substitutes for the gospel in our churches

Think about what your church would look like without the gospel. Would it be discernable? If the gospel was absent, what are other messages and causes that could take their place? What might take the place of the gospel in our sermons and children’s curriculum, and our home studies and small group meetings, and above all, in our hearts? Here are some possibilities:

Ways we substitute the gospel in our time: Can we tell the difference?

-A passionate devotion to the pro-life cause
-A passionate devotion to the heterosexual traditional family
-A drive toward church growth
-A clever appeal to consumerism by offering a Christianity Lite
-A sympathetic, empathetic, focus on interpersonal relationships
-A determination to take America back to its Christian roots by politics
-A warm affirmation of self-esteem

In other words, the church without the gospel would look very much the way the evangelical church looks at this very moment. We cannot assume that we have the gospel unless we keep it at the center.

It is extremely important that the good news of the cross and resurrection is preached and demonstrated to be the very power of God unto salvation and for our growth as God’s children.

The church’s greatest danger is not the anti-gospel outside the church; it is the multitude of false and counterfeit gospels inside the church. The Judaizers didn’t walk around the churches in Galatia wearing T-shirts that said, “Wanna be a heretic? Ask me how.” What made them so dangerous was that they knew how to talk about how they “got saved.” They told people to “trust in Christ.” They “presented the gospel.” Only they did not have the gospel at all. We should expect, therefore, that the most serious threat to the one true gospel is something that is also called the gospel and is pretty close. The most dangerous teachers are the ones who preach a different Christ but still call him “Jesus.”

For example, if a preacher in a church always talks about the gospel, but never gets around to confronting our sin, he isn’t really preaching the full story. Or a Mormon who uses the exact same terminology (Jesus, grace, heaven, God, Lord, Christ, Messiah, salvation), but means something entirely different. Not everything called the gospel is the gospel. It isn’t mere words that save; it is the realities of the one true gospel that saves—Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection for sinners.

This sermon was preached on 4.23.06