Thoughts on Evangelism, pt. 3: How "Accepting Christ" Leaves Many People Lost

Here's my final thought for the moment about the state of the preaching of the Gospel in American evangelical churches. (Special thanks to research assistant Mike McDaniel for the great follow up to our first thought last Friday).

The Cross-less Evangelical Gospel

Very few presentations of the "Gospel" by evangelicals that I hear mention, in any substantive way, the cross of Christ. Most "evangelistic" sermons I hear--whether at churches, student events, college campuses and  during crusades-- do talk about our "need" of Christ. For example, I hear how much better our lives would be with Jesus; how He's the only we can really "change"; how He's started a revolution we need to be a part of; even how we are eternally doomed if we don't receive Him as Lord and Savior. But hardly ever do I hear what it means to be guilty before God and separated from Him and how our only hope is found in what God in Christ has done to save us.

In listening to the Gospel presentations of some of the most "effective" evangelistic ministries in America, it is not uncommon to not even hear the death of Christ and an explanation of what it means mentioned in the call to salvation. I hear a lot of talk about "accepting Christ"--again, because He can free us from addictions, how He wants to use us to reach the world, how He can give us purpose, how real disciples love the poor, and etc. But nothing about God's righteousness, our hopeless guilt, and Christ's awesome substitutionary work.

We have turned "accepting Christ" into the saving act itself, rather than the substitutionary work of Christ on our behalf. Now, it seems, "accepting Christ" saves us, even if we don't know we are "accepting" about Him. It's like we evangelicals have gone Catholic and turned the "salvation prayer" into a kind of Protestant ritual that bestows grace whether or not we understand the reality of it. Or, if you are familiar with 20th century liberal Protestantism, we evangelicals act (in practice) like Rudolph Bultmann who said that salvation had nothing to do with Jesus' historical death but His dying and raising again existentially in our hearts. We act as if the existential act of "accepting Christ" saves us rather than what Christ did 2000 years ago on the cross. In other words, we're calling people to accept Christ and be saved without ever really preaching the Gospel to them.

The Gospel is not primarily about accepting Christ. Calling people to "accept Christ" is simply a way, and not really even a good way, of expressing what it means to throw ourselves on the mercy of God as promised to us in Christ's substitutionary death. That is the Gospel that must be understood for someone to properly "accept Christ." People to whom we are speaking don't naturally "get" that, either--it goes against every fiber of our self-righteous, self-justifying beings. Our natural proclivity, our innate religion, believes "I obey, therefore I will be accepted." The Gospel says exactly the opposite: "I AM accepted; THEREFORE I obey." We can't preach the Gospel without explaining the great truth of Christ's substitutionary work and our reception of it by simple faith in and surrender to what He did. Any other "conversion" experience does what Jesus condemned the Pharisees for, i.e. makes the convert "twice a son of hell." Is it not possible this condemnation of Christ (Matt 23:15) is applicable to the evangelical church at large?

One of my favorite Bible commentators, Graeme Goldsworthy, says this:

"There are evangelicals who are so earnest in calling for decisions for Jesus that they seem to forget to tell people why they should decide for Jesus. I remember listening to a speaker at an evangelistic meeting whose only mention of the death of Jesus was a passing reference in his closing prayer. I was acting as an advisor to follow up on the after-meeting counseling. I spoke to a young couple who had heard the talk, gone out to the front, been 'counseled' and then brought to me. They obviously had not heard any gospel in either the address or the counseling. They had no idea about being justified by faith in the doing and dying of Christ. It seems the decision can become everything. People are exhorted to turn to Christ, to receive Christ, to ask Jesus into their hearts, and the like, even when they have been given no substantial idea at all of who Jesus was and what He has done to save us." (Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, 173-74).

I don't mean to denigrate, at all, calling for a decision when we preach the Gospel. The Gospel, properly preached, always calls for a decision. I'm just saying that if we're not leading people to "decide" to stop trusting themselves and start trusting Christ's death and resurrection alone for salvation, whatever decision we're leading people to make is the wrong one.

Again, do you think I'm being too hard on this? What has your experience been like?

