What Is-and Is Not-the Gospel? | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about what is and is not the gospel. There are a number of things that are talked about in the church today that are offered essentially as the good news of Jesus Christ, but they are not.

These things would include repentance,.

Faith,.

Obedience, discipleship, and surrender all to Christ, just to name a few. We're going to talk about each of these and then seek to clarify what exactly is the good news of Jesus Christ for sinners. We hope this is encouraging.

We hope it's helpful and clarifying. Stay tuned.

Everyone, if you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing or on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

And we do have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation. Thanks for listening.

Theocast’s Mission and the Problem of Adding to the Gospel

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Wilmer, Minnesota, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

It is good to be around the microphone with my boys, my brothers, for the first time in the year of our Lord 2021. I think I can speak for all of us, as the memes would indicate as we look on social media, that 2021 is not much different than 2020 thus far.

And many people are ready to send that thing back and get a new one as far as just how life is going and what things are still difficult. Yeah, we need to read up on the fine print.

Hey, you know, just to jump on that, the return policy is he's returning.

Oh, my goodness. I can't even, John.

Dad joke.

Starting the year off strong. Starting the year off strong. I realize that our listeners will be hearing this in the month of February, not January. But you guys will just bear with us as we do this New Year's banter, because we've been away from the microphones for a couple of weeks.

Well, and each other. We haven't really talked. We haven't talked in a long while.

So I feel so I feel so disoriented by John's Christian bookstore coffee mug joke that I can't even.

Oh, my gosh.

Hey, I just speak truth, man.

And his Christian bookstore coffee mug backdrop.

That's right. He's going to return.

Wow.

I can give you a different backdrop if you want.

No, no, I'm kidding.

Nope.

Totally kidding.

No.

So as far as like what's going on personally in our lives, our brother Jimmy Bueller is grieving this morning as his beloved Buckeyes. Took one on the chin last night. Alabama is good. I think we can all agree on that, that they are very good.

Yeah, that they were the best team in college football this year.

Yeah.

And we'll leave that too. We'll leave that with you as the listener, whether you like college for the rest of us.

I don't care.

Exactly.

Jimmy and I were talking before we hit record. Jimmy and I were talking about college football for, I don't know what, five minutes, bro. And John is sitting over there just completely glazed.

Yeah, glaze glaze.

Yeah.

Like did not care in the slightest.

And yeah, well, you know, Jimmy, John, John is too spiritual for sports.

No, actually, if Justin and I were talking about golf, Jimmy would be doing the same thing.

So yeah, I mean, I can appreciate golf because I know it's a game of, of skill and athleticism, but uh, I just, nope.

So, so Jimmy, you dropped something and it's like, I've kind of been waiting three minutes now to hear this whole thing that you dropped before we recorded. So bring it so we can get this podcast.

We don't, we don't even know what it is.

This it's, I thought it could be kind of a fun little intro, something new to kind of, uh, get our listeners excited. And here it is, here it is. I'm going to share something that I used to be really into when I was younger, that as I've aged and matured, I am no longer into at all.

Pogs.

Pogs.

No, it's not pogs.

Wow.

John. Bringing it up from the depths.

Yeah.

Here it is. Are you ready? And we can banter about this. Are you ready? Are you ready? When I was younger, I used to be into pro wrestling like nobody else.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, never really. I played the Nintendo game.

I love that.

Yeah.

The Nintendo game is great, but man, I mean, I remember, and like my parents, my parents did not enjoy that I enjoyed pro wrestling. And so like, I had to go hide in the basement and turn on Monday night raw or Sunday night heat or Thursday night SmackDown.

And like, if I heard them coming down the stairs, like I would change the channel really quick, but man, I was huge. I know I was a huge stone cold, Steve Austin fan, dude.

Like my experience with WWF or whatever else you call it now, every Sunday, my uncle would come over and we'd sit and watch football with my dad and he goes, let me tell you what a real sport is. Isn't a sport.

