Contemporary Evangelism and the Biblical Good News

The contemporary invitation to accept salvation runs along the following lines:

"If you have never put your faith and trust in Christ, I urge you to do so now. Christ loves you and He died for your sins. Your hope of salvation is in Him alone. By a simple prayer of faith you can invite Him into your heart and join the millions through the ages who have come to Christ and become part of His church. Then become active in the church."
Backed by a verse from Ephesians (1:7, 8), the evangelical call seems plausible enough: "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us."

The purpose of this study is to show that the offer of salvation as presented in the outline above omits vital information; that it will induce a false sense of security; that it is a partial Gospel.

The popular Gospel is true as far as it goes. What is omitted from the Message makes it untrue to the Bible. The Good News (Gospel) brought by Christ and preached by the disciples was not concerned with forgiveness of sin alone. It was the proclamation of the Kingdom or Reign of God (Luke 4:43). It is that central element of the Gospel which is entirely absent from nearly all contemporary appeals to accept salvation. In order to understand what is meant by the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, we must examine the Scriptures. Unless we do this, we shall not know what Christ is asking us to believe, and consequently we shall be unable to respond to His call for repentance and belief in the gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14, 15; Acts 8:12).

If you are doubtful whether an understanding of the Kingdom of God is necessary for salvation, consider the following facts: The New Testament disciples were sent out to preach the Gospel, before they even understood that Jesus was to die for the sins of mankind. This must lead us to the conclusion that the death of Christ for our sins and His resurrection is not the entire Gospel Message.

In Luke 9:6 we find that "the disciples departed and went through the towns preaching the Gospel." Later we read: "Then Jesus took the twelve disciples aside and said to them: ‘We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and be spitefully treated and spat upon; and they will scourge Him and put Him to death: and the third day He will rise again.’ And they understood nothing of all this: His words were hidden from them. They understood nothing of what He was saying" (Luke 18:31-34).

What was it that they had been preaching, then, while still ignorant of the coming death of Christ? The answer is found in Luke 9:2: "He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God." In verse 6 this is defined as the Gospel. They had been preaching the Gospel, but with no understanding of the death of Christ for sin. The facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection were added to the gospel message about the Kingdom after his resurrection (Acts 8:12).

How much about the Kingdom of God have you heard in contemporary preaching of the Gospel? Probably the Kingdom of God is not even mentioned!

It is reasonable that we should inquire what the disciples preached as the Gospel after the death of Jesus for the sins of the world. The answer is found in the book of Acts, the record of the early Church’s preaching:

"And when they believed Philip announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12).
In verse 14 of this chapter it is said that the people had thus "accepted the Word" (or Message). We learn from this that the Good News of the Kingdom and the Name of Jesus Christ is summarized under the single term: The Message. So in Acts 19:8 Paul spent three months "persuading the people about the Kingdom of God." In this way the whole of Asia heard the Word (Message) of the Lord Jesus (v. 10). Paul described his own preaching as the proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Acts 20:25) and later, from dawn to dusk, he expounded and declared the Good News of "the Kingdom of God and the things concerning Jesus" (Acts 28:23, 31).

We see, then, that the Gospel was still the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, as it always had been. The information about the death of Christ was added after His crucifixion.

The evidence is conclusive that the Apostles did not simply invite the people to believe in the death of Jesus for their sins; nor was His resurrection all that they preached. They also proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God. All these elements are needed for the full Gospel. A half-Gospel or a mutilated Gospel will not lead anyone to salvation.

If you have not believed in the Kingdom of God, or if you are in doubt about what this is, you have not accepted the Good News of the Bible. Your attention may never have been called to the need for believing in the Kingdom of God as well as the death and resurrection of Christ. It is possible to attend church for years and hear nothing about the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ own gospel message.

