeks to answer the gospel question by transcending the tired debates between Jesus’ gospel (kingdom) versus Paul’s gospel (justification by faith). Scot believes there is only one truly biblical way to think about the gospel, and it’s to see that the one gospel proclaimed by Jesus Himself, the Gospel writers, the apostles in Acts, and Paul in his letters is Jesus as the completion of Israel’s story. 

In December of 2010, Scot wrote the cover story for Christianity Today, laying out this new proposal. We had a blog conversation about his article here at Kingdom People. The King Jesus Gospel is a book-length treatment of the main point expressed in the CT article. Scot is undergirding his proposal by showing why he believes it makes the best sense of the Bible as a whole as well as the Bible in its individual parts.

The King Jesus Gospel deserves an award for being the “most marked up” book I’ve read this year. I’ve got all sorts of passages highlighted, with notes in the margins, question marks here and there, exclamation points (both good and bad!), and worn-out pages. Put simply, I agree with much of Scot’s proposal, and yet there are places where I think he presses us into making some false choices. Today, I want to highlight the points of agreement. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at my concerns.

So, to start us off, here are four points that Scot makes and with which I am largely in agreement:

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.

Like a skilled doctor, Scot’s diagnosis is right: we need to revisit the heart of Christianity in order to gain clarity on the gospel. The problem within many evangelical churches today is that we have a gospel-less culture. Why? Because the biblical gospel has not been at the center of our preaching and teaching. When people are fuzzy on what the gospel is, it’s no wonder they don’t live much differently than those who don’t know the gospel. And it’s really no wonder that they don’t share the message with others. To live according to the gospel, you have to know what the good news is. To proclaim the gospel, you have to know the gospel.

Pastors within the gospel-centered movement will resonate with Scot’s distaste for “decisionism.” McKnight may be an Arminian theologian, but he is as far from Charles Finney as you’ll get. He writes:

“Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples.” (18)

True enough. But Scot is going further than just critiquing an obsession with numbers. He believes this lopsided understanding of Christianity is actually keeping us from making disciples:

“Focusing youth events, retreats, and programs on persuading people to make a decision disarms the gospel, distorts numbers, and diminishes the significance of discipleship.” (20)

Tough words. But don’t assume that Scot is content with a decisionless Christianity that is not centered on personal conversion. He chides the state church tradition (whether in its Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant form) for neglecting personal conversion:

“Making the conversion process automatic – and I’m doing my best to be dead-level honest in saying that – is disastrous for the vitality of faith and church life. This kind of gospel can deconstruct a local church, and I would finger this issue as one of the, if not the, origins of the demise of the church in European cultures.” (31)

Three cheers from this Baptist! Scot’s diagnosis is correct. Both extremes (automatic church membership and mere decisionism) usually fail to result in people becoming “The Discipled,” which according to the Great Commission, should be our goal.

Scot also points out the difference between “the gospel” and someone’s “method of persuading people to trust the gospel.” By canvassing the variety of evangelistic encounters in the New Testament, Scot is able to uphold distinctive methodologies in getting across the one message.

“Our preferred Method of Persuasion and the gospel are not one and the same,” he writes (42). “Methods shift and conform to the needs of the evangelist and the audience.” (32)

2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.

One of the hallmarks of The King Jesus Gospel is Scot’s looking to the Scriptures as our primary authority. Though he recommends studying the creeds, church history, and evangelical tradition, he clearly lifts up the Bible as the place where we will discover the biblical gospel and how it integrates the key themes of the Bible. In fact, “Back to the Bible” is one of the most common phrases in the book.

• “We need to go back to the Bible to find the original gospel.” (24)
• “… Our current answer isn’t biblical enough.” (24)
• “My plea is that we go back to the New Testament to discover all over again what the Jesus gospel is and that by embracing it we become true evangelicals.” (29)
• “We are in need to going back to the Bible to discover the gospel culture all over again and making that gospel culture the center of the church.”

Whatever one might think of the specifics of Scot’s proposal, it’s clear that sola Scriptura is a driving force in his work. So, naturally, he turns to the sections of the New Testament that most clearly lay out the basics of the gospel. In summarizing 1 Corinthians 15, he writes:

“To gospel is to announce the good news about key events in the life of Jesus Christ. To gospel for Paul was to tell, announce, declare, and shout aloud the Story of Jesus Christ as the saving news of God.”