Let me tell you what a real sport is. My dad and I would just look at each other like, are you kidding me? These, these are, these are grown sweaty men who are actually aren't pretending. And you're talking about grown sweaty men who are pretending.

Yeah. Okay.

If you want to call this work.

So I will say this, I will say this pro wrestlers.

Yes.

The outcomes are predetermined. We all know that, but man, the things that they do to their bodies, they're totally athletes though.

Yeah, it's nuts, but it's so John people, college football, man. We've definitely done it now.

Oh, that's right.

Hey, yeah.

John knows what the top turnbuckle is now.

Can we all know the top?

Well, that's what made me think of it. That's what made me, we were, we were talking about that. We were educated.

JP makes that phrase all the time. And I was like, is that like a cowboy phrase? Like you have to own a belt buckle in order to craziness.

Do you people see what we have to work with here?

Amen.

So, I mean, I just, I remember, um, watching pro wrestling with my friends and we were just like fascinated. We were, we were fascinated. And then, and then somebody, somebody began to like, you know, preach the gospel of it's not real to me.

And that's when I knew there you go.

Great transition.

I mean, it was a stretch.

It was a stretch, but we got to keep the dad jokes real here, especially the, uh, the transitions.

Yeah.

You got to keep them real. Speaking of what is and what is not the gospel, uh, you're, you're going to probably hear a very passionate. The next two episodes are going to be very passionate. Well, I can't ever think when we're not passionate, but it always just, you know, feels passionate.

But today is definitely, definitely is one of these ones that you, you walk in and you drop this comment on any of these pastors. And we are going to have some thoughts and they are not going to be, uh, they're not going to be lighthearted.

They're going to be, they're going to be pretty heavy. So today we're going to talk about what we pile onto the gospel and we titled it. What is not the gospel? And you would think, is that really necessary?

I mean, it's almost like saying what is the moon and what is not the moon? What is the sun and what is not the sun? You would think it's obvious, but unfortunately it's not, it's not obvious in our day and age because there's been so much clutter that's been put on top of the gospel.

So today, what we're going to try and do is as you do in wrestling, we're going to go and fight up, break up the fight and pull everybody off and clarify here. That was my attempt at wrestling. I don't know.

I think I just totally messed that up, but yeah, whatever. It's a brawl, the brawl.

It might've fallen flat, but anyway.

Yeah.

So the, the, and this is why if we believe according to Paul, he says in second Corinthians that the gospel is the power of God. Yeah, that the gospel is the power of God. And that if you are going to see God's power, you have to know what the gospel is.

Many people don't experience the joy of resting in Christ and really see God's power at work because the gospel they're believing in is confused, deluded. It's, it's, it's grayed out at points. And most people can't find rest because they are not assured by whatever gospel it is that they are believing in.

So we're going to go through a list of things that have been piled on top of the gospel. And then at the end, we're going to talk to you about and clarify and protect and put a fence around what is the gospel.

So JP, let's start with one of the most popular, probably today, the most confusing often of what people assume the gospel to be, but it's not.

Repentance Is Not the Gospel

Yeah.

So the first thing that we want to start with in terms of what the gospel is not is repentance. You will hear many people today say things kind of like this, that the good news is that we repent of sin and thereby are saved.

That repentance is the good news, you know, repent and believe and whatever, and things will go well for you. And we're here today to, to clarify a number of things, including this one, that repentance itself is not the good news.

Repentance is something that happens to us. Repentance, biblically speaking, is a change of mind. It's a change of mind about a number of things, a change of mind about God and what He requires, a change of mind about ourselves and our position before God.

A change of mind about Christ and what He has done for us. But repentance itself is not the good news. You hear a lot of language in many contexts, Calvinistic and otherwise, that will exalt repentance to this place of, I don't know, preeminence, you know, where this is what the Christian life is.

Like to be a Christian is to repent. And so it is so thereby, it is so synthesized and sort of woven into the fabric of what the gospel even is, that it's at best confusing, at worst damning. Thoughts brothers?

