Authority is in the Spirit
For a man to own his sin—not pass the blame on to others, and agree with God about his sin—is supernatural.
There is nothing more beautiful and powerful in this life than the love of God displayed to us in the gospel of truth by which we are saved. But let us remember that without the truth there is no love. Love and truth are irrevocably tied to one another. They are different sides to the same coin. You can’t divorce the truth and love from each other, any more than you can divorce the truth and love from God.
Believing that you can withhold the truth and be loving is like having a beautiful car without an engine; it might be nice to look at, but it can’t take you anywhere and really, it's good for nothing. The truth and love of God converge in the gospel more so than anywhere else in human history. The gospel isn’t just the beginning of the Christian life, it is the Christian life.
Gospel Centered
I have been accused of trying to make everything I teach or preach about the gospel. I have been called a one-dimensional preacher who always tries to make every sermon lead back to the cross. I hope that this accusation is true, and I pray that I am found guilty of this without a doubt when I stand before God one day. Everything in the church and the life of a Christian should be centered around the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially matters pertaining to Christian discipleship. That being said, it appears that often today in what we call Christian discipleship the gospel is not primary. Now I must be clear, I don’t think that most churches or pastors in the world would disagree with the statement that the gospel must be central in discipleship, but in practice I believe many do disagree by what they give emphasis to, what they focus on and what they often leave out.
We tend to try and make discipleship seem more appealing by focusing on practicality or what people think they need rather than focusing on what Jesus says and what the Bible focuses on. While you might sell a lot more books that way or get better speaking invitations because of it, what gets produced will be lacking and deficient. Please understand I’m not saying that I have a better method than others. I’m only saying that we must carefully search God’s Word and obey it realizing it has all the answers we need as Christians.
Too often today the gospel is viewed as something we do before we enter into discipleship, but the truth is, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the central point of all discipleship. We will never outgrow it and we will never move past it. It’s the measuring stick we continually use to check our intentions, expose our flesh and compare ourselves to the finished work of Christ Jesus our Lord.
True Discipleship Over Comfort
The atmosphere today in many churches is so centered on church growth at any cost, personal comfort and what we want God to do for us, we often fail to push people towards the narrow path of the gospel. That place where our life is confronted with the message of Jesus that tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him; to lay everything down for him and to give up complete control of our lives. You can’t disciple someone you are pandering to, someone you are trying to entertain or impress or someone you are trying to sell something to.
The gospel continually challenges us through purposeful examination to compare ourselves to Jesus, who he is and what he demands from us as his followers. One of the biggest problems we face is that many within the church of today treat the gospel as if it is something we present to people once in the beginning, get them to “accept it” and then we are off to the more important things of Christianity.
Teaching people that they can accept Christ without following him has made a crisis of sorts in the area of Christian discipleship. Expecting people to live out true Christianity when they are still unconverted is not only foolish and unproductive, but it is also cruel.
The gospel is not only the beginning of becoming a Christian, but also the center of Christianity. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the lens through which we should view everything else. This is why we must preach the gospel often and in its fullness. A church that doesn’t preach about sin and final judgement isn’t really preaching the gospel. A pastor who doesn’t labor to stress the exclusivity of Christ in his preaching leaves room for the people under the sound of his voice to make dangerous assumptions about who God really is and what it truly means to be saved.
The truth is, church consulting groups and church growth experts go to great lengths to encourage pastors not to be divisive, but the gospel is divisive by nature. Its wisdom cries out over and over again the message of Jesus himself: repent for the kingdom of God has come near. But churches seem to grow faster when you put just enough truth in to draw in undiscerning Christians and leave out enough truth to comfort the conscience of the false convert and unbeliever. This creates unhealthy numerical growth in churches as well as false security for people who have not truly committed their lives to Christ.
Making Followers, Not Spectators
You can fill churches with people who think they are saved when they really are not, but you can’t make them disciples, because true disciples are followers of Jesus, not mere spectators. Churches are full of spectators, people who come for entertainment and encouragement. People who are very interested to know what services the church provides, but not very interested in being a servant and definitely not interested in being a disciple.
The gospel cuts through all of this. Of course, we want those outside of Christ to come to our church and, yes, we want to reach out to them to draw them in, but for the sake of presenting the gospel not to merely fill a seat. The gospel is good news for a sinful and lost mankind not an initiation into a social club. A major part of sharing the good news is sharing the bad news that makes the good news good. What does this mean? Without the awareness that we are all sinners headed for eternal damnation, we don’t really see the work of Christ in the gospel as the good news that it actually is.
A true gospel preacher should always be dividing the room he is preaching in. Preaching the gospel in its fullness does this. We should always make clear when we are addressing Christians and when we are addressing lost people—drawing unbelievers to repentance and encouraging those in Christ to keep fighting the good fight. But even Christians need the message of repentance and often this helps us continually evaluate ourselves and test ourselves in light of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
In Christ,
Pastor Joshua
Joshua West is a pastor, evangelist, and author. He is also director of the World Challenge Pastors Network.