In my opinion, the most helpful chapter in the book is “The Gospel of Peter,” in which Scot considers the oft-neglected sermons recorded in Acts.

“There are seven or eight gospel sermons or summaries of gospel sermons in the book of Acts… If we have any Protestant bones in our body, we want to know what they gospeled and how they gospeled, and we want our gospeling to be rooted in and conformed to this gospeling.” (115)

3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are related, but they do not refer to the same thing.

One of the central contentions of The King Jesus Gospel is that the gospel should not be confused with its implications. It is somewhat odd to see someone outside of the Gospel Coalition stream making this case so forcefully, but that is what Scot is attempting. Readers will quickly see, however, that Scot is making the distinction between the gospel and its implications even sharper than his Reformed friends. The issue that will ruffle many evangelical feathers is that Scot thinks of “personal salvation” as an implication of the gospel, not the center of the gospel itself. Salvation flows from the gospel, but salvation is not the message of the gospel. Hear him out:

“We evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really ‘salvationists.’ When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) ‘salvation.’ We are wired this way. But these two words don’t mean the same thing…” (29)

From a lexical standpoint, Scot may be right. The word “gospel” does not specifically refer to “my personal salvation.” Yes, the gospel secures my salvation. Yes, it is the power of God unto salvation. But it’s the message of Jesus that brings personal salvation, not the message of personal salvation itself. (Interestingly enough, Scot finds allies for this position in both N.T. Wright and John Piper, particularly Piper’s book God is the Gospel, in which he makes the case that the Person of Jesus Christ Himself is the good news, not just the saving benefits we receive from union with Him.)

But from a pastoral standpoint, I have some concerns about making distinctions this sharply. I wonder if in our parsing of these closely related words we aren’t separating what should be joined together. The gospel is the “word of salvation” after all, and it is the instrument by which we are being saved. All this leads me to think that we might be overlooking the biblical authors’ hints that “gospel” and “salvation” are more closely related than some exegetes want them to be. More on that tomorrow.

For now, let me express what I like about Scot’s proposal: he is seeking to show that the one gospel we believe in contains justification by faith and the coming of the kingdom, but that the specific message is bigger than both. He sees the good news as the announcement that the story of Israel is being resolved in the story of Jesus. That’s great, as long as we remember that the announcement is about Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners.

In other words, when considering the gospel, Scot claims that the way forward is not to ask, “Did Jesus preach justification?” or “Did Paul preach the kingdom?” The better questions to ask are “Did Jesus preach Jesus?” and “Did Paul preach Jesus?” Over against Bultmann, who argued that over time, the proclaimer of the gospel (Jesus) became “the proclaimed” (early church), Scot helpfully demonstrates that the picture of Jesus we see in the Gospels is of a Savior “who unequivocally and without embarrassment nominated himself for Israel’s president.” (105)

4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

One of the central points of my work on Counterfeit Gospels is that to rightly understand the gospel announcement (Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and exaltation), one must have some knowledge of the worldview, or Story, within which that announcement makes sense. I am on the same page with Scot when it comes to our need to place the gospel announcement within the context of the story. This is a refrain that Scot echoes multiple times in the book.

• “This story is not the same as the gospel… The gospel only makes sense in that story.” (36)
• “One reason why so many Christians today don’t know the Old Testament is because their ‘gospel’ doesn’t even need it.” (44)
• “The gospel Story of Jesus Christ resolves or brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures (our Old Testament).” (50)
• “Any real gospeling has to lay out the story of Scripture if it wants to put back the ‘good’ into the good news.” (85)

Scot is also right to note that the grand narrative of Scripture is not just the backdrop for the gospel but also the forward-looking story that culminates in final restoration at the end of time, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. When it comes to matters of life after death, final judgment, and hell, Scot doesn’t hold back.

“Gospeling must involve the Story of final judgment in order for humans to see that they ultimately will stand before God and not before a human tribunal.” (135)

He then quotes Jonathan Edwards approvingly, saying, “Perhaps we need more of Edwards today, not less.” (136)

Points of Concern

These are the four main areas in which I am largely in agreement with  The King Jesus Gospel. There are, however, a few points that cause me concern and may lead to unintentional confusion for the reader. I’ll elaborate on my concerns tomorrow.

