*excerpt from my latest commentary*

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apologetics/message/21625

Let me use an earthly example to bring the point home of why precision is important when we talk about theology. If you had a headache and I told you to go to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and get the
pills in the white bottle & take three for your headache….

What color are the pills ? (see below)
WHICH white bottle ? (there are several in the cabinet)
With or without food ? (some medicines must be taken with food)

Some things require precision because they involve life or death issues. If I said “Oh, it doesn’t matter which white bottle… and you know…. They’re pills! How different could be they be ?”, would that be very loving of me ?

Neither is it loving to simply downplay the importance of precision in terms and belief when discussing salvation. Plenty of people “believe in Jesus” and can speak “Christianese” very well. But when you ask them WHAT do they believe about Jesus, this is when you find out both of you don’t believe in the same Jesus at all. This was the reason the council of Nicea was convened in 325 A.D. Arius of Alexandria and his disciples could affirm the Biblical language that Jesus was the ‘Son of God’ and even affirmed Jesus as ‘God’ in a lesser sense. But Arius believed that there was a time….”when the Son was NOT.” In other words, he believed that Jesus was a created being. He denied that Jesus was the eternal God of the Universe in human flesh. So the council made clear and unambiguous statements in response, declaring Jesus as being of the “same substance” as the Father (not ‘similar substance’), “Very God of Very God” and “begotten, not made”.

I think I have the whole thing posted over here already, but it kinda needs to be rehashed upon again from time to time – even if just as a reminder for believers. We need to be careful when we communicate truth – the gospel has content and even well-meaning believers getting content wrong can point folks to a false Christ, false God and false salvation.

Years ago, Sproul wrote two books: Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification and Getting the Gospel Right. Both were aimed at getting evangelicals – reformed or not – back to a biblical definition and exposition of salvation and all that the gospel entails, including the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross.

Too many times, some well-meaning professed believers settle for a ‘minimalistic’ faith – “What’s the minimum I have to believe to be a Christian ? Okay. Then the rest is just filler.” While this is a decidedly western mindset (because in the east, there is no ‘minimmum’ – it’s “do or do not” ala Yoda in Empire Strikes Back), it nevertheless has always been a problem in the church. Some people, for fear of the offense that the gospel brings and that they might ‘chase away’ people, avoid as much of the ‘hard’ stuff or try to ‘soften’ or ‘pitch’ the gospel differently, hoping to woo people in to the faith through their persuasion and good presentation.

There’s two great dangers in misunderstanding that occur when folks do this.

The first has to do with maintaining the integrity of the gospel. I have it subdivided in two parts:

First, when we dumb down the gospel or don’t present it accurately, point blank, we’re lying. When we pitch the gospel as:

“I invite you to bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your eternity: ‘Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you.’ Go ahead.

If you sincerely meant that preyar, congratulations! Welcome to the family of God! You are now ready to discover and start living God’s purpose for your life. (a certain well known 25 million copy plus selling book, pp. 58-59)

…we dumb down the gospel, twist it and make it man centered (living YOUR purpose, even couched in calling it God’s…) rather than CHRIST-centered:

“If you embrace everyting that I have mentioned in this chapter about the facets of the gospel, but do it in a way that does not make the glory of God in Christ your supreme treasure, then you have not embraced the gospel.

Until the gospel events of Good Friday and Easter and the gospel promises of justification and eternal life lead you to behold and embrace God HIMSELF as your highest joy, you have not embraced the gospel of God. You have embraced some of his gifts. You have rejoiced over some of His rewards. You have marveled at some of His miracles. But you have not yet been awakened to why the gifts, the rewards, and the miracles of have come. They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights in God above all things, and by delighting display His supreme beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever.” ( John Piper, God is the Gospel pp. 37-38)

The difference in these two presentations/explanations of the gospel and reasons for believing in Christ are monumental. One has to do with ‘you’ and pursuing ‘your purpose’ and satisfying ‘your earthly needs’ versus seeking and savoring the Savior as THE earthly, heavenly and eternal satisfaction for all of your needs.

