Gospel Neglection

Which elements of the gospel, as the word is used by Paul, are neglected in today's church? What can we do to bring them back into focus? If the essence of the gospel is “good news”, how can it be heard in our community as truly good news?

6 uses of Gospel:

• the gospel is the story of Jesus in the light of the scriptures.
• the gospel is a new redeemed humanity, a single family of God
• the gospel is a message to be communicated to the whole world
• the gospel is ethical transformation
• The gospel is truth to be defended
• The gospel is the power of God transforming the universe

     Today, in the church as a whole, none of Paul's 6 uses of the gospel are used, or enacted, to their fullest potential. This being the case, I believe all the elements of the gospel, as Paul describes them, are neglected, and certainly misinterpreted/misunderstood, to a certain extent in every church. This is also true for the church of Christ as a community, and a nation.

     The church understands that the gospel is the story of Jesus in the light of the scriptures. I agree with that statement. However, where that statement and truth is neglected, is in the fact that churches usually only recognize Jesus in the light of the New Testament Scripture, with brief reference to Him being mentioned in the Old Testament. This is neglect by way of incomplete interpretation and understanding. When we only see Jesus in light of the New Testament we cannot begin to comprehend the entirety of Jesus being good news! Yes, what Jesus did is good news, it is fantastic news. However, if we only look at the New Testament, we miss a huge part of the depth of how wonderful this news was and is.

     The Jews already knew of the redeemer, and they were eagerly awaiting His arrival. They knew because of the Old Testament. All throughout the Old Testament, God made promises to redeem His people and to bring them a Messiah. These people were now desperately waiting to see the Messiah.
Luke 2:25-32 “And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was       revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

     Simeon saw the Messiah, and responded with joy, and blessing. The Messiah had come, what they were waiting for had finally come, and he had seen the Messiah with his own eyes. That is wonderful news. When we as a church merely look at the New Testament of what Jesus did; died on the cross, we miss such a crucial part of the good news; the Messiah, God, came, and was seen, and He was known.

Luke 2: 36 – 38”

“And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.”

This woman essentially never left the temple, and yet when Jesus came there as a baby, she knew it was the Messiah, and went and proclaimed Him as the Messiah. This is wonderful news. The Messiah had finally come, and in coming and being witnessed, part of the Old Testament gospel was fulfilled.

     When we as a church only focus on the Old Testament works we miss the fulfilling of the Old Testament gospel; the coming of the Messiah. The gospel does not begin with the NewTestament, and the works of Jesus. It begins in the Old Testament when God promises a redeemer.

Genesis 12:2-3 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” The New Testament is the fulfilling of the gospel. If we only focus on the New Testament, we're only getting the fulfillment of the gospel, not the whole gospel.

     Wright defines another of Paul's usage of “gospel”, as; “the gospel is a new redeemed humanity, a single family of God”.¹ This means that the Jews and the gentiles will no longer be separated, there will be peace between them, because God has literally torn the veil between the sinners and the presence of the Holy God. Now, not only the chosen can be sanctified, but all people can choose to be sanctified. “Jesus is our peace, made peace, and preached peace.”² There is no longer has to be enmity, or separation between the different people of the world because God has bridged that gap, and now we get to choose whether we cross that bridge or not.

     The church neglects this by forgetting that we are not a people borne of dissension, arguing, and bitterness. We are a people borne of love, sacrifice, and peace. We as Christians stand so far on opposing views that we get on our soap box, stay there, and refuse to come down. This often costs people friendship, and always causes hurt, and sometimes even splits a church. How can we say we are living as a single family of God, if we decide to hold to our opinions so hard, it leads to resentment and brokenness; the opposite of who God is and what He intended.

     Thirdly Paul uses gospel to overview the idea of a message to be communicated to the whole world. Individual church bodies neglect this in one of two ways: the neglect to spread this in their daily lives, or the neglect to spread this across cities, nations and the world. This comes from a misconception of mission. Some churches focus on “mission trips” to Mexico, the Ukraine, Taiwan, South Dakota, somewhere away from their home – state or home – town, while they neglect to live out the good news in the actions and words of their daily lives.

     Other churches focus on “Evangelizing” their home-town or home-city. They go about this, usually by brashly walking up to someone and gently attacking the world they live in with the words “hi I'm a Christian, can I tell you about Jesus?” Now this may not be so offensive if the church did not neglect the gospel as ethical transformation. However, because of the neglect in that area, evangelism needs to be approached far more eloquently. While it may get the job done sometimes, often it is based off of attacking the basic routine, or beliefs of another person and telling them Jesus is better. While this may be true, it is often not a very good idea if you want a receptive response from your listener. Evangelism could be approached better by treating it as an everyday mission trip. On mission trips the idea behind them is to help a people group in a way that touches them so deeply with the love of God that they cannot ignore his presence, and cannot help enjoying, and feeling safe in your company. If evangelists made this their mission, instead of verbal debate, I think many more people would be reached! The churches who focus on cross state/ over-seas mission trips, they need to be more aware of living in that state of mission everyday, reaching out to people in a way that “touches them so deeply with the love of God that they cannot ignore his presence, and cannot help enjoying, and feeling safe in your company.”

     If churches as a whole did this, it would affect and possibly resolve the damage from the neglect of the gospel as ethical transformation. We have neglected the gospel as ethical transformation and, as I said before, when we mention God or Christianity, we are stepping onto a battlefield firing arrows at an unprepared citizen. The reason this is, is because we have turned ethical transformation into a dogma. Churches either pound their fists and cause havoc and pain for non-Christians, or they ignore any and all sin, even among their own believing body, and excuse it with the phrase God is love. This all comes from the neglect of ethical transformation, in the form of misunderstanding.