The video below is a panel discussion from The Gospel Coalition with Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Jonathan Leeman, and Trevin Wax. The conversation centers on the Great Commission and the mission of the local church.

Gospel, Mission, and the Church from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Topics discussed:

• The Gospel: Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration vs. God/Man/Christ/Response
• The centrality of the cross in our gospel presentations
• Confusing the gospel and its implications or the fall and its implications
• 9Marks and Acts 29: Two camps in dialogue
• Mission of the church and the meaning of “missional”
• How our cultural contexts form the way we react to “missional”
• Taking care in not overwhelming people with mission
• The role of the church in mercy ministries
• How local churches are staying cross-centered while engaged in mercy ministry
• Should a pastor have a defensive or offensive posture when it comes to the gospel and mission?

Here are a few thought-provoking quotes:

Matt Chandler: “The atoning work of Christ is the gravitational pull on the mission and the gospel. If you tell the meta-narrative without the atoning work of Christ, you are no longer telling the meta-narrative.”

Jonathan Leeman: “Our entire lives are the backdrop for speaking gospel words.”

Trevin Wax: “We are suspicious of anything that sounds like it could be used as theological cover to not get engaged in mission.”

Kevin DeYoung:”Our mission is to make disciples of Christ as servants of people; our mission is not to serve people as disciples of Christ.”

Matt Chandler: “Our fundamental posture is offensive in nature. I want my fundamental posture, standing firm on the Word of God, to be: We have a saving, delivering God who is going to save others in this city.“

Hear the Christian gospel:

We are all rebellious traitors against God and his kingdom, and for that we are dying now and are destined to suffer forever in the ultimate despair of hell. We are actually God’s enemies (not merely in our imagination), and we deserve whatever torment we have coming. Worse, we are entirely unable to lay down our weapons and change sides, for as the apostle Paul reminds us, we are “dead in our transgressions and sins… by nature deserving of wrath… without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:1-12). We are unwilling to change, and unable to change our hearts and minds so we would be willing.

God justly could have been content to destroy our insurrection and wipe us from the earth. But he took pity on us, and while “we were God’s enemies,” “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8, 10). The cross is a most unusual weapon of choice, but the death of his beloved Son was the only way that God could defeat our sin and death. Satan had become the functional ruler of us and of this world when he tempted Adam and Eve, God’s appointed rulers of creation to switch their allegiance to him. Now a Son of Adam, the Son of God, had come to earth to win us back.

Jesus did not conquer Satan in some heavy-handed way, using his overwhelming force to throw him down. God beat Satan on a level playing field. He became a creature, vulnerable to Satan’s attacks, and defeated the devil through weakness rather than shock and awe. In this way he did not so much overpower Satan as outwit him. He showed Satan and his demons to be fools, for, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15).

Demons shrieked and danced around the cross, deliriously surprised by how easily Jesus had fallen into their trap. What they didn’t realize was that they had walked straight into his. Jesus knew what C.S. Lewis – in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - called the “magic deeper still,” that “when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward”. Death died in the death of Christ, for Jesus bore our penalty in our place.

Jesus took our sin and death down with him into the grave, and when he arose he left them in the dust. Paul explains, “He was delivered over to edeath for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Jesus’ spectacular resurrection is not merely an authoritative illustration of a general truth that is embedded in creation. Rather it is the turning point of world history, for that is the moment that God reversed the cruse, releasing forever those who put their faith in Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection don’t merely reveal that death leads to life; they are the very things that make it true. Jesus triumphed over sin, death, and Satan by his cross and empty tomb, and anyone who trusts his finished work alone will join his victory.

- Michael Wittmer, Christ Alone: An Evangelical Response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins (148-150)

“At its core, the gospel is Jesus as the substitute for sinners. We could summarize the whole by saying that in his life Jesus lives in perfect submission to the will of God and he fulfills his righteous standard (the law). In his death on the cross he quenches God’s wrath against sin, satisfying the sovereign demand for justice. In his resurrection he is victorious over sin and death. All of this is done on behalf of sinners in need of redemption and offered to all who believe. This is therefore very ‘good news.’

