The Gospel and the Consequences of the Gospel

In my Adult Sunday School class at Westney Heights Baptist Church last Sunday I expounded John 21:1-14, the miraculous catch of fish, which is, of course, about evangelization. John 20-21 depicts the risen, but not yet ascended, Lord Jesus Christ organizing, empowering, instructing and preparing His Church for her mission in the world. Central to the work of the Church in the time between the Ascension and the Return of Christ is evangelization. My plea was that we would keep our eye firmly fixed on the ball and not allow the world to squeeze us into the mold of making social action and social justice central to the mission of the Church. They are good in their place, but they are not the Gospel. Only the Church has the Gospel; if we don't preach it no one else will. Others may feed the hungry physically, but no one else can feed them spiritually.

It seems to me that we may well be in the middle of a Second (or is it the Third?) Great Defection from Evangelical Protestantism into liberal apostasy. A previous defection took place in the late 19th century and led eventually to the expulsion or withdrawal of many Evangelical and orthodox believers from the mainline Protestant denominations during the Fundamentalist-Modernist conflicts of the 1920's and 30's. Those events sowed the seeds for the current on-going decline of the old Protestant denominations, which is so evident today. Their decline is doctrinal, moral and numerical and the very survival (in any form) of denominations like The Episcopal Church and the United Church of Canada is in question. Certainly their gospel witness has evaporated.

Yet, incredible as it may seem, many Evangelicals are once again falling for the siren song of "relevance" by embracing the same doctrinal deviations as late 19th century Evangelicals did, including a denial of moral guilt produced by sin, the need for a substitutionary atonement, the divinity of Christ, the need for personal conversion and the need for separation from worldliness (while remaining, of course, in the world). Along with this eviserating of the the heart of the Gospel (Christ died for our sins) there must be, and always is, a new replacement "gospel" of moralism and good works. Concern for the poor, "peaceandjustice" and environmentalism come to stand in the center of the Christian proclamation instead of sin and atonement.

In a recent editorial in Themelios, D. A. Carson addresses the question of "What is the gospel?" [My comments in bold in square brackets]
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"In blogs, journal essays, and books, there has been quite a lot written recently about what “the gospel” is. In the hands of some, the question of what “the gospel” is may be tied to the question of what “evangelicalism” is, since “gospel” = εὐαγγέλιον = evangel, which lies at the heart of evangelicalism. . . .[In David Bebbington's widely-accepted four-fold definition of Evangelicalism as an historic movement, the centrality of the cross is one of the four distingishing marks. This is indisputable and Carson is about to unpack it.] . . . one must distinguish between, on the one hand, the gospel as what God has done and what is the message to be announced and, on the other, what is demanded by God or effected by the gospel in assorted human responses. [This is a crucial distinction. If not made, it results in the distortion of the gospel and the failure to preach the gospel.] If the gospel is the (good) news about what God has done in Christ Jesus, there is ample place for including under “the gospel” the ways in which the kingdom has dawned and is coming, for tying this kingdom to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for demonstrating that the purpose of what God has done is to reconcile sinners to himself and finally to bring under one head a renovated and transformed new heaven and new earth, for talking about God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, consequent upon Christ’s resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and above all for focusing attention on what Paul (and others—though the language I’m using here reflects Paul) sees as the matter “of first importance”: Christ crucified. All of this is what God has done; it is what we proclaim; it is the news, the great news, the good news. [The gospel is not everything that the Church has to say, but rather a proclamation (heralding) of what God has done. The Church will, of course, have other things to say on the basis of the Gospel, i.e. "teaching them to obey all things I have commanded you," once the Gospel has been proclaimed and a local congregation of believers formed. ]

By contrast, the first two greatest commands—to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves—do not constitute the gospel, or any part of it. [This must be said and it must be said this bluntly. If you find yourself resisting this truth, you may well need to examine your conscience and your understanding of the basis of your salvation.] We may well argue that when the gospel is faithfully declared and rightly received, it will result in human beings more closely aligned to these two commands. [Of course.] But they are not the gospel. Similarly, the gospel is not receiving Christ or believing in him, or being converted, or joining a church; it is not the practice of discipleship. [Here is where many Evangelicals make the same mistake with regard to piety as Liberals make with regard to social service and it explains why some Evangelicals are already half-way to Liberalism even though they look and sound orthodox. I want to stress that this insight is not a uniquely Reformed insight, as people like Brian McLaren would like you to believe (although many Reformed preachers express it very well). But John Wesley would concur with Carson here, as would Benedict XVI.] Once again, the gospel faithfully declared and rightly received will result in people receiving Christ, believing in Christ, being converted, and joining a local church; but such steps are not the gospel. The Bible can exhort those who trust the living God to be concerned with issues of social justice (Isa 2; Amos); it can tell new covenant believers to do good to all human beings, especially to those of the household of faith (Gal 6); it exhorts us to remember the poor and to ask, not “Who is my neighbor?” but “Whom am I serving as neighbor?” We may even argue that some such list of moral commitments is a necessary consequence of the gospel. [Theologians will argue about the precise definition of "necessary" here.] But it is not the gospel. We may preach through the list, reminding people that the Bible is concerned to tell us not only what to believe but how to live. But we may not preach through that list and claim it encapsulates the gospel. The gospel is what God has done, supremely in Christ, and especially focused on his cross and resurrection.

Failure to distinguish between the gospel and all the effects of the gospel tends, on the long haul, to replace the good news as to what God has done with a moralism that is finally without the power and the glory of Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning. [Right. This is the main problem of liberalism - moralism instead of the good news of salvation. And moralism is bad news - who can live up to the Divine standard?]
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Clearly, Don Carson and I are on the same page here. It is a good editorial about a pressing contemporary issue.