Is it possible to be legalistic about gospel-centrality?

The day I first chewed on that question most seriously was the same day my friend Pete Wilson (no relation) posted a link to a podcasted critique of one of his sermons. Now, Pete’s ways are (generally) not my ways. I have serious concerns about the general ecclesiological “genre” of the church he pastors (which is a genre I myself lived and ministered in, both as a layperson and as clergy, for almost 15 years), but CrossPoint Church in Nashville gets a whole lot more right than most places, and aside from that, I love Pete and I love his heart and I know he loves Jesus.

But if you asked me if Pete and CrossPoint could use a healthier dose of gospel, I’d say yes. (Who couldn’t, right?) So this podcast critic could have had me at hello. Instead I wanted to punch him in the throat. (Podcastorily speaking, of course.)

The same day I was thinking specifically about whether it’s possible to be legalistic about urging gospel-centrality I heard this merciless, unfunny (despite continuous efforts at “humor”), pedantic, grating, soulless critique of Pete’s sermon and found the answer to my question was “yes.” If you’ve never heard a Pharisee opine on gospel-centeredness, give it a listen. He’s got the letter of the gospel but not the spirit. (And in a few cases, he gets the letter wrong in his zeal to not let Pete go on too long uninterrupted.)

I think this is the real crux of the “mean tone” criticism some of us get from time to time (some of us more than others, eh Frank? — but I have received it myself and it’s something most of at least the Reformed persuasion have heard at one time or another). “Cage phase” stereotypes and mercurial matters of “tone” aside, is it possible to be a legalist about the gospel and thereby screw the whole proclamation up? I try to check myself on this frequently, so that by contending for the gospel I am not making the gospel sound less than good.

I think this (sort of) concern may lay behind the meatiest portion of John Frame’s recent critique of Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity: the section marked “Christ and Other Things” and in Frame’s Conclusion.

I know this is, in blogosphere time, old news, but this blog is new and currently on the subject of evangelical definitions, so fuh-giva-ness please.

Bell defines evangelical for a Boston Globe interviewer thusly:

I embrace the term evangelical, if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That’s a beautiful sort of thing. (Source)

I don’t know who wouldn’t embrace that sort of beautiful thing, including non-performance artist evangelicals whose self-defining might actually include the evangel.

(And yes, yes, I know Bell does not deny the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He just apparently finds these events peripheral to evangelical definition. (I got accused of meanness for saying this elsewhere.))

One fear we must put aside in our quest for greater gospel-centrality is that it will not preach week to week. The enemy and our own flesh will test our commitment with the “plausible argument” (Col. 2:4) that the gospel will just sound so one-note. We are tempted to think the repetition will have the unintended effect of boring people or making the gospel appear routine and commonplace.

But the gospel is resilient. It is miraculously versatile. It proves itself every day for those awake to it. Because it is the antidote for all sin of all people, power effectual for every type of person no matter their background or circumstance, it is God’s might to save every millisecond and therefore every Sunday.

The gospel is indeed one song. But it is a song with many notes. The news is the same, but some of the words may change and the angles shift. (Use a thesaurus if you have to.) If we are awake to the gospel and seek the wakefulness of others, Christian and non-Christian, the playing of the greatest song at every instance is a lot like the exuberance of childlike wonder in monotonous fun. In Orthodoxy, the great G.K. Chesterton writes:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

When we “get” the gospel for what it really is — the power to save, the most thrilling news there could be, the declaration that God’s Son died for us and then came back to life! to be the risen Lord and supreme King of the universe, not just the entry fee for heaven but the currency for all of life — we revel in the new creation it unleashes in its wake at every turn. We never get tired of hearing it. It’s the new song that never gets old. “Play it again, play it again!” we will cry.

Gospel wakened people have been given the strength enough to exult in the beautiful monotony of the gospel.
The further good news is that those who are dulled in their senses will not be further dulled by the gospel. In fact, only the gospel can deliver them from their dulled state. No amount of fog and lasers will do it.

What is (or who is) an evangelical? The previous definitions and characterizations resonate with me in various ways, particularly David Koyzis’s confessional core contra pragmatism and especially the “essence” offered by the inimitable John Stott (as shared by Justin Taylor).

My own desperate clinging to the tattered label evangelical has less to do with any political or cultural uniformity as it does to these core convictions, or rather, the core conviction that the good news of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners and a broken world is the mightiest power set loose in the history of the world. As a word it has likely lost its flavor, and clearly its clarity, but I love it and I gladly apply it to myself (and to others) because of what it can mean and what I hope it will mean again.

I have been accused of wishful thinking, fiddling while Rome burns (or the Titanic sinks, as it were), but I just don’t want to let evangelical go the way of fundamentalist (which is not a very good word anyway). For better or worse, I am not a “post-” anything.

So I define evangelical as “person of the gospel.” I know that in seeking to get back to this essence of the evangel, the Christian’s atomic structure, I probably only succeed in making the dividing lines more fuzzy (and letting all kinds of people inside the circle), but I’m cool with that. I’ll preach it and live it, draw somewhat tighter circles of systematic theology and doctrinal confession around the church I pastor, and just let the Holy Spirit sort out the rest. I am just young and naive enough still to think Lewis’s “mere Christianity” a viable option for unity.

The result is that I end up identifying strongly with the so-called “young, restless, and Reformed” and have joined the Gospel Coalition, etc., yet still have my Calvinist credentials questioned by those outside these groups (though strangely not any inside that I know of (yet?)) because I refuse to equate the gospel with a particular brand of Calvinism or cultural movement or what-have-you. (My book on Jesus, which was released this last summer, draws equally from John Piper and N.T. Wright, for instance.) The gospel has my loyalty and therefore so do all who love it. It is the power of salvation for all who believe, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, Arminian or Calvinist, Baptist or Presbyterian, Methodist or Lutheran, high church or low church, mini or mega, traditional or emerging, iMonk or TeamPyro.

I do track quite closely with this newfangled push for “gospel-centrality,” and that is, I think, the hope for the future of evangelicalism and even the word evangelical. I know more than a few of those gospel-centered ambassadors spend more time blogging than they do helping people die, but that’ll work itself out in sanctification, good mentoring, and the tried-and-true antidote of just growing up. In the spirit of semper reformanda, I stick doggedly to the gospel — revel in it, gnaw on it, savor it, teach it and live it, find it versatile and resilient, highlight the many notes of its one song, bang it into my head continuously — and believe that Christ is building his church and that his church will be a people shaped by the gospel.

So yeah, that’s how I define evangelicals: a people who once were not a people (1 Peter 2:10) but who will be a people shaped by the gospel.