Jesus’ life is good news, for his obedience to the Father and fulfillment of the law is for us. While we as sinners fail to keep the law, Jesus was perfectly faithful. Jesus’ death is good news because his death was a payment for our sin, and by it we are cleansed from our guilt and released from condemnation. Jesus’ resurrection is good news because his victory over death is ours and through it we look forward to a resurrection of our own.”

- Joe Thorn, Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself

Do we need to “defend” the gospel?

Surveying a variety of sermons online, blog posts, and recent books (mine included!), one might get the impression that evangelicals are so worried about the future that we have gone into all-out “defense” mode when it comes to the gospel. The true gospel is under attack. The good news of Jesus Christ is being maligned, altered, watered down, adjusted, or outright denied. We must defend the gospel that has been entrusted to us!

There is certainly biblical precedent for thinking of the gospel as something to defend. Jude tells us to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” The Apostle Paul claims that God planned for his time in prison to be “for the defense of the gospel.”

But the general picture we see in the Scriptures is that the gospel is on offense. The gospel is described as powerful and explosive – unstoppable even. In all our talk about defending the gospel, it’s possible that we might think of the good news as fragile and vulnerable. God forbid! Defending the gospel isn’t like trying to keep a precious vase from breaking. It’s more like running in front of a bulldozer saying, “Clear the path. The gospel is coming through.”

So we do defend the gospel – in the sense that a strong proclamation of the gospel will always be seen as a defense against weak or errant proclamations of the gospel. And yes, we are called to recognize attacks on the gospel and be on guard as soldiers in a cosmic battle.

But we do not defend the gospel, if our idea of defense implies that our bungling of things might forever ruin the message upon which Christ has promised to build His church.

The gospel has a life of its own. It is the very power of God. It does not need to be shielded, as if its potency was dependent upon our protection. We fool ourselves if we imagine that we are the mighty protectors of a vulnerable treasure. Au contraire, it is we who are weak and frail and need to be empowered by the gospel.

It’s the gospel that defends us. The unstoppable gospel is what stops the mouth of Satan our accuser, and says, “Leave them alone. They’ve been purchased by blood.” The gospel is what seems like foolishness to the world and yet continues to be believed by millions of people in every generation. It’s the gospel that comes to us, “as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing.” (Col. 1:6).

The gospel is like kudzu that just won’t go away. People try to stomp it out (persecution), trim it back (watered-down doctrine), or spray it with weedkiller (heresy), but the vine just keeps on growing. Defending the gospel? It’s more like unleashing the gospel.

So take heart. The gospel is unstoppable!

To summarize: Paul viewed the gospel as centering upon Jesus Christ and what God has done through him. The essential points of the gospel are Jesus Christ’s status as the Son of God, his genuine humanity, his death for our sins, his burial, resurrection, subsequent appearances, and future coming in judgment . . . that one is justified by faith in the gracious work of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. . . . [It is not] merely a recital of theological truths and historical events. Rather, it relates these truths and events to the situation of every individual believer.

- Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 1063

Today, I’m happy to introduce Kingdom People readers to Mitch Chase, author of The Gospel Is For Christians. A few months ago, I wrote this about the book:

“In The Gospel Is For Christians, Mitch Chase demonstrates not merely a love for theology, but a love for the Savior to which all good theology points. Mitch reminds us that the good news of Jesus Christ is not a peripheral matter for the Christian. The gospel must remain at the center of our spiritual life in order to bear the fruits of ongoing repentance and faith.”

The following is a conversation between me and Mitch about what it means to be “gospel-centered” and mission-focused.

Trevin Wax: Mitch, the title of your book would have seemed strange to most of us a few years ago: “The Gospel Is For Christians“. And yet, we’re seeing a gospel-centered movement in our day that is making this very claim, that Christians need the gospel for sanctification just like we need the gospel for salvation. Why do you think this message has grown in popularity? What is the gospel-centered emphasis a reaction to?