When we reduce the gospel to some earthly ‘best-life-now’ formula, we rob God of His glory. Again, simply comparing the two statements above, you see the focus of both and both presentations of what is supposed to be the gospel. But only one is Biblically accurate and you can see it clearly, if you’ve spent any amount of time in your Bible. One is earthly, the other heavenly. One seeks to focus on the Giver of the gifts as THE gift: the other, on the gifts, with the Giver being an afterthought or a means to an end (your purpose).

A not-well-known-at-all Christian rapper put it this way:

Pick up the Holy Scriptures and engage your mind/
God’s Word- sufficient guidance for all mankind//

with instructions for livin – not just sal-va-tion/
but sometimes it’s hard to spot it – like a dalmation//
cuz false teachers obscure it, I’ll tell you how/
they like to focus on you livin’ “YOUR BEST LIFE NOW”//
and have you pursue your PURPOSE with a LIFE that’s DRIVEN/
to only satisfy your needs, but CHRIST was given//
so that in ALL things, He’d have preimminence or first place/
His Lordship extends over all the human race //
(BC – Definition – from the 8611 EP)

Secondly, there exists a great danger in an inaccurate gospel to leading folks to an inaccurate salvation, which is no salvation at all.

Take for example, the Lordship-Salvation controversy, over which many books have been written and many debates have been conducted. Is Repentance a part of the gospel message ? Was Thomas Watson right when he said “Repentance and faith are the two wings of a bird whereby we fly into heaven.” or is Bob Wilkin right when he says that repentance is not necessary for salvation and is something ‘believers do’ ?

C. Ryan Jenkins’ of Sola Gratia Ministries had an example in his masters’ thesis on this point. He had an example of a pastor of a local ‘megachurch’ get caught in an adulterous affair that had been going on for many years. The now-former pastor isn’t happy about having to resign and his wife has forced him to get counseling to save the marriage. He blames his wife for his affair and seems more upset that he lost his pastoral job and lucrative publishing ministry than anything else. He tells his pastoral counselor that he doesn’t believe that repentance is a part of the gospel message when asked about his testimony. The counselor cites Luke 24:47 and the unrepentant pastor says “I know that verse. What you don’t understand is that the gospel of John – which is the only evangelistic gospel – never has the word ‘repentance’ in it. So repentance isn’t a part of the gospel. John ‘trumps’ all the other gospels, since it’s the only one that’s evangelistic on purpose.’

If you were a counselor, how would you approach this man ? As a non-Christian needing salvation or a Christian needing to repent ?

Preaching a non-repentance gospel is akin to lying to folks and telling them they can live however they want and still be saved (which is exactly what some preachers do). But 1 John 3:9-10, Luke 9:23-26 and a host of other passages show that the person who lives this type of Christian life is living a fraud and will end up in HELL. Do not be deceived.

Again, a bit of food for thought. You sure you got the gospel right ? Might I recommend you to John MacArthur’s two excellent books on the subject: The Gospel According to Jesus and The Gospel According to the Apostles ? If nothing else, they will make you think and look again at the Biblical record on what Jesus meant when He said ‘follow me’ and what the apostles preached afterward. Might I recommend you a third book ? Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper ? Maybe a fourth ? God is the Gospel also by Piper ?

Might I recommend you not take shortcuts and seek to express the gospel – as much as possible – in Biblical terms ? Can’t go wrong there.

Might I remind you that the ‘results’ (Isaiah 55:8-11) are in God’s hands and not yours (1 Corinthians 3:7) ? How about remembering that it is God who opens the heart to believe the scriptures (Acts 13:48, 16:14, John 6:44-45) ? Much of today’s ‘evangelism’ is based on wrong assumptions about humanity’s ability and desire to respond to the gospel and we seek more to trick or intellectually convince people of the gospel’s viability, when the gospel is FIRST and foremost, strictly speaking, a spiritual matter.

Lack of accuracy in one area of doctrine affects others. It only takes a few flakes of snow to start a roaring avalanche. Likewise, it only takes a few misplaced words – for example, manifestations instead of persons – to go from teaching Trinitarianism to the heresy of modalism and a false god, false Jesus and false faith that cannot save.

Are you treating all of the bottles in the cabinet the same ?

I hope this helps some fam grow and think deeper and better about your faith and how you communicate the gospel.