Trevin Wax and the Gospel

It may seem odd to some, but what the gospel is has become a significant discussion. For some it is about God’s love, for some it’s about God’s wrath, for others it’s about justice, and for others it’s about joining a church. Trevin Wax, at LifeWay Christian Resources, has authored a new book on the gospel that both seeks to define the gospel and then also criticizes cheap counterfeits being offered today: Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope.

Trevin defines the gospel along three fronts, what he calls a a three-legged stool: the gospel is the Story, the gospel is an announcement, and the gospel is community. That is, the Story is Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration (and here he draws on the common framing of the gospel story, but also a cosmic redemption).

And the gospel is also an announcement: God, in Jesus, lived a perfect life in our place, bore the penalty for our sin, was raised to launch new creation, and is now exalted.

And the gospel is also community: we have to respond individually in repentance and faith (no baptism in those Baptists!) but in order to become part of the new community of Christ, the church.

Each of these has counterfeits in our world, which can be seen in the image, and I don’t see unfair reductionisms in Trevin’s sketches here: the story has been reduced and distorted into a therapeutic gospel and into a judgmentless gospel. The announcement is distorted into a moralistic and quietistic gospel. The community has been distorted into an activist gospel and a churchless gospel. I’d have put activist in the second group, and I’d have included a church-is-salvation framework that at times motivates pockets of the church, including sectarianism and overly zealous sacramentalism.