Mitch Chase: Thanks for this conversation, Trevin, and what a great way to start!  The notion of gospel-centeredness indeed seems to be growing in popularity, and hopefully the ultimate reason for this is the nature of the gospel itself, which should still be compelling and powerful for believers to hear.  In one sense, this gospel-centered movement has gained momentum from the books and sermons of Tim Keller, Jerry Bridges, Mark Dever, Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, C. J. Mahaney, John Piper, and others.  These contemporaries have faithfully proclaimed the gospel and helped countless others – like myself – see that its power is central for Christian living.

The prevalence of “gospel-centered” language is a reaction to the kind of failed discipleship methods that many of us once thought would sustain our Christian faith.  Church leaders haven’t always rooted discipleship in the gospel, so for many Christians the biblical mandate to grow in faith has led to continual frustration.  What’s been proclaimed is an endless array of steps, secret formulas, or studies that lead to deeper truth.  Therefore, many of us once considered the gospel as essential for believing in Jesus but unimportant for actually following Jesus.  So what’s crucial in this gospel-centered movement is its fresh emphasis on Christ’s work for our growth and obedience.

Gospel-centeredness is a critique of our consumeristic culture, in which new is better and the latest is greatest.  Contrary to this mindset, Christians don’t grow in faith by discovering the latest formula or completing the program with the newest “truth.”  Human growth methods have no power to conform sinners to Christ for the glory of God.  What Christians need isn’t something new but something old – the Old Story of Christ Crucified and Risen.  So the gospel-centered movement certainly appeals to believers who recognize the spiritual bankruptcy of “Christian” consumerism.  There is no greater news, no deeper teaching, than the gospel.

Trevin Wax: It’s interesting you bring up discipleship materials. There are always people asking for “deeper Bible study” or for a “deeper walk” with Christ. But what people mean by “depth” is not often clear. Some people think in terms of information. They want to know more facts, whether they come from history or theology. Information dump. Others think “deep” means a practical tidbit for my life tomorrow. They think in terms of immediate application. But this can turn the Bible into a self-help manual.

The gospel-centered movement has the opportunity to redefine what “depth” means. We shouldn’t see depth as “more info” or “life insights” but gospel-centrality. Going deep means we immerse ourselves in the truth that Jesus Christ bled and died to save helpless sinners like you and me. We’ve got to see the depth of our sin and the depth of God’s grace in such a way that it is clear we can do nothing to make ourselves more acceptable to God. Depth means going deeper into the gospel until it confronts the idols of our hearts.

You’ve got a chapter called “Preaching the Gospel to Yourself.” I’m hearing this phrase more and more nowadays. What do you mean by “preaching the gospel to yourself” and why should Christians be doing this?

Mitch Chase: “Preaching the gospel to yourself” refers to the practice of speaking to our hearts about Christ’s redemptive work: on our behalf Christ has broken the power of sin and paid the penalty for sin. Essentially the idea is to dwell on the meaning and accomplishment of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  C. J. Mahaney says that preaching the gospel to yourself is the most important daily habit a Christian can establish.

In my book, I give two main reasons for preaching the gospel to our hearts.  First, we are sinners – redeemed ones, to be sure, but sinners still.  While believers are new creations in Christ, we face constant temptations to return to the flesh and fulfill its desires which war against the Spirit (Gal 5).  The gospel is necessary for the pursuit of holiness, because salvation doesn’t produce morally perfect people.  The power of the gospel saves sinners by grace and then sustains and empowers them in that grace.  In order to obey God, our hearts must dwell on the perfect obedience of Christ on our behalf, becoming a curse for us and satisfying His Father’s wrath.

Second, we need to preach the gospel to ourselves because we are prone to forgetfulness.  In this culture, we can be so bombarded with information that we don’t know what to retain or reject.  These cultural messages seek to define our lives, our priorities, our ambitions.  So we need the gospel because of our wandering hearts.  We sing, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”  The Old Testament also testifies to this tendency, for the Israelites constantly forgot the Lord and forsook his commandments.  It can happen easily, subtly, in times of blessing or trial.  Our blessings can become our idols, and our trials can become deterrents to relentless trust in God.  In running the race set before us, we must keep our eyes on the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2).

Preaching the gospel to ourselves, then, is a biblical and practical strategy that goads us onto the path of remembrance and obedience.  A key aspect of discipleship and Christian growth is learning what to remember, what to return to again and again.

Trevin Wax: I think the idea of preaching the gospel to yourself is great. We certainly need to have the truths of the gospel massaged deep into our hearts.