We Christians as a body of believers, have failed to understand that in becoming Christians, we enlist in the army of God, going from citizen to soldier. We so often fail to understand two things; we are not warriors, and the un-beleivers are not our enemies! They are citizens who we are to protect from our real enemy; Satan.

     I say that we are not warriors because a warrior is someone who goes into battle for the personal glory and wealth he/she will gain from it. We should NOT be warriors. However, I believe that there are several “Christians” out there who have become that. They have stopped serving as a soldier under the “Mighty Warrior” (Zeph. 3:17), God, and they have gone off on their own, choosing and fighting their own battles for their own profit and glory.

We as a body can resolve all of this by merely recognizing God as the Warrior in front of our army, and Satan and his cohorts as the enemy. Ephesians 6:12 “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”

     Now this is not to say that there will not be times when we have to defend the gospel against flesh and blood. “The gospel is truth to be defended”³ However, the key word is defended. We are not on the offense, we should never use the gospel to attack a citizen. We are defending the gospel against a citizen, who has been mislead by the great deceiver, and sometimes given themselves over to him. “the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Revelation 12:9) “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8) “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

     These people have been deceived by Satan. They have given themselves over to his power and ideals, whether knowingly or unknowingly. They have allowed themselves to be defined by the evil of Satan, that they have allowed to dwell inside them. The church, as a body of Christ, neglects the gospel as truth to be defended, is either they are silent about Christ everyday, not acting out of His love, or they are using the gospel as an offensive tactic against a citizen. Once again, to prevent not acting out of love, we must treat everyday as a mission trip, because that is what it is. To resolve attacking citizens with the gospel we must first separate our understanding of who this person is, and who they have allowed themselves to become. This person is a citizen of the God we serve, and we fight to protect them. However, they have allowed themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, to be sold into slavery to the devil.

     When we have to defend the gospel we have to remember to only defend. If we attack, then we are defying our mission as inheritors of Christ's kingdom, as the inherited patriarch of the family of God, charged with the responsibility of caring for the family, and buying back any lost, any one sold to slavery, and any land that has been bought out of the family, and renewing it's fruitfulness. As soon as we attack this enslaved citizen we are essentially violating the prime directive, given to us by God as His inheriting patriarchs; to bring our family home safe to Beth Ab. If we violate this then it would be better for us “to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around our neck” Luke 17:2 [paraphrased] The simple way to avoid this; do not neglect the defense of the gospel, and depart from an fleshly offense of the gospel. (Use the gospel as an offense against Satan as Jesus did in His trials in the desert Mathew 4)

     The final usage of the gospel, recognizes the gospel as “the power of God transforming the universe”⁴ Creation itself is a witness to the goodness of God and to His gospel. “ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” (Job 12: 7 – 9) Merely by looking at creation we should see the evidence, goodness, and gospel (good news), of God. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

     We as Christians do not have an excuse to ignore the glory of creation in all that it is, because it daily declares the glory of our God! “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19:1) Yet constantly we walk through the world daily, not stopping to notice the birds singing, usually grumbling about the whether, not paying attention to the vibrancy of color, even when it's dark and dreary out. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.” Isaiah 40: 26

     In spreading the gospel, in teaching the good news, we miss one of our biggest tools that, through it, every person in the world has personally witnessed God; creation. How do we as Christians viably say we don't neglect the gospel as the power of God transforming the universe, when we take for granted the stars, grumble about the whether, don't use it as tool to spread the good news, and worst of all, slowly destroy the witness, creation, God has given us to use.

     In order to resolve this, we need to renew our wonder, and thankfulness at the beauty and awesomeness of creation. We also need to be more active in preventing the destruction and pollution of it. Part of why people take stars for granted is because we have polluted the atmosphere with so much light at night, that most, if not all, city people, have never seen the milky way, or even the big and little dippers. The church as the body of Christ needs to take more care in protecting and preserving the witness God has given us to testify for Himself.

     The essence of how we as a body can cease to neglect all of these aspects of the gospel is by; being more aware of our own ignorance, preserving our witness, and openly listening to others, as well as the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We as a people cannot continue to suffocate ourselves, and the world, in our own ignorance, pride, and strength, by attempting to be warriors for Christ. We need to relieve ourselves of the megaphone, and give it over to God.

     Once we give God the megaphone He will begin to project His good news through us, and we will become the megaphone, instead of a scarred warrior screaming a battle cry. It is only through becoming the megaphone that our community will begin to understand the good news of Christ. In being the megaphone for Christ, we allow Him to take our hurts, turn them into good. We allow Him take our despair, and turn it into peace. We allow Him to take our anger, our fear, our bitterness, our hate, and turn them into compassion, understanding, and love. When we become the megaphone, we witness and experience the much needed peace, hope, and love of God that our world needs. When we witness that and allow God to project that out of our megaphone lives, then people will know that there is hope for them. They will know that there is peace. They will begin to see and experience, that there is love; unconditional, and abundant love, that they can know on a daily basis. That is the good news that our broken world needs so much to know. Our world waits everyday for another disaster to hit. However, they're looking, watching and waiting, in faith, hoping that peace will follow.

1Wright, The Mission of God's People, (USA, Langham Partnership International, 2010), pp 191

2Wright, The Mission of God's People, (USA, Langham Partnership International, 2010), pp 192

3Wright, The Mission of God's People, (USA, Langham Partnership International, 2010), pp 196

4Wright, The Mission of God's People, (USA, Langham Partnership International, 2010), pp 197