Yeah, I, this, this comes in, you hear verses all the time, repent, repent, and people I know listening to this podcast have already yelled out, but the Bible literally says repent and believe. And you will be forgiven of your sins.

And I would also say repent and be baptized is what it says as well. So there's, we, we have to look at all of scripture when it, when it comes down to a specific area. And in some, in certain contexts, when it says repent and believe, he's talking about those who are trusting in the law to, for their salvation versus trusting in the person of Jesus standing in front of them.

Like God's salvation in the flesh, standing in front of them. That you have to understand the differences. Don't believe in your own works for salvation. Believe in Christ's works for salvation. Turn from, but even that, in order to believe in Christ, it doesn't matter if you're turning from sin or turning from another false belief, which is sinful.

You can't do that on your own. And so there's, you, there has to be, you know, what we would say systematic theology here is very important because the Bible, the way in which it's written and the way in which it's designed, you have to look at all of scripture and all of context.

So just, you know, when someone quotes a verse and says, this is what the Bible says. So I'm just going to believe it. You brothers are changing the gospel. Yeah, go ahead.

A really quick interjection by way of clarification. When we're talking about the gospel or the good news, what we mean by that, and we're going to be clear about that later. The good news is the thing that saves you.

The good news is the thing that saves sinners from their sin and reconciles us to a holy God. And repentance is not that thing. Repentance itself does not save people.

Yeah.

I, so if, if the listener has not read the book, The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, may I recommend that to you? Because in that book, the author Sinclair Ferguson, Scottish Presbyterian, he is essentially talking about this very thing, right?

I mean, this was a, this is a controversy called the Mero controversy that went on centuries ago that surrounded this very issue. That does somebody need to forsake sin in order to come to Christ? And that sounds like, I know, I can just hear the alarm bells going off in people's mind, but essentially what it centered on was kind of almost like this chicken and egg analogy that what comes first?

Is it God's grace or is it our repentance?

Right.

Like which of these, which of these comes first? And I think often, and this is, this is, I know this is like heavily nuanced. And so we need to be pretty careful in how we're speaking about this. But often I think people believe functionally that it is our work, our repentance, our turning from sin that generates God's love, affection, and grace for us.

And I think what we are trying to say is that it's actually the other way around. That it is God's grace toward us. It is God's work via the Holy Spirit, via the preaching of the good news about Jesus Christ to us that generates repentance as a grace in the work or in the life of the believer.

Go ahead, JP.

Is there anything that we need to do in order to come to Christ? The answer to that question is no.

Exactly.

Yeah, no, that's good. And, and, you know, going back to something that Jimmy said a couple of weeks ago on a, on a podcast on pietism, you know, God has done His part and basically He's presented you the goods.

And now you basically, and if you want them, you've got to clean up your life and come get them. That's if we're going to change the word repentance is clean up your life and come get Jesus and you can be saved.

That is not good news. That's really bad news because in order to clean yourself up, to make yourself acceptable, you have to pay for your sins. You can't do that. So to, to, to be clear, we, we have to be careful when we, well, you know, I'm just taking the Bible literally.

And, and I'm saying you're taking a phrase literally out of its context of the whole Bible, because if you look at what all of scripture has to say, repentance is absolutely part of the Christian life.

But it, it's what comes when the spirit does that to you, that God repents you. And so it, you can, you can absolutely combine those together. It's if you believe in Christ, you're going to repent. So repent and believe is, is, is a true statement, but you have to understand it in its context.

But when you, when you, when you pile repentance on before a change of heart and the spirit coming in and regenerating, if you require it beforehand, you are saying there is a position you must take in order to receive grace, therefore grace only meets you at a certain point.

It's Chad Bird in his book, I believe it's a night driving. He talks about how God repents us, that God is the one that is doing the work in our lives in order for this to come to fruition. And if you think about specifically how Ephesians chapter two speaks of the person who does not yet know Christ.

