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?