Comments

[Tom Thompson]

**Edited by administrator**

[micah driscoll]

All of these calls for decisions, commitments, prayers, dedications, etc, seem to leave out the God ordained word, namely, believe - trust in or rely upon. We are not saved by our commitments, our prayers, our resolve, but by Christ's commitment, His prayers, His resolve to stay upon that cross until our sins were atoned for. We are simply called to believe in the Gospel, the power of God for our salvation, through the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thanks JD for tackling this issue and posing the question about Matt. 23:15.

[Curt Treece]

JD,

We were just dealing with this last night at our SummitLIFE group. We are studying through the book of 1st John and were in chapter 3 last night.

Verse 1 says "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God..." and verse 9 says "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning...he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God."

In our discussion, I asked everyone how it is that we can be called children of God and then how it is that we are "born of God". The answers talked about believing in Jesus and following him and being confident in his promises. I pressed further to get them to explain clearly what was accomplished by Christ.

It was very apparent that there is a tendancy to completely skip over the actual good news of what God accomplished for us in Christ through is perfect sacrifice and resurrection, straight to our response to the gospel as if the latter replaces the former as the gospel.

I tried to make it very clear that if we think we are sharing the gospel with people, and the substance of our message is to believe in Jesus and follow him, we have completely missed it. My faith and "commitment" to Jesus is not the gospel.

Anywho...I plan to review with my group Graeme Goldsworthy's chapter in "According to Plan" called "I am the First and the Last" where he says, "it is important to keep the gospel itself clearly distinct from our response to it or from the results of it in our lives and in the world...We should not make faith part of the gospel itself. It would be absurd to call people to have faith in faith! While the new birth bears a close relationshiop to faith in Christ, it is a mistake to speak of the new birth as if it were itself the gospel. Faith in the new birth as such will not save us."

[Thad Parker]

So Jesus is layin the smack down for them making converts??? Hardly. Jesus rips 'em a new one because the converts have no proper example to follow since the leaders themselves are missing the forest for the trees. This forces me to ask the question of myself; "Is the Cross of Christ of utmost centrality in my own faith?" If not, then those woes are upon me. Great point here JD.

[Tony]

I could not agree more. We have completely substituted the gospel and Christ's work on the cross for "making a decision." The evangelical church (especially in the south) is full of people that have "made a decision" and are now trying to live out a moral life which they have mistaken for the Christian life. Morality is mistaken for Christianity.

In "How People Change" Lane and Tripp nail it in the first chapter. They talk about all the things that we use to replace the Gospel. The problem is that it is very subtle and most (again in the south) have never heard preaching that truly focus on the gospel. They focus on the change that will be wrought as we "accept Christ". It is very hard to see if you have not heard and seen the real thing. It is simply what we have always heard.

[Pastor J.D.]

Tom... thanks for your comment. I did not, however, intend for my comments to be a criticism of the conference you and I were at together. I removed your comment so that it would not be construed that way.

[Adam]

J.D., one of my issues, and one that seems common in our culture, is that we don't want to see ourselves as "guilty before God and separated from Him." We gloss over or downplay our sin and its consequences (guilt and separation). We justify it by saying it's not THAT bad compared to other sins. As you preached a few weeks ago, we recognize that it feels good or gives us pleasure and therefore think that it's permissable (or that God is intentionally withholding something from us).

Simply put, we can ignore or diminish the great work of the cross because we ignore or diminish the ugliness, severity and reality of our sin. I'm as guilty or more than the next person, and pray that I stop settling for a goal of being "a good person." (Side note: the "good person" of society may be another "burning bush," with it's inability to satisfy or mean the same thing to different people.)

[Nicholas Crabb]

Who does all of the sweet graphics for Summit?

[D PLUM]

Nailed it. Love it. Thanks!

D Plum
Mosaic Church DC, Lead Pastor

[Lee Peoples]

Great article. Often times as a pastor I get into coversations with people and they tell me they are saved because they prayed to recieve Christ years ago.

I ask them what they believe about Christ and many of them cannot even tell me the basics of the gospel.

I believe that we are called to call people to make a decision for Christ. However we must be clear in what we are presenting.

Often the simple concept of repentance and trusting in Christ is left out of many calls for decisions.

Great work!

Lee Peoples
www.stewbaptist.org
www.leepeoples.wordpress.com