Where Is the Good News in the Gospel We Preach. . .

WHAT MUST THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
DO TO BE SAVED? (15)

There is a story about the disenchanted member of the Church of Christ who confronted every preacher who came to his congregation for the annual “Gospel Meeting” with the question, “What is good about the good news?” They would all say that the gospel means good news, but he wasn’t hearing anything good in the gospel that they preached. It was rather bad news, or so it seemed to him. When he failed year after year to get a satisfactory answer to his question, he concluded that he was not going to hear good news at the Church of Christ and left us.

The story may be apocryphal or it may be overstated, but for those of us who know the Churches of Christ there is a disturbing familiarity to it. It is a question we must come to terms with, Where is the good news in the gospel that we preach?

It would be deemed both presumptuous and irresponsible to say that after all these years the Churches of Christ do not even know what the gospel is, and that they preach more bad news than good news. We do of course preach what we understand to be the gospel, but the question the man asked in the story prevails—Where is the good news in the gospel that we preach?

A look at some of the fallacies we commit in reference to the gospel will serve to put the question in perspective. We have been critical of big-time evangelists like Billy Graham for “not preaching the gospel” since he does not preach baptism. We fail to apply this same rule to the apostle Paul who insisted that “Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel.” If this means anything it means that there is a distinction between preaching the gospel and preaching baptism. Did any New Testament evangelist ever “preach” baptism? They preached “the gospel of the grace of God” and they preached” Jesus Christ and him crucified,” but did they ever proclaim any ordinance? Was it not always a person, the Person of Jesus Christ, that they proclaimed?

Would it not follow then that anyone who proclaims Jesus as the risen Christ and the Savior of the world is preaching the good news of the gospel, all of the gospel? Granted, the likes of Billy Graham may err in not properly instructing people how to respond to the good news by repenting of their sins and being baptized for the remission of their sins like Peter did on the day of Pentecost. But if one preaches Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world he is preaching the gospel, apart from what he might or might not say about baptism.

Did not Peter preach the gospel, all of the gospel, before he had reason to say anything about baptism? Acts 2:37 says, “When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. .” What was the this? Was it not the facts that make up the good news, such as “This Jesus God raised up, of which we are all witnesses?” It was the gospel that cut them to the heart. The record says they asked, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” It is only at this point that Peter says anything about baptism. Suppose the response had been negative and they had turned away without making any inquiry about what they should do? In that case Peter would have said nothing about baptism, for it was an act of response to the gospel, not the gospel itself.

Peter told what was good about the good news before he was asked about baptism. That is in fact why they were cut to the heart, the power of the good news. Preaching baptism doesn’t cut people to the heart, though it might convert them to an ordinance. And sometimes even the good news does not convict people. In other places in Acts, as in chap. 4, the apostles preach the gospel, but there is no response like that on Pentecost, and so nothing is said about baptism. But they no less preached the gospel.

Would it have been any different if in the history of Church of Christ preaching we had concentrated on proclaiming Jesus Christ as the good news of our salvation and said nothing about baptism except as people made inquiry as they did on Pentecost? Haven’t we been guilty of preaching an ordinance more than a Person? It is understandable that a hungry soul such as the one in our story would badger our preachers about where the good news was in the gospel they preached.

Recent studies by some of our own scholars reveal that there has not been much good news in what we have called “gospel preaching.” In a 1988 article in the Gospel Advocate F. W. Mattox explains that Church of Christ preachers have left it to “denominational preachers” to preach grace, faith, and the atonement while they “went about straightening out their misunderstanding of the place, action, and order of faith, repentance, and baptism in obtaining church membership.” Mattox notes that while others preached the atonement of Christ but not baptism, we preached baptism but not the atonement of Christ. Others preached Christ while we “straightened out” those who so preached. Alas for the iron bed of Procrustes!

Back in 1937 K. C. Moser wrote a tract on “Are We Preaching The Gospel?” in which he charged that the Churches of Christ were not preaching the gospel. By the gospel he meant the good news of Jesus Christ and him crucified. For much of his life Moser charged that we are not a Cross-centered, grace-oriented people, and even when we “preach” baptism it is treated as an arbitrary command unrelated to the Cross. In a reference to one of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s books, in which he finds not even a hint of Christ dying for our sins, Moser issued a stunning indictment of Church of Christ preaching: “If Mr. Fosdick has REJECTED the gospel, others have NEGLECTED it.” Moser examined a book of 50 Church of Christ sermons and found in none of them more than a passing reference to the gospel.

