There is an increasingly positive emphasis in the Church-at-large, which I’m sure would have sat uncomfortably with the 1st-Century Gospel pioneers. Pronouncements of God’s ‘unconditional’ love and forgiveness in Jesus at best undermine, and at worst eliminate, the seriousness of sin and the absolute requirement of repentance.
For example, in promoting the Church of England’s report on LGBTQ+ matters in education, Valuing All God’s Children, Archbishop Justin Welby wrote:
Central to Christian theology is the truth that every single one of us is made in the image of God. Every one of us is loved unconditionally by God…This guidance helps schools to offer the Christian message of love, joy and celebration of our humanity without exception or exclusion.1
Well-intentioned posters outside many of our churches also illustrate the trend, such as “Somebody up there loves you”2 which (in tiny print) refers to John 3:16, neatly avoiding any mention of the danger of perishing. Others proclaim messages such as “Messed up?…Join the club”,3 or, without any Scripture, “Every mistake you’ve made erased through Christ”.4 In such cases it appears that catchy marketing and graphics skills are devaluing the Gospel: ‘messing up’ and making ‘mistakes’ fall well short of the universal problem of deliberate, original sin.
Trends in charismatic worship music also over-emphasise the goodness and love of God, usually without reverence for the seriousness of sin, the high price of redemption or the cost of following Jesus. Recent songs being used widely in congregational worship speak of the love of God as ‘reckless’ and of God himself as “madly in love with you”.
It’s as if we’ve followed the philosophy encapsulated in the 1944 secular chorus, “Man, they said we’d better accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative…”5 Overestimating humanity’s power to resist temptation and denying the true Gospel, this once well-known ditty at least had an explicitly negative attitude to sin.
Good News and Bad News
As we turn to Scripture, we find the first mention of the word ‘salvation’ in Jacob’s prophecy for his 12 sons and the tribes that would issue from them (Gen 49). Though Jacob was given the amazing promise of ‘Shiloh’, the Messiah (v10), he also had quite a few negative revelations about his descendants. Following the serpent-like picture of Dan, Jacob cries out longingly, “I wait for your salvation [yeshu’ah], O Lord” (v18).
The Hebrew word ‘yeshu’ah’ means ‘rescue’ or ‘deliverance’. This is promised literally by God in many texts. Psalm 96 is quite revealing. Written by David for the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (see 1 Chronicles 16), the opening verse exhorts singing in praise to the Lord and is followed in verse two by the command: “Proclaim the good news of his salvation [yeshu’ah] from day to day” (NKJV) (interestingly, the Septuagint Greek uses the verb ‘euagglizo’ for ‘Proclaim the good news’, recognisable in our English word ‘evangelise’).
Pronouncements of God’s ‘unconditional’ love and forgiveness in Jesus at best undermine, and at worst eliminate, the seriousness of sin and the absolute requirement of repentance.
This Psalm famously continues to exhort praise and worship but then, more soberingly, exhorts (v8) “fear before Him, all the earth”, using a Hebrew word that means ‘tremble’. The reason to fear appears in verses 10 and 13: because the Lord will come to judge the earth with righteousness. Thus the ‘Good News’ of ‘salvation’ is primarily about deliverance from the judgment of God. The Good News depends for its meaning on the bad news!
The ‘Apostle of love’, John, having asserted “God so loved the world”, also writes “he who does not believe is condemned already…because their deeds are evil” (John 3:18-19), whilst Peter, in the Temple courts, had no compunction in declaring to his religious countrymen, “Repent therefore, and be converted, so that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19).
Really Bad News
When Paul wrote to the early Church in Rome, he asserted that he was “ready to preach the Gospel” there (1:15), because “It is the power of God to [produce] salvation” (v16), it reveals “the righteousness of God” (v17) and it reveals “the wrath of God” (v18). That wrath, Paul says, is against two issues: ‘ungodliness’, meaning absence of reverence towards God (i.e. a wrong heart-attitude) and ‘unrighteousness’, meaning injustice, wrongdoing and violations of law (i.e. wicked deeds). Verses 20 to 22 form a famous range of humanity’s evil attitudes and practices, all deserving judgment.
In Paul’s second chapter he returns to explain why he wants to preach the Gospel. He points out that continuing in sin makes things worse: “you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath” (v5). Moreover, that day will be truly dire: “a day of indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” (vv8-9).
Rather earlier, in Athens, Paul had preached the Gospel privately in the synagogue and publicly in the marketplace. When various philosophers took him to the Areopagus so that they could be free of the hubbub of commerce, he very quickly moved from speaking of God as Creator and Sustainer to declare “God has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness”; moreover, God would do this “by the man he ordained", that is, by Jesus. The gentle Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is also the awesome, ultimate Judge.
He himself declared it: “The Father judges no-one, but has committed all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22). Jesus spoke more than anyone else in the Bible, and in more detail, about Hell, such as in Matthew 10:28: “fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell”. The Good News only makes sense in light of the bad news!
The Good News only makes sense in light of the bad news!
What Now?
One wonders, then, why we are so reluctant to declare the full Gospel? KP Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia, writes, “I have come to see that many evangelical Christians do not really believe the Word of God, especially when it talks about hell and judgment. Instead they selectively accept only the portions that allow them to continue living in their current lifestyles”.6
What a contrast to the Apostle Paul’s reminder to the church in Corinth: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ…knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men…” (2 Cor 5:10-11). It appears that we have largely lost sight of the terror of the Lord!
Interestingly, Satan’s temptation of Eve first cast doubt on God’s only early law: “of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat”. Satan did not deny the law itself. What he did deny was the consequence that God had clearly set out (“In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”), flatly contradicting God’s word by saying “You will surely not die” (Gen 2:17, 3:4). This was the first ever denial of the judgment of God. Multitudes have since followed Eve’s lack of trust in the protective goodness of the Lord, who foresaw the horror that awaits those “who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth” (Rom 2:8).
The time for recovery of the perspective of eternity and of compassion for the lost is surely long overdue. Truth matters!
References
1 Homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying tackled in new guidance for Church schools. Church of England press release, 13 November 2017.
2 See this poster and examples of others on the CPO website.
3 See here.
4 See here.
5 Song by Jonny Mercer. The first verse clearly presents the false ‘gospel’ of positive thinking:
“Gather ‘round me, everybody, Gather ‘round me while I’m preachin’,
Feel a sermon comin’ on me.
The topic will be sin and that’s what I’m ag’in.
If you wanna hear my story, then settle back and just sit tight,
While I start reviewin’ the attitude of doin’ right.”
6 Yohannan, KP, 2016. Revolution in World Missions. GFA Books, p90
