Do you Preach Too-Narrow of a Gospel?

I’ve been reading Amy Sherman’s book Kingdom Calling and have come across a provocative question: Do you preach “the too-narrow gospel”? The question is not, “do you preach the gospel too narrowly?” as in do you exclude some group of people from the gospel – racial minorities, Jews, gays, the rich, etc. The question is do we preach a gospel that is too narrow, too small? Ms. Sherman suggests in her book that the evangelical church has often been guilty of reducing the gospel to simply “having a personal relationship with Jesus”. As a Christian trying to live a Christ-centered, gospel-centered life, it would be easy to shrug off such a question and check the box for “got the gospel”. But let’s not be hasty.

            What is the gospel? “Gospel” means “good news”. The good news isn’t that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. The good news isn’t that God has a purpose for your life, or that you can have your best life now, or that God loves you and you should start thinking more positively, or that God wants you to be healthy, wealthy & comfortable. The health & wealth “gospel”, social justice gospel, works righteousness, Christianity as therapy, Jesus as an example / noble teacher to follow are not the gospel. The gospel isn’t strictly a truth to believe, it is NEWS to proclaim. The gospel at its core is that God has provided a substitute for sinners, His Son Jesus, to restore our relationship with Him. John 3:16 says it succinctly:

^ESV John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”

The proper response to the gospel is also quite clear:

^ESV Mark 1:14-15 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, ¹⁵ and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

So the good news isn’t that Jesus is a wise teacher who can help me get my life back on track if I listen to Him. The good news is that Jesus has died on the cross for my sins. And when I repent and believe I’m trading my sins for His righteousness.

So the core of the gospel is that through Christ you can have a personal relationship with God. So in that sense we do preach a “narrow gospel”. There is only one way (John 14:6) of salvation, one way to get right with your Creator: to stop trying to earn salvation by your own efforts and trust in the work of Jesus Christ. No other gospel will save. Belief in God isn’t sufficient (James 2:19). Even believing true things about Jesus isn’t sufficient. You and I must believe in Jesus, i.e. trust ourselves to Him. The Apostle Peter is blunt:

^ESV Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

So evangelicals are right to proclaim the good news that you can have a relationship with Jesus and to proclaim it ‘narrowly’ in the sense of justification by faith (vs. works).

            However if in proclaiming the gospel “narrowly” we teach only about the individual restoration of my relationship with the Creator we DO teach a “too-narrow gospel”. The gospel is not just a “me and Jesus” thing, a private personal individualistic spiritual thing. The personal restoration of relationship with the Creator IS good news, but the good news is better / greater / broader than that! For the gospel is not only that Christ restores your relationship with God, it is that Christ also restores your relationship with yourself, your relationships with others and your relationship with creation itself. If the gospel we preach only impacts the vertical dimension between me and Jesus we are preaching “too-narrow” of a gospel. The power of the true gospel is more comprehensive than that. What Jesus accomplished on the cross restores four fundamental human relationships: my relationship with God, the inward relationship with myself, the relationships I have with others and my relationship with creation.

            Personal forgiveness of sins IS part of the gospel, but it is only part of it. Ms. Sherman is on to something. Evangelicals (myself included) have stressed what the gospel saves us from (sin and death) but have not adequately stressed what the gospel saves us for. Perhaps that is why evangelical churches have excelled at gaining converts but not making followers of Jesus. Let us embrace the wholeness of the gospel and let us follow the Prince of Peace in working toward restoration in every dimension – horizontal and vertical.