That they are spiritually dead, that their spiritual faculties have been so deeply affected by sin and the fall. To require that kind of person to do some sort of repenting in order that God's grace would be placed upon them is absurd.

We don't ask dead people to do anything. And so repentance is a fruit of God's work via the Holy Spirit, by the preaching of the gospel in the life of a believer. And I know that might be, that might be shocking for some people to hear, but repentance is a fruit.

Yeah, it is.

And can I say, yeah.

And to add to that, Jimmy, can I say we cannot fall into the ditch of the either or.

Exactly.

Well, you guys are saying repentance isn't necessary.

That's not what we're saying.

That is ridiculous. That is not what we're saying. It's just, you got to get the order correct, right?

Right.

Christ brings us to life and we repent.

Yeah.

Repentance without doubt will be there. And at the same time, it is not the gospel. All right. This next one is going to be perhaps be even more controversial. Not only is repentance not the gospel, faith is not the gospel.

Faith Is Not the Gospel

Oh boy.

Yeah.

Faith in and of itself. This is confusing. So the scripture will use the phrase, we're saved not by works, we're saved by faith. But what the Apostle Paul in that instance does not mean is that faith in and of itself saves.

Faith in and of itself has never saved anybody and it never will. We'll talk more about this later, but we are saved by the object of our faith, who is Jesus Christ. Faith is the means through which the work and merit of Christ are applied to us.

And yeah, so just to be really clear too on faith and repentance, this seems like a reasonable time to say this. And then I'll hand it off to one of you guys. I think a lot of times faith and repentance are pulled apart in the ways that people talk about them in the church.

It's like they can exist independently. And biblically, I just don't think that's true. If we understand the definition of repentance like we've been framing it, it's a change of mind about these various things.

It's quite clear that repentance and faith go together. Both of them are produced by the work of God in us. Both of them are a result of the grace of God and they're fruit of the new birth that God alone causes in us as we behold Christ.

And so I think we do bad things, and this is probably another podcast for another day, when we separate those two, repentance and faith. And this is how repentance in particular ends up sounding like a work that we need to do, when in reality, repentance and faith go together and they're sort of opposite sides of the same coin.

But neither of them are the good news.

Something I say to our church repeatedly, and they might be getting tired of it by now, but we are never saved by the quality of our faith, but we are always saved by the object of our faith, which is Jesus Christ.

I think often when we read the New Testament and we look at the people that believed in Christ, believed on Christ, we want to, I mean, Hebrews 11, their faith is commended, and I think we often associate that, like, this person is a man of strong faith or this woman has a strong faith, and I understand what people are trying to say there, that their life is a model for perhaps younger Christians to follow.

But at the end of the day, like you look at Hebrews 11, the people that are commended for their faith committed some pretty horrible sins and had some pretty atrocious decisions littered throughout their life, and so the object of our faith is always Jesus Christ.

We are not saved by our strong faith, we are saved by a strong Savior in whom our faith is in. So, to say that the gospel is faith, that you just believe, well, that's actually not good news. The good news has to be about someone to believe in, which is Jesus Christ.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. If you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what does it mean to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. If you've been encouraged by our ministry and would like to help us, you can join one of our support teams. This is a monthly membership where we provide additional content each week, and your support is what allows us to keep spreading the good news of resting in Christ.

You can learn more at theocast .org. If I were to tell you, we all believe you have to drink water. I mean, there's like three things you need in order to live, right? You got to drink, you got to eat, and you got to sleep.

If you remove one of those, you're going to die, period, right? So, if you say, I believe that water will keep me alive, believing in the water won't keep you alive. The water itself has to keep you alive, but believing in the water is not going to do it.

You actually have to put your faith in something that actually is going to accomplish the thing that you said, and then it has to do it. This is what we're trying to separate. Some people just talk about finding their assurance in their faith.

Well, as Jimmy said earlier, your faith will be weak at times, and your faith can be strong at times. When someone describes to me a strong Christian, I think of someone who is really trusting in Christ and nothing else.

