With Christendom waning and God’s
people becoming increasingly ineffective in gospel witness in North America, it
is time to re-focus on the message that is spread. Dallas Willard does an excellent job of
casting the contemporary problem and offering the solution.
Many
evangelicals in North America have come to faith in Jesus Christ through gospel
presentations such “The Romans Road” or “Steps to Peace with God.” Each delineates the biblical realities of
human sin, God’s wrath, humanity’s inability to rebuild a relationship with
God, and God’s offer of reconciliation through the cross of Jesus Christ (Rom 3:23; 6:23). Where these and many other written or oral
gospel presentations have failed is the other side of the coin, after people
have said “yes” to a relationship with Jesus.
Verses requiring a lifetime of obedience to Jesus due to our salvation
are downplayed or ignored (John 14:23; John 15:10; Matt 28:19-20). Yet, it is through a lifetime of obedience,
submission, and active spiritual formation that spiritual authority and power is
generated, the kind of power and authority that have a positive effect in our broken world. Dallas Willard makes the astute comment:
Jesus’
message of hope and wholeness was not only one of forgiveness of sin, but also
one of newness of life. According to
Willard, “To be ‘saved’ was to be ‘delivered from the power of darkness and
translated into the Kingdom of his dear Son,’ as Colossians 1:13 says. We who are saved are to have a different
order of life from that of the unsaved. We are to live in a different ‘world.’” (Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines). The gospel as reflected throughout the entire
New Testament says that new life is now available in the Kingdom of God if one
trusts Jesus Christ—”trust[s] the whole person of Christ in everything he
touches—which is everything" (Willard, The Great Omission).
Willard continues this stream of thought,
We cannot have a gospel dealing
only with sin. We have to have a gospel that leads us to new life in Christ,
and then spirituality can be presented as a natural development of such new
life. But if we divide between justification
and regeneration in such a way that the gospel is only “believe Jesus died for
you sins and you will go to heaven when you die,” we are stuck with a theology
that is inherently resistant to a vital spirituality (Willard, The Great Omission).
Quite simply, a gospel that solely
emphasizes justification does not create disciples who will pursue becoming
like Jesus. Without truly becoming like Jesus in belief,
character, and action, followers of Jesus have no witness or authority in the
postmodern world.
Willard
argues persuasively that nothing in the teachings of Jesus or the early
followers suggests that one can enjoy Jesus’ forgiveness and yet have nothing
more to do with Him until heaven. As Tozer says, “Salvation apart from
obedience is unknown in the sacred scriptures.” Willard has different words but the same
conviction, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning." (Willard, The Great Omission).
Failure to expend
effort in the Christian life, failure to expend effort to practice the
spiritual disciplines and become an apprentice of Jesus’ way of life, leads to
moral and spiritual defeat—a destination many Christians find themselves in
today. In Willard’s words, “Only avid discipleship
to Christ through the Spirit brings the inward transformation of thought,
feeling, and character that ‘cleans the inside of the cup’ (Matthew 23:25) and
‘makes the tree good’ (Matthew 12:33)" (Willard, The Great Omission).
As we prepare leaders for a church that will live on mission, they need freedom from sin, a freedom that the gospel promises,
without the anemic discipleship that a gospel focused only on justification
provides. Nothing less than the future
of the church and its witness in the world is at stake.
Blessings,
Kirk