Where’s The Gospel?

“God loves you and accepts you just as you are.”  These were the words I heard as we recently had a guest speaker in our church. The rest of his sermon was built on that very premise. We didn’t have to understand anything, simply, “God loves you and accepts you just as you are.” This phrase couldn’t be more wrong.

Why is this phrase wrong? For starters, it is impossible for God to love us just as we are because we are sinners and God is holy. Where God is there can be no sin. Let me clarify a couple of things. Throughout the sermon there was no mention of our sin, or the need of a Savior. There wasn’t any mention of repentance and change. It was a feel good type of sermon and the kind of thing that is in too many churches. If we don’t care about peoples souls then we should continue to preach this way. However, if we have a desire to see people meet Jesus, be radically transformed and spend eternal life with the almighty creator God, then we need to be clear of what the gospel says.

Here are a couple examples of the gospel in a sentence:

Mark Dever:

God has made promises to bring His people to Himself and He is fulfilling them all through Christ.

Kevin DeYoung:

A holy God sends his righteous Son to die for unrighteous sinners so we can be holy and live happily with God forever.

Doug Wilson:

Scripture tells us the story of how a Garden is transformed into a Garden City, but only after a dragon had turned that Garden into a howling wilderness, a haunt of owls and jackals, which lasted until an appointed warrior came to slay the dragon, giving up his life in the process, but with his blood effecting the transformation of the wilderness into the Garden City.

Are you discerning when you listen to preaching? Do you have solid bible preachers in your church? We have quickly become a generation that accepts everything as truth. I don’t say this about all people but far too often we won’t think for ourselves. In a day of Google and Wikipedia, it’s easier than ever to be lazy in our thought life. Christianity is about news and news takes evaluating and thinking. It’s something important to remember; the preaching of God’s word can either be an act of worship and helpful for teaching, instruction and rebuking or if it is not that, it is a hindrance and essentially a waste of time. Preacher, here is a better catch phrase — God loves you and accepts you because of what Jesus has done and He refuses to let you stay in your old way of sin because He loves you that much.

“A man who first tried to guess ‘what the public wants,’ and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and scoundrel”- C.S. Lewis