Some reflections en route to denying the gospel
By David Gibson

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. (Heb 2:1)

Introduction

You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailments. (1)

Proclaiming, assuming, denying"”it is a story that could be told many times over, and is repeated in the lives of many a movement. (2)  In this article, I want to suggest that evangelicalism is exactly one such "movement', and to examine what evangelicalism in the middle stage, the assumed stage, looks like.

Firstly, let me suggest a definition:

Assumed evangelicalism believes and signs up to the gospel. It certainly does not deny the gospel. But in terms of priorities, focus, and direction, assumed evangelicalism begins to give gradually increasing energy to concerns other than the gospel and key evangelical distinctives, to gradually elevate secondary issues to a primary level, to be increasingly worried about how it is perceived by others and to allow itself to be increasingly influenced both in content and method by the prevailing culture of the day.

It is relatively straightforward to point to individuals, churches, movements and institutions that are clearly either proclaiming the gospel or denying it; it is extremely difficult to spot assumed evangelicalism and to evaluate and critique it. It is assumed evangelicalism. It acknowledges all the right things. There is an in-between-ness about assumed evangelicalism and the crossing of boundaries is notoriously hard to see until you have arrived on the other side.

And so, wary of the risk of being judgemental, and fully aware that we are, by the nature of the case, speaking about potentialities more than actualities, let's see what we can say about assumed evangelicalism. What does the phase actually look like? What are its characteristics? We can address the issue positively by asking two questions to determine which of the three stages best describes ourselves and our ministries.

1. To what extent does the gospel dictate our priorities in life, and the visions and strategies of our churches, movements and institutions?

Evangelical Church"”and an assumed gospel

Imagine Soundville Evangelical Church around the corner. A typical evangelical church with a Sunday school and youth work, a mid-week prayer meeting, two services on a Sunday with lively hymns, contemporary songs and half-hour sermons. How would we know if this was a church that was beginning to just assume the gospel? There could be at least two symptoms:

Legalism
It is quite possible that the gospel is preached, but the Christian congregation do not make the connection between that gospel and their own lives. The gospel is regarded as being for the outsiders, the non-Christians who ever so rarely slip in to one of the services. And, when we limit the gospel to unbelievers we begin to adopt non-gospel ways of relating to God and to others, aka, legalism.

But in any church legalism may also exist in other forms, such as everyone constantly appearing sorted and problem-free, or preaching that constantly scolds and sets unrealistic standards.

The antidote to legalism is always to recover the sheer scandal of the gospel of grace. Expounding Romans 6:1, Martyn Lloyd-Jones had this penetrating insight:

There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this: that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret to mean that " because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace " If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding then it is not the gospel. (3)

In other words, the effect of truly grasping the gospel is to find ourselves amazed at the fact that what we do adds nothing and takes away nothing from what God has done for us in the Lord Jesus.

Licence
The other symptom of assuming the gospel is exactly what we meet in Romans 6💯 licence"”thinking that because the gospel of grace is so amazing it really does not matter how we live from now on.

The most common form this takes is moral licence"”I am saved by grace so my sexual immorality or my gossiping and coveting does not really bother God. In Soundville Evangelical Church there may be some Christians who are assuming the gospel like this, with very real and serious consequences.

However there is another type of licence and this is probably more likely to afflict the church as a whole: practical licence. What happens here is that the gospel is assumed as being true and important but actual church practice has little to do with it. So, for instance, a church that is just assuming the gospel in this way will begin to foster distorted spirituality, a spirituality that seeks to draw near to God other than "by the blood of Jesus" (see Heb 10:19-20). We need to realize that, if it is the blood of Jesus that draws us near to God, then singing, religious art, breathtaking scenery and church buildings do not. According to the gospel, we are no closer to God in the pew than the pub.
2. To what extent do the key features of evangelicalism dictate our priorities in life, and the visions and strategies of our churches, movements and institutions?

Evangelical study of theology"”and assumed biblical authority
In the book Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life, the senior scholar Professor Paul Woodson writes to the young Timothy Journeyman who has just embarked on theological study:

I doubt very much that evangelicals are wise to pursue academic respectability. What we need is academic responsibility. There is a world of difference. Elevating academic respectability to the level of controlling desideratum is an invitation to theological and spiritual compromise.  (4)

Academic respectability and academic responsibility adopt different approaches to the matter of biblical authority. Respectability will assume that the Bible is truthful and authoritative, but realizes that to draw attention to this in the academy will often bring scorn and derision. And so it keeps quiet, and keeps evangelical convictions apart from academic study.

Responsibility, on the other hand, holds onto biblical authority, even when that is not a position shared in the wider academic world. Striving to be responsible means students will work to the best of their ability, weighs all the options, thinks openly and creatively, and reads widely"”but will be governed by the desire to remain faithful to the Bible and not the academy.

Evangelical Movements"”and the assumed cross
I recently read through the magazine of an influential evangelical charitable organization. The word that I met most frequently was "justice' and its many applications to various socio-political and economic crises and the very right need for action and intervention. What is being obscured is the fact that God's justice would consume the oppressed refugee in a shanty town as much as it would consume the privileged westerner. The storyline of the whole Bible presents us with the cross as the place where God uniquely demonstrates his justice with the result that, as one writer has put it, "What Golgotha secured for us was not sympathy but immunity". (5)

I do not wish to be misunderstood here. I am not suggesting that organizations like this do not believe what I have stated about the cross. However, by just assuming this truth, rather than clearly and repeatedly articulating it, there is vast potential for the next generation to deny what they have simply never had the chance to understand.

Conclusion
In each of the areas it is vital to realize that the temptations we face are often exceedingly subtle. Some evangelical biographies and histories give the impression that difficult decisions only need to be made when we reach a watershed moment, a clear-cut choice between truth and error. In reality, such crisis points come about because of daily decisions, made on a minute scale and over a period of time, to either assume evangelical distinctives or actively articulate them. Individually, every day, we face the choice whether to sit under the Bible alone, to run to the cross alone and look to Christ alone or to begin to shift our gaze on to other things. Once we begin simply to assume these truths, then we are already beginning to stop conducting ourselves "in step with the truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:14). The potential consequences for ourselves are harmful; for the generation following us they are disastrous.

David Gibson is a postgraduate student at Aberdeen (Scotland) and editor of The Biblical Theology Briefings ([url=http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/]http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/[/url]). This is an extract of an article which first appeared in the RTSF Newsletter From Athens to Jerusalem, Vol 3, Issue 4, Autumn 2002. To read the article in full, visit www.beginningwithmoses.org

E N D N O T E S

1. D. A. Carson, The Primacy of Expository Preaching, Tape 1. Address given at Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, 1995.
2. See Risto Lehtonen, Story of a Storm, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1998.
3. D. M. Lloyd-Jones, “The New Man: An Exposition of Chapter 6”, Banner of Truth, London, 1972, p. 8.
4. D. A. Carson and J. D. Woodbridge, Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life, Crossway, Illinois, 1993, p. 174.
5. Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ, IVP, Downers Grove, 1998, p. 178.