The Dangerous Twins of Two False Gospels
To hear some people talk, the path to salvation is simple and straightforward. “All you have to do is trust Jesus.”
They’re right, of course. God’s gift of salvation in Christ is simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that children can sometimes grasp it more easily than adults.
As adults, our competence and confidence can get in the way of our accepting the fact that there is simply nothing we can do to bring about our deliverance beyond repenting (letting go of our sin and all our self-justifying devices) and believing in Jesus (putting all our confidence in his death and resurrection to pay the debt of our sin).
That is the New Testament’s gospel call: “repent and believe.”
But here’s where our Western minds can betray us: because the gospel is so straightforward and plain, we can easily imagine that the process of trusting God in this way is merely intellectual. It is nothing more than acknowledging a set of facts:
1. God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.
2. I am sinful and separated from God.
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for my sin.
4. I must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Some of our readers will recognize those four points as Cru’s famous “Four Spiritual Laws.” And those four points do a marvelous job of explaining clearly what our deepest problem is and how only Jesus’ death and resurrection can make us right with God.
But neither Cru nor the Scripture ever intends to reduce the miracle of the new birth to a mere cognitive process, the assimilation of theological bullet-points. It is possible for someone to give intellectual assent, even enthusiastic assent, to all four of those points without a clear understanding of the Good News about Jesus.
This means that it is possible for a man or woman to intellectually, even verbally, acknowledge those four true statements and still be far from God.
How?
THE FALSE GOSPEL OF MORALISM
There are plenty of pseudo-gospels, false versions of the gospel that seem to be true but are actually false. These false gospels are not just misleading: they are spiritually lethal.
One of those false gospels was the subject of intense debate in the pages of the New Testament. And while that false gospel still plagues the church today, there is another false gospel that is equally deadly.
Paul wrote his letter to the churches in Galatia to denounce the false gospel of moralism: The Judaizers insisted that Jesus’ death and resurrection alone are not sufficient. If someone wants to be part of God’s family, he must supplement that faith with further moral requirements. He must submit to Jewish rituals (in their case, the ritual of circumcision).
Of all Paul’s letters, his letter to the churches in Galatia shows us Paul at his most passionate. He recognizes that anyone who tries to add moral requirements to the gospel is creating a false gospel that cannot save. Because no one can keep the Law, adding Law-keeping to the gospel can only condemn.
I would love to report that this heresy died out in the early days of the church and is no longer a threat, but sadly that is not so. The false gospel of moralism thrives even today. Many believers – even entire fellowships – labor under the burden of a legalistic understanding the gospel.
THE FALSE GOSPEL OF INTELLECTUALISM
It is a sad fact that we are unfortunately prone to over-react. Martin Luther once observed that mankind is like a drunk man trying to mount a horse. First he falls off one side, then he gets back up and falls off the other.
Some people, reacting to the false gospel of moralism, fall off the other side of the horse and embrace the false gospel of intellectualism.
Rejecting the works orientation of moralism, the false gospel of intellectualism tries to reduce evangelism to a purely intellectual process in which the only requirement is a clear understanding of the main ideas, divorced from life-change. So long as you have a clear understanding of the doctrine of salvation and can clearly articulate it as your own settled belief, you can be assured that you have been born again.
There is an untold number of people who somewhere in the past made a decision for Christ along those lines and, sure now that their salvation is an accomplished fact, go on with their lives as if nothing had ever changed.
And that is the problem. Nothing has ever changed.
There is no desire to please God, no attempt to align behaviors with the teachings of the Word of God. There is no trajectory toward holiness, no holy zeal, not even any real awareness of sin.
The false assurance of the gospel of intellectualism inoculates us against real spiritual growth. Because we need do nothing to accept God’s gracious gift in Christ, we assume that all there is to being a Christian is professing faith in Christ so that we can get our ticket punched and enjoy the ride.
This spiritual blindness is rooted in a truncated understanding of what God has given us in Christ. It is true that putting my faith in Jesus frees me from the penalty of sin. But is also true that once I have put my faith in Christ, the Spirit of God begins the process of freeing me from the power of sin.
But the gospel of moralism and the gospel of intellectualism are actually two sides of the same coin. They both react wrongly to Law (laboring under it or rejecting it) and overlook the transforming power of grace.
Neither moralism nor intellectualism will save us, and both will leave us in our sin.
HOW THE GOSPEL CHANGES US
I once had a conversation with a young man in which he turned the tables and educated me. We were talking about 2 Cor 5:17: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” I had always misunderstood that verse, thinking it meant that once I’m a Christian I shouldn’t have the desire to sin any more.
My personal experience, of course, told a different story. I knew that I still struggled with sin, especially my own particular “besetting sins.”
But there it was in black and white: I’m a new creation in Christ, so (I thought) I shouldn’t ever struggle with sin. I had real difficulty understanding and appreciating that verse because I didn’t know how to “preach the gospel to myself.”
But my young friend had a different take, and I think he was right. He said that when a man comes to Christ, he is made new in the sense that he can never again be comfortable with sin. Once I am a believer, I’ve joined the battle, and I am a participant in spiritual warfare. The kind of habits that might have once gone unnoticed and unchallenged now seem strangely, oddly inappropriate.
In other words, 2 Cor 5:17 is saying that once I’m in Christ, I’ll never again be okay with ongoing sin in my life.
This is because once I am in Christ, God’s Spirit undertakes that lifelong task of re-forming my life from the inside out. This means that it is not just my ruined conscience that will recoil at sin in my life, God’s Spirit will war against it as well, and He will struggle mightily to make real in my actual life what is already true in my standing before God. The Spirit strives to create in my daily habit patterns the same thing God sees when He looks at me: the image of His Son.
This is the life-change that begins to take shape when a man or woman repents and believes the gospel. If that kind of life-change is not present in my life – especially if I have no real interest in that kind of life change – I may not know Jesus at all. I may have only believed the false gospel of intellectualism.
CLARITY ON THE GOSPEL
So we don’t fall off the horse again, let’s make it crystal clear: my good works have absolutely nothing to do with how I am made right with God. This sinful creature can stand upright before the eyes of the Holy One only because he is clothed in the perfect righteousness of His Son.
Paul puts it this way: “For by grace are you saved… not of works” (Eph 2:8-9).
But saving me from God’s wrath isn’t all of the gospel. God loves me too much to leave His child wallowing in his sin. If I have really repented and believed (and not just given intellectual assent to) the gospel, I am born again into a new life where the Spirit begins to bend the trajectory of my life toward holiness.
Paul goes on to say that we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).
Only God knows those who are truly His, so I would never presume to judge whether a man or woman is part of the Kingdom. But as a Christian leader, as a man who disciples men and wants to see our fellowship make disciples, I long for our people to recognize the false gospel when they see it, no matter how attractively it presents itself.
And I want to see our people embrace and thrive in the glorious truth of the Good News about Jesus: that he came to save us from both the penalty and power of sin.
Persevere.
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor
Subscribe to receive Discipleship Weekly in your inbox each week.