Bill Love, minister to the Bering Drive Church of Christ in Houston, in a new book titled The Core Gospel has studied the content of preaching in the Restoration Movement during its first four generations, from the early 1800’s to the 1950’s. His aim was to determine to what extent Restoration preachers preached the core gospel (the Cross) in comparison to New Testament preachers. His findings are disturbing, for while the NT preachers referred to the Cross in all the 33 sermons in the NT (100% of the time), Restoration preachers in the hundreds of sermons that Bill studied referred to the Cross only 25% of the time.

Love’s study reveals that there was a continual decline in the preaching of the Cross from the generation of Stone and Campbell (56% of their sermons pointed to the Cross) to the generation of G. C. Brewer and Foy Wallace (23% of the time). In the first two generations, before the Church of Christ was a separate church, preachers referred to the cross an average of 52% of the time, while in the two generations of Church of Christ history our preachers averaged only 25%.

I could not help but notice that the most irenic and unity-minded of our preachers were Cross-centered (Barton Stone, who never had a debate, pointed to the Cross 82 % of the time), while the more controversial did not (J. D. Tant referred to the Cross only 12% of the time). I was pleased to see that Hardeman and Wallace scored as high in Bill’s study as they did, 41% and 42% respectively. But the over-all findings are alarming. Part of Bill’ s conclusion is: “Our focus moved from Christ crucified to his church, a subtle but destructive shift,” and then adds “Once our sickness took hold, we grew weaker and weaker, more and more anemic. . Without the gospel we lost touch with the source of our faith.”

The Church of Christ is sick and without the gospel? If this charge is anything like a true appraisal, it is clear enough what we must do to be saved. We must discover the good in the good news. What is good about the good news is that God’s mercy is as magnanimous and as far reaching as the universe itself. God’s love has no limits and his grace is unconditional. We must discover, as an astronomer sights a “new” constellation in the heavens, the magnificent grace and mercy passages in Scripture and saturate our preaching with them.

Here are a few of the great truths about the good news that the Churches of Christ have virtually ignored. If we would begin to emphasize these passages in our teaching and preaching as we have passages about baptism and the church, it is predictable that a great change would be wrought among us.

“For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn. 3:17)

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” (Jn. 12:32)

“For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (Jn. 12:47)

“So that by the grace of God he might taste of death for every one.” (Heb. 2:9)

“For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men.” (Tit. 2:11)

“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:22)

“And he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 Jn. 2:2)

“For the love of God controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Cor. . 5:14-15)

“In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Cor. 5:19)

These passages all have something precious in common: each one tells us that Christ died for the sins of the entire world, all humankind, every single person, absolutely and unconditionally. However sinful your life has been, Christ died for you. You are saved by his grace, which is God’s free gift. Now that is good news! We are not preaching good news when we tell people they are lost and bound for doom and destruction. They are saved and bound for heaven! That is what is good about the good news.

So, there are two “gospels” we can preach. We can tell the world it is lost and must repent to be saved. Or we can tell the world what the Bible says in the passages quoted, that just as in Adam all died so in Christ are all made alive, that all people are saved, so one only needs to accept the free gift. We can look at the world and say every one is lost except those that the Bible says will be saved, or we can look at the world and say every one is saved except those that the Bible says will be lost. Which is good news: You are lost, therefore repent; or You are saved, won’t you accept it?

Jesus is the Savior of the world, not the potential Savior. He has not died for all men if. . . He has died for all men (period!) Christ died for you; you are saved by his grace, no strings attached. Only accept it. That is the good news of the gospel. Everyone is saved! The only exceptions are those the Bible clearly states will be lost—those who persistently and finally refuse to accept the free gift. The Bible condemns only those who refuse and continue to refuse to believe and obey Christ.

So, the Church of Christ has had it backwards and has consequently preached bad news. We have preached that everyone is lost, while the Bible teaches that everyone is saved. Everyone is saved except those who refuse the free gift. The Bible tells us who will be lost, those who “refuse to acknowledge God” (Rom. 1:28) even after he unconditionally bestowed his grace upon them. Everyone else is saved.

That’s the answer to the disheartened member of the Church of Christ who wanted to know what is good about the good news. What an answer we have for such ones. What is good about the good news is that Jesus Christ has saved the whole world, every single soul, by dying on lhe Cross for us, freely and unconditionally. Wow, that is good news!

Let’s preach the glorious good news. God has saved you through Christ, taking away all your sins, as the above verses teach. Won’t you accept it through faith and baptism? Only those who refuse will be lost. Or to put it another way, everyone is of “the elect” (another subject we virtually ignore) except those who persistently refuse to believe and obey.—the Editor