The Malformed Gospel
We have reviewed the origin of the promised gospel in the Torah and determined that the gospel is a Jesus-centered event focusing on his death, resurrection, and exaltation. This leads to transformative living. Any gospel that does not move the believer to love his neighbor, show mercy to the oppressed, and humbly walk with God is malformed. Jesus has inaugurated the promised kingdom and is enthroned as its reigning king so when the gospel becomes more about me and my story it has veered from its Jesus-centered mooring. Power-centered Christianity in the West has failed to live out the servant-centered teachings of Jesus.
Unfortunately, following a massive missionary movement over the past two centuries, the West has exported an ineffectual gospel message to the world. The gospel of sin management, with its nearly gnostic eschatological emphasis on heaven, offers little space for accepting the direct reign of Jesus here and now. Confusion arises primarily due to the inability of adherents to differentiate between the plan of salvation message and the gospel of God. These two subjects are related but quite different.
The malformed gospel is anchored in propositions and its versions reflect similarities to this “Roman Road”[1] evangelistic message:
“all have sinned and need forgiveness (Rom 3:23); the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23); but God loves us and Jesus paid the penalty for our sins (Rom 5:8); when you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom 10:9); since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus (Rom 5:1); If you believe these truths, and pray this prayer, you will have eternal life, ‘God, I know that I have sinned against you and am deserving of punishment. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve so that through faith in Him I could be forgiven. With your help, I place my trust in You for salvation. Thank You for Your wonderful grace and forgiveness - the gift of eternal life! Amen!’"[2]
Such a gospel proclamation focuses on individual sin and belief in a set of propositions rather than living a transformed life through the power of the Spirit. This gospel version does rightly acknowledge that through Jesus’ sinless life, death, and resurrection, God has dealt with sin, but it stops short of the good news that conforms the believer to the image of Jesus (Rom 8:29) marked by loving God and our neighbor (Matt 22:37-40).
In malformed gospel identifications, followers are concerned with personal blessings acquired through personal forgiveness afforded by Christ’s sacrifice for the individual’s sin resulting in a promised eternal heaven. Righteous living is more about what I do not do (sin) and what I believe to be true (propositions) rather than what I do for Christ and the other. The gospel here is about sin management (personal and for others).
Matthew Bates describes the current understanding of the gospel in evangelical churches worldwide as a “truncated gospel.”[9] In Evangelicalism, the gospel is about a multi-step program where one believes, repents, and calls on Jesus for the forgiveness of sins with a guarantee of Heaven rather than Hell as her reward. This fire insurance gospel places the human benefits as primary and God’s purposes as secondary. Dallas Willard responds to this “truncated gospel” as a “retreat from living an eternal kind of life now!”[10] Certainly, humanity is the beneficiary of divine love, mercy, and grace, and I would never deny there are eternal blessings explicitly associated with the gospel. However, to reduce the gospel to mere rationalistic acceptance of doctrinal truths is cruel because people desperately want an intimate and active relationship with God and others, rather than a set of propositions in which to believe.
For the many others who side with this gospel ideology, the gospel is a message directed at changing my spiritual trajectory and final abode rather than changing the world and my involvement in that new creative order. These well-known expositors, along with many others, are involved in works that pivot on reforming a Euro-tribal[11] culture so that it looks like their version of Christianity. Here, gospel proclamation and personal piety trump sacrificially serving my neighbor, the oppressed, or the other.
In contrast, God’s gospel of power graciously offers everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).”[12] There are gospel elements in these proclamations, but so too is there a dismal lack of loving others by the transforming power of the true gospel.
A False Gospel
The false gospels take on many forms. To believe in Jesus’ incarnation, divinity, resurrection, and kingdom—marks of orthodoxy do not guarantee a true gospel is present even in the community of believers. Paul recognizes and refutes the false gospel the Galatian churches began to follow. Here, the people had replaced grace for law, works of the flesh over that of the Spirit (Gal 3:2-5). Noteworthy is that a false gospel may be active among saints. Galatian believers began with the true gospel and fell prey to a false gospel (Gal 1:6-7). Works apart from the Spirit are powerless to justify, sanctify, or save. Salvation is found in no other name but Jesus (Acts 4:12), and allegiance to Christ in faith and deed are marks of the true gospel.
[1] This gospel message is found in evangelism tools such as “Romans Road,” Https://www.gotquestions.org/Romans-road-salvation.html (accessed 11/09/2021).
[2] Ibid.
[3] John F. MacArthur Jr. The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988)210.
[4] Ibid., 21-23
[5] Barry Rubin, You Bring the Bagels, I’ll Bring the Gospel, Sharing the Messiah with Your Jewish Neighbor (New Jersey: Chosen Books,1989)65-69.
[6] Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989). After reading all 406 pages of cultic beliefs, including three appendices, one finds at the book’s end, in Appendix C, the true doctrines of the church. She attaches none of these doctrines to the gospel, but instead includes doctrines that define a Western reading of Creeds and Church history. Gospel here is relegated to what the Church believes over and above how the church lives in light of what it believes. Jesus as active reigning king is absent.
[7] Presbyterian Church in America.
[8] R. C. Sproul, “Only One Gospel” in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed John H. Armstrong (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996)109.
[9] Matthew W. Bates, 27.
[10] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God (New York: HarperCollins, 1998)35.
[11] Alan Roxbury and Martin Robinson, in Practices for the Refounding of God’s People, The Missional Challenge of the West (New York: Church Publishing, 2018) coined the term Euro-tribal to describe the individualistic white European Protestant Christian movement of denominationalism that has degraded to a form of tribal elitism.
[12] John F. MacArthur, Jr, The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988)210.