That, to me, is a strong Christian versus someone who's weak in faith means that there's some doubt. They're wavering. Their faith in the substance of Christ, our object, is not very strong. And the illustration I've used a thousand times, sorry, I'm muttering, but I'm just trying to get this all out because I know we have a lot more to cover.

When you're in a plane, there are a lot of people who just don't, you know, my dear mother-in-law, it just terrifies her to fly. She's afraid she's going to fall. Her faith is really weak. So if I'm sitting next to my mother-in-law in a plane and we're flying and we fly safely, we get to point A to point B, was it called into question based upon her faith in that plane versus me?

No problem. No, our faith did not get us from point A to point B. The plane did. And that's gospel. The gospel is Jesus Christ saving sinners, not Jesus Christ looking to someone's faith saying, oh, your faith is strong, therefore you are saved or because you have faith, therefore you are saved.

And I know it sounds like we're splitting hairs, but this is so important because people often lose heart because they have weak faith. A weak faith is not a weak savior. That just means that your heart needs to be renewed in Christ.

Obedience, Discipleship, and Surrender Are Not the Gospel

Okay, next. We've already talked about repentance. We've talked about faith. The next thing that is not the gospel is obedience because sometimes people will look at the words of Christ, you know, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, language like that, that the apostles will even use, John uses language like that at points, you know, that to love God is to essentially do what he says.

So people will talk about obedience being the good news, hitching my wagon to obedience and those kinds of things. Or even the transformation of life kind of falls under this heading too. The transformation of our lives is not the good news.

The fact that I'm not like I used to be is not the gospel.

We like to use the phrase, even though I don't think John likes it anymore, you know, kind of poke him in the eye, there is this trend within greater evangelicalism to, and it's good-hearted, I don't want to impugn people's motives and so on and so forth, but there is this trend within greater evangelicalism to typically, you know, if it's a credo-baptistic church to share kind of their testimony before they are baptized.

And I mean, I'm all for hearing people's stories and how God has worked in their life, but if you notice the common thread, the way that Christianity, modern Christianity has framed people and taught people how to share their testimonies, what is it that they are constantly pointing to?

They're pointing to, I used to do this, I used to be addicted to this, I used to struggle with this sin, but now I don't, and now I'd like to go under the water. Like that is the way that they...

I've put the bottle down and I've come to Christ.

Exactly right. As if like that is the end game, right?

The proof of their salvation is the evidence of some kind of change.

Right. I mean, people used to make these, I haven't seen a video like this in a while, but I have seen it before, where essentially it's like the cardboard testimonies, right? I feel like I'm just offending people left and right, and I'm really sorry, where it's like they would hold up the cardboard sign and say, I used to be this, they'd flip it over and they'd say it now, and it's like, okay, well, that's great, but here's the problem in that.

If that is the gospel we are sharing, we are in essence making a promise to people that if you believe in Jesus, you will no longer struggle with this, which may or may not be the case, and that's not good news.

Well, the thing that communicates in part two, this transformation of life idea, for example, what we're saying, I used to be an alcoholic and now I'm not, and I'm coming to Christ, or I used to abuse substances and now I don't, and I'm coming to Christ, or I used to be this and now I'm not, and I'm coming to Christ, it's like, well, you realize there are many different belief systems and programs that exist in the world where people give the exact same testimony, where they say, I used to be this and now I'm not, I used to be that and now I'm different.

There is nothing distinctly Christian about that, and this is just one example of so many things in the church, in the evangelical church anyway, where there are good things talked about, but you don't need Jesus for them.

You don't have to have Christ for them because you could go about it some other way and transform your life. There are people who don't believe in Christ at all and are pagan in that sense of the word, whose lives have been changed by this or that discipline or this or that thought process or whatever it may be.

You don't need Jesus to get off drugs. You don't need Jesus to quit drinking. You don't need Jesus to stop being a serial womanizer and be a good husband. That sounds absolutely controversial to say, but you need Jesus to save you from your sins and give you righteousness.