The crucial question for your salvation is, therefore: have you repented and believed the Good News of the Kingdom of God? To do this was the very first command of Jesus (Mark 1:15). Without an understanding of the Kingdom of God there can be no belief leading to salvation. The parable of the sower shows that the "Message about the Kingdom" (Matt. 13:19) must take root in your heart. It is essential to find out what is involved in believing "the Good News of the Kingdom of God" (see Matt. 4:23, 9:35, 24:14). Only those "hearing and believing the Message [Word]" about the Kingdom (Matt. 13:19) are promised eternal life in the Kingdom (John 5:24). And belief in the gospel and the practice of a corresponding lifestyle must be held fast until the end.

"Gospel" defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary: "1. Glad tidings preached by Christ; religious doctrine of Christ and his apostles."


Luther and the Gospel

"[Luther] created by a dogmatic criterion a canon of the gospel within the canon of the books. He wrote: ‘Those Apostles who treat oftenest and highest of how faith alone justifies, are the best Evangelists. Therefore St. Paul’s Epistles are more a Gospel than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For these do not set down much more than the works and miracles of Christ; but the grace which we receive through Christ no one so boldly extols as St. Paul, especially in his letter to the Romans.’ In comparison with the Gospel of John, the Epistles of Paul, and 1 Peter, ‘which are the kernel and marrow of all books,’ the Epistle of James, with its insistence that man is not justified by faith alone, but by works proving faith, is ‘a mere letter of straw, for there is nothing evangelical about it.’ It is clear that the infallibility of Scripture has here, in fact if not in avowal, followed the infallibility of popes and councils; for the Scripture itself has to submit to be judged by the ultimate criterion of its accord with Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith" (Moore, History of Religions, Scribner, 1926, p. 320).

"In the course of time Luther came practically to set up a canon of Scripture within the Canon. Probably most Bible students actually do this in practice to varying degrees. Luther’s virtual canon consisted of three Pauline epistles as forming the central core: Romans, Galatians and Ephesians. To these he added John, 1 John, 1 Peter, and Acts. The least valuable book in the New Testament was Revelation, and he found little more value in Hebrews, James, and Jude. What governed his choice was that he regarded as supreme the great doctrine of Justification by Faith. This, he held, is the essence of the Gospel, and by it all the rest must be interpreted. It was this that caused him to place the three Synoptic Gospels on a lower level. It was not that he thought less than anyone else of the importance of Christ’s own words, His life, death, and resurrection — nobody could read the epistles without realizing the immense importance to Paul of, at least, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It was because the Gospels do not clearly and evidently deal with the central doctrine of Justification by Faith, and this was for Luther, the touchstone by which the golden Truth is disclosed" (Norman Snaith, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, London: The Epworth Press, 1956, p. 12).

Readers should ponder these extraordinarily revealing facts. Leaving one dogmatic system, the Roman Catholic Church, Luther substituted another dogmatic system. He declared that the Gospel (Christianity) is not primarily found in Matthew, Mark and Luke! In other words the teaching of Jesus is not really the Christian Gospel. Rather, said Luther, the Gospel is most clearly found in Romans, Galatians and Ephesians, and certainly not in James!

Most churchgoers have been unconsciously influenced by this very damaging method of reading the Bible. The effects of Luther’s "pick and choose" procedure are heard everywhere in contemporary presentations of the Gospel. We are constantly told that the Gospel is to be defined firstly by the book of Romans (cp. the "Roman Road" method of evangelism). But according to Heb. 2:3 Jesus is the model preacher of the saving Gospel. This means that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the primary source of the Christian Gospel. There is a reason why God has given us three parallel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke) of Jesus’ version of the Gospel. And that Gospel centers on the Kingdom of God as its fundamental and principal topic. But you would never suspect this if you examine contemporary invitations to accept the Gospel.

Luther’s notion that Matthew, Mark and Luke are unimportant for defining the Gospel exercises an unfortunate control on most modern preaching. One dogma has been replaced by another equally paralyzing one. It is esssential, therefore, that Jesus’ own label for the Gospel — "the Gospel about the Kingdom" — be reinstated in the position it deserves, in honor of Jesus as the master-teacher.

by Anthony Buzzard