I want you to consider which gospel you have and are embracing? (Pause)
In my experience most Evangelicals think “the gospel” is fixed and defined. Is summarized in a few sentences, called the Romans Road or the ABCs to getting saved. Usually treated like it is a 3-minute exclamation point for the sermon.
But I think there are actually many different gospels preached in evangelical churches.
A gospel is better seen as the sum total of our thoughts about God, it includes what the world is, how it works, why it and we exist.
That is a more thorough description of a gospel.
“How to get to heaven” through Jesus Christ, as wonderful and true as that is, is only part of the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, as was brought into the world with Christ. There is much more to hear and to preach.
Like a prostitute selling and twisting a great and precious thing, for money. The purpose is off. Similarly when the purpose of the preaching gets other than the Lord speaking through a person, then the emphasis is departed from the Lord’s intent for engaging in preaching in the first place. Then it often becomes not just off-base a little, but false.
“How to get to heaven” many evangelicals have surgically removed, and made it the whole, then sprinkled 52 other gospels around it for other reasons. So much sprinkling that they are almost false gospels (depending on the preacher), because the emphases are so far off on tangents.
Gospels, when embraced produce certain types of loyal and committed followers. The gospel of Islam produces a certain type of wildly committed radical follower.
Similarly in Christ certain gospels produce the type of Christian individuals and communities.
There is a gospel that produces teams of Christians who hire someone to gather around, a professional to lead and to head and to orchestrate the meetings. Someone who serves to isolate them from those they disagree with and don’t like. Someone to tell them when to come, how much to give, when to sit, when to leave, when to repeat after me, when to fellowship. And through sermons someone to tell them what is the mind of Christ as a weekly audience.
But fortunately as we read about in scripture there is also a gospel that connects people to the spirit of Jesus Christ. Who then gather as bodies of Christians. Who gather at his leading. Who leads a people to all contribute and who all one by one prophecy the greatness of Jesus Christ one. They allow Jesus Christ to lead, head and even orchestrate each meeting through every member in submission and in cooperation. And they together uncover the will and the mind of Christ. Assembling daily as the body of Jesus Christ in the earth in order to display the glory of God in the earth, to challenge the principalities and powers. And to usher fallen and dead humanity into the new humanity which has already begun in Jesus Christ.
Someday if the Lord allows it, I’ll teach and preach that glorious gospel.
