I grew up in a Pentecostal church where every Sunday the preacher railed at us about various sins that we either had committed or were thinking about committing or very soon would commit. He taught us that every time you commit a sin, you lost your salvation; so you had to come to the altar and re-give your life to Jesus Christ once again.
That’s called preaching the law, and it was full of should. You should. You should do this. You should do that. You shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t do that.
Now when I was a teenager in the 70s, I noticed a shift in the church. It shifted away from this law of “you should” to a new charismatic movement of “you can.” You can do this. You can prosper. You can dream any dream. You can have anything you want. You can just name it and claim it. You can be all that you want to be, and God is there to assist you.
As a matter of fact, the reason you want to get saved is because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. If you come into a church and you hear the pastor say, “God loves you” and you’re thinking to yourself, “Excellent, because I love myself too!” Then he says, “God has a wonderful plan for your life,” and you say, “Beautiful, because I have wonderful plans for my life too! This God sounds like he could be a great help, a great assistant to my agenda of loving myself greatly and having a wonderful plan for my life.” So people join churches based on a false gospel.
During that time, we shifted from a ‘gospel’ that said, “You should do this, and you shouldn’t do that” to a ‘gospel’ that says, “There’s nothing you can’t do. It’s still all about you!”
No matter which way this so-called ‘gospel’ flip-flops, it’s still a man-centered gospel.
The gospel is not ‘you can.’ The gospel is not ‘you should.’ The gospel is ‘Jesus did.’ Once you accept that, you’re finally at a place where the resurrection power of Jesus can lift you up and his righteousness can start working in you and through you.