I hear a lot of people talk about their love for the gospel. But then I also hear a lot of talk about how
people “love” ice cream, their cars, their mates, their pets, and the NFL.
I’m pretty sure there’s a difference in each case.
There are different ways to love. Some of them are a million
miles from the others. So what are people talking about when they say they
really love the gospel?
I’m going to give you three different ways. There are
probably more, but I’ve seen these three a lot.
Type 1: The Good Old Gospel
Some people love (what they call) “the gospel” the way they
love Christmas. For them, it’s the “old, old story”, the “grand old gospel”. It’s
warm, it’s comforting, it’s familiar, and it’s sentimentally satisfying. They
feel happy when they hear it recited each Sunday and disappointed if they
don’t hear it. Just hearing it makes them feel faithful, secure and obedient.
They even like fire-and-brimstone preaching because it
strikes them as thrillingly defiant, and in any case they know they’re safely
on the far side of any risk themselves. At the same time, they don’t really
worry much about whether or not there are unbelievers present to hear it. They
don’t feel anything is missing if deep teaching in their church is replaced
with quick-hit “get-saved” messages. For
them, it’s all good so long as “the good old gospel is being preached.”
They say they really love the gospel, but really they love
it in much the same way old ladies love Royal Doulton figurines; as an
aesthetic exercise, without regard to functionality.
Type 2: The Gospel as Life Preserver
But not everybody’s like that. There are people who love the
gospel the way people love life preservers, charitable societies and universal
health care; because of the good it does for people. It gets people out of hell
and sends them to heaven. It makes them moral and gives them a reason to live. It
organizes their lives and even their thoughts. It makes them better people, on
the whole. And it makes them one of us.
These people thrill to numbers, to tracts, to altar calls
and to missions biographies and to dates and signatures in the flyleaves of
Bibles. They love the gospel because it saves souls.
Type 3: The Gospel as Doorway
These people love the salvation message as a doorway. No
matter how ornate and welcoming a doorway is, its real function is to open the
way to richer and better places beyond. It’s a way into a whole living space
where one can move, grow and mature. More importantly, it’s the doorway into
relationship. It makes one a beloved one among beloved ones, a saint among
saints. And above all, it is the way into relationship with God the Father
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
People who love the gospel this way love it because it’s not
the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a wonderful new life that
waits to be explored, appropriated and enjoyed. It is the doorway to heaven,
because heaven is to see and know God. But relationships are ongoing things:
they grow, they develop, they mature, they increase. The doorway of salvation
is not the stopping point for people who love the gospel of Christ, for Christ
is the goal of their gospel.
One of the hallmarks of these lovers of the gospel is that
they don’t just love evangelism; they love discipleship. They don’t just long to see people escaping death but growing into
fullness of life. They know that the course isn’t completed until
all believers come into that fullness.
The Key Question
When we say we “love the gospel”, who is it we are really loving?
If we love the “good
old gospel”, we are really loving only ourselves. We are indulging
ourselves in sentimental traditions but not spending much thought on whether or
not those traditions are actually communicating the gospel to others or
achieving the divine purpose.
If we love the gospel
for salvation, then we are loving mankind. Yet we don’t love them much. We
love only in a blinkered and myopic way, seeing only the objective of rescue
but not any further potential. We may even be lazy, willing to do just enough
to get the saved “across the line”, so to speak, but unenthused about the work
of taking him or her any further, and really, uncaring about the whole question
of why the Lord has saved him or her in the first place.
Only if we love the
gospel as what it is — a doorway — are we genuinely loving God. For then we
are loving it for its utility to him in achieving his declared purpose —
namely, to bring men and women to ongoing life and relationship with him, to
constitute them as worshipers and faithful saints, his eternal companions,
friends and beloved ones.
Convicting Bit
So do you love the gospel?
Just how do you love it?
Want to know how to tell? Ask yourself this: how are your
personal resources and the resources of your local church being expended? Are
you focusing on recycling the message, but not concerning yourself with who is
present to hear it? Are you notching your gun for each “soul” saved, but taking
little thought for their lives beyond? Or are you focused on what gives the
Lord what he desires — true worshipers, true disciples, true saints, a Body
worthy of our great Head?
So do we really love the gospel?
And should we not start to love it the better way?
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