The Importance of Gospel Clarity

I think we can all agree that the gospel is foundational to what it means to be a Christian. It is by and through the gospel that we come to salvation. Paul tells us in Romans 1:16 that he is “Not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The question is, do we all agree on the gospel, and are we faithful to proclaim it clearly and regularly? There has never been a time when gospel clarity and faithfulness were unimportant. At the heart of the 16th-century Reformation was the understanding of the gospel. We can see this when we look at Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, the posting of which we often credit as starting the protestant reformation. The first couple of statements posit that repentance, not penance, is the correct response to the gospel proclamation. Earlier, in the 4th century, the Council of Nicaea dealt with the full deity of Christ, an issue central to the gospel message. If Jesus is not fully divine, he cannot fulfill the demands of divine justice. I did not choose these two events at random, but chose them because I believe they demonstrate some important truths about how we are to understand and communicate the gospel.

Essential Elements vs. Underlying Realities and Proper Responses

In our own day, we are on the backside of the gospel centered movement. Leaders like John Piper, Timothy Keller, Matthew Chandler, R.C. Sproul, and many others proclaimed the centrality of the gospel in every aspect of human life over and over. These were the men who shaped my first understandings of gospel faithfulness when the Lord drew me back to the church. I am immensely thankful to each of them for their clarity and faithfulness. But I think something was missing from the movement. The gospel centered movement rightly focused on the essential elements of the gospel message, that is, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, but often, likely unintentionally, failed to show how the gospel depends on foundational principles and ties together the whole of Christian theology. It is not enough to get the essential elements of the gospel correct. If we are to faithfully and clearly proclaim the gospel, we must show how the underlying realities and the proper response are necessarily connected to the gospel.

Nicaea and the Full Divinity of Christ

In the 4th century, as the church emerged from centuries of persecution from the Roman government, a council was called to discuss the issue of Arianism. Arianism is the heretical teaching that Jesus is a created being, and not coeternal and coequal with the Father. The church fathers at this council recognized the dangers of this teaching. They gave us the Nicaean Creed, which would be updated later that century at the Council of Constantinople, to provide us with the creed that we know today. The question of Christ's deity is not just an academic question for theologians and church leaders. It is a gospel question, not in the sense that it is part of the essential elements of the gospel, but in the sense that it is an underlying foundational reality of the gospel. The Westminster Larger Catechism in its 38th question makes this clear. It asks, "Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God?" And answers, "It was requisite that the Mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience and intercession; and to satisfy God’s justice, procure his favor, purchase a peculiar people, give his Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation."

The unique unity of full divinity and full humanity in Christ's person allows him to be our mediator and savior. To deny either Christ's deity or humanity is to deny the gospel. I think most Christians understand this, but it is not often communicated as part of our gospel teaching. We separate these ideas into our teaching on the Doctrine of the Trinity, if they are taught at all to the broader church body. I know that this is not true of everyone, but it does seem to be a trend for many.

When I first came to the church I am an elder of, the people were undoubtedly gospel people. But their depth of knowledge was limited. No one had given them the meat of scripture, and the gospel they knew, while true, was shallow. By God's grace, we have been growing together.

Reformation Repentance

When we focus on the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, we see a different focus. The focus is on the correct response to the gospel, or, to be more precise, how we take hold of the gospel. In the introduction, I mentioned Luther's 95 Theses. Luther initially intended these not to be a proclamation of separation from Rome but an attempt to debate and clarify some issues that he was starting to see in Rome's teaching. He had noticed that the Latin Vulgate had incorrectly translated the Greek "metanoeō" (Repent) as "Poenitentiam agite" (Do penance), which led him to state, "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent" (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." (Thesis 1) As the years pass and the Reformation gets into full swing, the importance of justification by faith alone and repentance takes center stage. Perhaps this can be most clearly seen in Rome's response to the Reformation at the Council of Trent. Cannon 9 of the Council's 6th session states, "If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema."

The point here is to highlight that all of this is not just some tangential element of Christianity, but is foundational to our understanding and response to the gospel. What Rome gets wrong is its desire to add works to justification. They want to add cooperation "in order to obtain the grace of justification," whereas Protestants have long understood that Christ alone is just and the justifier. This is a gospel issue. If we are neglecting to teach the full sufficiency of Christ's work in justification, then we are not genuinely teaching the gospel clearly. If we fail to call sinners to repentance and faith, we are not teaching the gospel clearly.

Summary

My point in writing this is to encourage elders and teachers in the church to teach the whole counsel of God. We cannot stop at the essential elements of Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection and think that we have fully communicated the gospel. We certainly must not have less than these essentials, but we do our churches a disservice if we do not give them the whole picture. The doctrine of God, the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, and many other doctrines are essential underlying elements of the gospel. The thing I think the gospel centered movement got right is that it called us to see how the gospel affects every area of life and doctrine. No part of Scripture is not tied to the message of the gospel. The reality of original sin tells us of our need for the gospel, and eschatology helps us to understand what awaits those who have been saved by the gospel. All of it is important. We are not faithfully communicating the gospel if we are not faithfully teaching the whole counsel of God. The good news of the kingdom of God is that though we were born in our trespasses and sins, the Lord, the creator of all, sent his only Son to take on our humanity. Being fully man and fully God, the Lord Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, fully satisfying every demand of the law. Something that we are incapable of. He came to seek and save the lost, to call sinners to repentance, and ultimately to die the death that we deserve on the cross. On the cross, our Lord faced the full wrath of God as our substitutionary atonement. Three days later, he rose victorious over the grave, showing that death had no power over him. He then ascended to heaven, where he will one day return to judge all of humanity. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every mouth will confess that Jesus is Lord. If we have not been united to Christ through repentance and faith in his atoning work, then we will face the full wrath of God. If we have been united with Christ, we are no longer under judgment. We have been adopted into his family and will share the inheritance prepared for us. We will sit down at the wedding feast of the Lamb and enjoy being in the presence of the Lord for all eternity.

Soli Deo Gloria