That's right.

Amen.

Well, my children were baptized recently. My 12-year-old daughter, in our church, we give people the opportunity if they would like to say something to the congregation for the encouragement of the hearer, we give them the opportunity to do that.

My 12-year-old daughter wrote out something, and it was great. We've had people who have come from pretty rough backgrounds who you would hear their testimony, and it's unbelievable to see what God has done saving them.

I remember when my daughter came to me and she said, Dad, I think I really want to be baptized because it's something we explain every single week with communion and the sacraments. She goes, but I just don't have like a—and she was trying to describe, like, I don't have that transition moment to tell people about.

Oh, yeah.

And so it was six months of me really encouraging her and talking with her to make sure she understood that you aren't saved because you've had a transition moment. It's like, you know, I used to really get upset at my brother, and now I don't anymore.

So when she got up there and she read her testimony, she literally said, you know, I always thought I had to have this story, and I'm reminded that without God and Christ—and she explained the gospel.

She literally said, I'm a sinner, and I'm standing in this water because I'm a sinner who was saved by Jesus. That's why I'm here.

And God gave her baptism so that she now has that story where she can look back and say, I was baptized into Christ Jesus, and I'm united to him, and I'm his.

I once was dry, but now I'm wet, right? I mean, that's it. And here's kind of the crazy thing, and I've said this before, and I've prayed this before publicly, and people have given me—I don't think I've ever received more pushback for a prayer than what I'm about to say, where I have prayed for the children of our church.

And I have prayed, God, we ask in your grace and by your favor that our children would have particularly boring testimonies. And people give me all sorts of pushback because they're like, well, we want our kids' testimonies to be exciting so that other people—and I'm like, you know what, I feel like if in 20 years, my Charlie and my Owen and my Nora, they can say, Lord, we can't remember a time that we didn't know or trust in you.

I'm like, praise God. I'll chalk that up as a win.

Justin Perdue. Not only that, I don't remember a time I wasn't meaning to trust Christ.

One.

Two, I remember my baptism. There it is.

Jon Moffitt. Well, and that's decisionalism. I mean, what you're getting into is that I have decided to follow Jesus and, you know, sinner's prayer probably falls into this. What a lot of people grew up in a Baptist background and their point to, I remember when I decided to follow Jesus and I made the sinner's prayer.

You know, I'm with Jimmy, my kids, 16, 14, 12 and five, my oldest three, they can't tell you when they said a prayer. We just don't lead our kids in that way. They hear the gospel every single week. What really forces my children early on in their ages to deal with their salvation is that they saw communion happen every week.

We finished the table and we let people know to come to the table and receive such mercy and kindness and grace and strength from the Father, you have to be a family.

Member.

I mean, this is a family gathering. So the kids would ask, well, dad, why am I not taking communion? It was early on we had this opportunity to share the gospel with them over and over again and eventually the kids were like, yeah, I mean, I believe, when can I participate?

It's like, well, you need to be baptized. But the point of it is, it wasn't that my kids, I didn't walk them through a prayer and say, well, are you deciding to follow Jesus now? I can tell you my kids have been hearing the gospels from the birth because I've been sharing it with them and they're not going to have this transition moment.

As a matter of fact, my kids could fall into deep sin and we know that to be true according to Christianity. So a sinner's prayer is really dangerous and it's not the gospel. It's just one of the things that we pile on to the gospel.

The sinner's prayer is not the gospel. And I can't tell you how many people I know who come and talk to me and say, I know I'm a Christian because I said a prayer. And it's really sad and it's heartbreaking because, again, that's another way of saying my faith is in the statement I said.

They're effectively saying that the sinner's prayer saved me. It is the thing that saved me and reconciled me to God.

People want to get crazy. They look at us like we're nuts when we talk about the sacraments in that way. God communicates grace and they're like, oh, that's mysticism, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden they're like, yeah, but the sinner's prayer, man, the sinner's prayer, that's where it's at.