I wonder though how preaching the gospel to ourselves relates to our preaching the gospel to others. I worry that we might take something great – like this idea of gospel-centrality – and invert it into something self-centered and self-focused. Take a daily quiet time in prayer and Bible study for example. Such times are a great gift from God, but if they become the standard of evangelical activity, they can lead to a rather lopsided view of Christianity. In other words, we always face the temptation to confuse make means the end.

So, how do we guard against doing this with self-preaching? God’s purposes are much bigger than Christians walking around reminding themselves of the gospel. How do we connect gospel-centeredness with Christian mission?

Mitch Chase: You point out a great danger.  How tragic if our flesh used gospel-centeredness for self-centeredness!

In a sense, the answer to such a danger is not less of the gospel but more.  The gospel is crucial in God’s overarching plan for the world.  He blessed the nations through Abraham’s seed, who is ultimately Christ Himself (Gal 3).  In Revelation, we see multitudes of every nation, tribe, and tongue, people bought by the blood of the Lamb who was slain.  In Colossians 1, Paul spoke about the gospel bearing fruit all over the world.  These Scriptural examples show that the gospel has a global perspective that should correct extreme individualism.

The key, therefore, is to connect the truth of the gospel to God’s unfolding purposes for the world.  Jesus died for individuals who compose the Church (1 Cor 12), and through the proclamation of the gospel by His people Jesus is drawing sinners from the nations.  This perspective challenges our individualism and reminds us of the global nature of the Christian mission.  Christians need to be immersed in this global perspective.  The mission of the church is to make disciples of the nations (Matt 28:19-20).  Jesus is the Light of the world (John 8:12).  Christians must also be aware that our salvation is a work of new creation that will culminate in God renewing the whole world and uniting heaven and earth (Rom 8; Rev 21).

Biblically speaking, then, gospel-centeredness is inseparable from Christian mission and God’s unfolding purposes.  If Christians seek to separate the two, then they become self-centered (rather than gospel-centered) and disobedient to the Lord’s commission to His Church.

I’m curious, Trevin, whether your upcoming book Counterfeit Gospels addresses the question you posed to me.  What wisdom would you share in connecting a believer’s gospel-centeredness to God’s mission in the world?

Trevin Wax: I do address this subject in Counterfeit Gospels, albeit from a different angle. My concern with a self-centered view of “gospel-centered” goes back to the nature of the gospel announcement. If the announcement of Jesus Christ crucified and raised is public news that is about the actions of our missionary God to rescue us from sin and death, then it follows that this gospel will create a community of people who put on display that kind of missionary heart.

If we think we are “gospel-centered” and are not compelled to share our faith, love the community of faith, help the poor, give to the needy, and so on, then my question is: what kind of gospel are we preaching? And what kind of disciples are we making? If our idea of “gospel-centered” is a large number of people in a church on Sunday grateful for personal salvation but unaware or uninvolved in the brokenness and lostness around them, then I wonder how gospel-centered we really are.

Being gospel-centered doesn’t mean we are obsessed with a factual truth. It means we are smitten with a beautiful Savior. And the more we love Jesus, the more we will look like Him.

Mitch Chase: I completely agree!  The nature of the gospel announcement must be the starting place.  If the gospel announcement is defined entirely individualistically (and thus incorrectly), then the inevitable result will be self-centered “disciples.”  True gospel-centrality should actually stir missionary zeal, not stifle it.  One mark of a gospel-centered church, then, is a global mentality.  A small church of 30 people should think globally, because the gospel is global and because the Christ of the gospel is Lord of the world.

I hope that one of the effects of the gospel-centered movement is to spur on the Church to obey the Great Commission with even more faithfulness, perseverance, and willing sacrifice.  And this effect should surely be driven by an even greater desire: to see the nations praise our God who is worthy of worldwide adoration.  As true gospel-centrality empowers churches to proclaim and live out the gospel in the world, we will see the truth of John Piper’s statement from Let the Nations Be Glad!, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.  Worship is.”  Believers should want to be gospel-centered people because we want the nations to exalt the world’s true Lord.

Trevin Wax: May all of our passion for the gospel be directed to that end! Thank you for the conversation, Mitch.