What is "Gospel Preaching?" Sometimes folks may say, 'Our Pastor's a good preacher - but he needs to 'preach the Gospel more!' What do they mean? I think they mean...
- He needs to preach directly evangelistic sermons,
- preferably from straightforward passages in one of the Gospels, directly about Jesus,
- and with pointed application towards those who are not saved.
- he should include much earnest urging folks to repent of their sin, trust in Christ as their only Saviour.
- he should also explain clearly the penal substitutionary death of Christ for sinners.
You may or may not agree with my summary, but that's my basic starting point.
I have come to the conlusion that much of the above is culturally and generationally influenced. Folks above a certain age remember when every Sunday, the preacher would preach to the lost at a so-called, "Gospel Service." His message would conform to most or all of the above points, and he would "preach the Gospel."
The question I have is this: would New Testament preachers agree? Would Paul say that a diet of such sermons was actually preaching, "The Whole Counsel of God?" I do not think so.
I hope to look at this issue again, but for now, I want to attach an extract from a famous preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It's in his book, "Spiritual Depression," (Ch.4, "Mind, heart & will," pp.54-56) and it covers what it means to preach the Gospel, I think.
“The Apostle's whole object... is to show the importance of grasping the balance of truth, of taking hold of the whole gospel, and of seeing that if one but grasps it truly it leads inevitably to certain consequences...
... There are certain principles enunciated here. The first is that spiritual depression or unhappiness in the Christian life is very often due to our failure to realize the greatness of the gospel. The apostle talks about 'the form of doctrine delivered to you', he refers to the 'standard of teaching'.
Now people are often unhappy in the Christian life because they have thought of Christianity, and the whole message of the gospel, in inadequate terms:
(a) Some think that it is merely a message of forgiveness. You ask them... what Christianity is and they reply: 'If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven', and they stop at that. That is all. They are unhappy about certain things in their past and they hear that God in Christ will forgive them. They take their forgiveness and there they stop—that is all their Christianity.
(b) There are others who conceive of it as morality only. Their view... is that they do not need forgiveness, but they desire an exalted way of life. They want to do good... and Christianity to them is an ethical, moral programme. Such people are bound to be unhappy. Certain problems will inevitably arise in their lives which are strictly outside morality—someone's death, some personal relationship. Morality... will not help at that point, and what they regard as the gospel is useless to them in that situation. They are unhappy when the blow comes because they have never had an adequate view of the gospel...
(c) There are others who are interested in it simply as something good and beautiful. It makes a great aesthetic appeal to them. That is their way of describing the gospel and the entire message is to them just something very beautiful and wonderful which makes them feel better when they hear it.
I am putting all these incomplete... views over against what the Apostle here refers to as 'the form of doctrine,’... the great truth which he elaborates in this Epistle to the Romans with its mighty arguments and propositions and its flights of
spiritual imagination. That is the gospel, all the... 'infinities and immensities' of this Epistle, and the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Colossians – that is the gospel. We must have an accurate view of these things.
But someone may say: 'When you talk about the Epistle to the Ephesians or... Colossians, surely you are not talking about "the gospel message". In the gospel message you just tell people about forgiveness of sins.' In a sense that is right, but in another sense it is wrong. I had a letter from a man who had been here on a Sunday night and he said that he made a discovery. The discovery he made was that in a service which was obviously evangelistic there was something for believers. He said, 'I had never understood that that could happen. I never knew... that... an evangelistic message could be preached to unbelievers and yet there could also be a message for believers which would disturb them.’ Now that man was was making a great confession. He was telling me what his view had been hitherto of the evangel. It was this... incomplete view, just selecting one or two things. No, the way to evangelize is to give 'the whole counsel of God'.
But people say that they are too busy, or, that they cannot follow all that. I would remind you that the Apostle Paul preached that sort of thng to slaves. 'Not many mighty, not many noble are called'. That is what he gave them—this tremendous presentation of truth.
The gospel is not something partial or piecemeal: it takes in the whole life, the whole of history, the whole world. It tells us about the creation and the final judgment, and everything in between. It is a complete, whole view of life, and many are unhappy in the Christian life because they have never realized that this way of life caters for the whole of man's life and covers every eventuality in his experience. There is no aspect of life but that the gospel has something to say about it. The whole of life must come under its influence because it is all-inclusive; the gospel is meant to control and govern everything in our lives. If we do not realize that, we are certain sooner or later to find ourselves in an unhappy condition...
...We must realize the greatness of the gospel, its vast eternal span. We must dwell more on the riches, and in the riches, of these great doctrinal absolutes. We must not always stay in the gospels. We start there but we must go on; and then as we see it all worked out and put into its great context we shall realize what a mighty thing the gospel is, and how the whole of our life is meant to be governed by it.
That brings us to the second point, which is that in the same way as we often fail to realize the greatness and the wholeness of the message, we also fail to realize that the whole man must likewise be involved in it and by it—'Ye have obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine delivered unto you'. Man is a wonderful creature, he is mind, he is heart and he is will. Those are the three main constituents of man. God has given him a mind, He has given him a heart, He has given him a will whereby he can act. Now one of the greatest glories of the gospel is this, that it takes up the whole man.
Indeed, I go so far as to assert that there is nothing else that does that; it is only this complete gospel, this complete view of life and death and eternity, that is big enough to include the whole man. It is because we fail to realize that, that many of our troubles arise. We are partial in our response to this great gospel.” (From "Spiritual depression," Martyn Lloyd Jones.)
It may be over-simplistic, but Christ is the Gospel. Gospel preaching - true Gospel preaching - is preaching Christ. Gospel preaching is declaring, "The Whole Counsel of God," from all the Scriptures - because all the Scriptures preach Christ!
"Wait for the LORD, be strong and take heart, and wait for the LORD." (Ps.27v1)
