The content for this week’s blog post reflects my notes on Pastor Dave Hintz’ sermon at the 2023 Ironmen’s Conference where he spoke about how and why Christians have a better gospel than the social gospel popularized today. If you want to listen to the whole message, click here. I was struck by how helpful the comments were that he made about the issues surrounding this trend.
“A Better Gospel”
Religious energy is still present in America even though church attendance is lowering. Now, we have activists instead of priests. We do not have revelation but lived experiences. We have science instead of authoritative revelation. And we might not have church attendance but the social gospel shapes our worldview.
In the biblical gospel, God created us man and woman in His image. We reflect him, and we were made for a purpose. However, we fell in Adam and are doomed to die, enduring the righteous wrath of God forever. Yet, God placed his own wrath on Jesus so that you can have faith in the risen Lord. There is faith and joy from that, which helps us to say no to the passing pleasures of this life and enjoy God forever.
The secular gospel says that evolution and chance mutations have resulted in all that is. We are given the freedom to make our own destiny, but our searches for meaning and purpose “are corrupted by society.” It has corrupted that freedom of pursuit of life and happiness. We do not believe in personal sin, but systemic sin. There is no presence of future joy, so you are to realize the most pleasure here and now, and the most pleasurable experience we can have is sex. No one should deprive persons of this, even if it means abortion.
So which of these is the better gospel?
Following are four reasons why the biblical gospel is a better gospel:
1.) The biblical gospel offers salvation – It is the power of God to salvation.
If you go to a funeral led by a liberal pastor, it sounds like a string of Halmark cards whereat the preacher says things to the effect of “she is now an angel.” Also: “We will meet her at the end of the rainbow.” But we as Christians have a more real and tangible hope.
But in the absence of the supernatural power and hope found in the scripture, we create a negative sense of coercion with guilt and shame. That is the method of the left politically with respect to woke-ism and systemic racism. They single out white people as oppressors. This shows us that you cannot come “just the way you are” into the woke religion. The second aspect of the biblical gospel is –
2.) The biblical gospel is for everyone.
God went to Jonah, and He told Him to preach against the ancient equivalent of the Nazis to the Jewish community, or the Ninevites, which for Jonah was unthinkable. In Jonah 4:11, God responds to Jonah who wanted judgement against them, and He told him, “should I not have compassion on Nineveh?”
The Gospel is like that for anyone. It doesn’t matter what your national identity is or your ethnic or religious or political viewpoints. God is reaching out to everyone to join the family of faith. It is a unifying truth. In contrast to this, the woke or secular gospel is always trying to find new groups of oppressed people. It is always trying to find who has it worse, promising a utopia that everyone knows will never come.
3.) The biblical gospel displays God’s faithfulness.
In the context of the time, faithfulness meant that you keep your commitments. In the context of God, He always keeps His commitments to Himself. The 9/11 hijackers did meet God. The pedophile who got away with sexual molestation and rape his whole life, met God, and God will deal with each of them. Psalm 143:11 and Is. 46:13 shows that God always makes good on His promises. God will be faithful to restore the Jews also (Rom. 11). The Bible says that He will swear to His own hurt but He will fulfill His word.
Romans 3:23-26 shows that we are made right through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. He saves people in a way that does not violate His own righteousness. We are saved because He is faithful/righteous not because we are righteous. That is why it makes no sense to boast in our salvation because it is all a work of God. We have nothing to boast in. That is why a self-righteous Christian in an oxymoron.
But the social gospel says, “It takes all of us,” “Try harder,” and “We can do better.” Those are the mantras of the secular Gospel so we can make an “equitable society.” There is intense pressure on all of us to bring in the hold outs. Rothman’s “The Rise of the New Puritans” is a book about this secular gospel. Basically you can’t watch a football game without being reminded that certain people are being oppressed, neither can you have thanksgiving dinner as long as that is the case. It is the idea that we can’t enjoy life until everyone is.
4.) The biblical gospel is better because it is accessible by faith.
Religion is typically expressed by, or required to have rituals, or rules just like the hijab in Islam, as well as many more means of attestation. But God says that His religion is accessible only by faith.
The Old Testament book of Habakkuk says that a nation even more evil than Judah is going to judge them. But God says to accept it as an act of faith. The book’s theme is that the righteous are going to live by faith in the midst of it. Neither is it an acquiescence. Faith is an internal conviction of the soul of the greatness of God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ so that we can live confidently. We obey just like the Christian unmarried couple does who does not have sex before marriage. That is an act of faith.
The secular gospel says that the righteous groups are those oppressed groups. There is no salvation, but you can have some kind of clemency if you spend your life being an activist for them. You can come out of the closet and become oppressed and then you are classified better.
Applications –
- You need to engage beyond the cultural war. This cultural war is a religious one for a change. They say, “You have to do better.” “You have to change,” and they use the media, entertainment, big business to coerce people to get in line. We try to use the big guns politically, but we have a better gospel and a “bigger gun.” Their gospel can’t change hearts. Ours can.
- Embrace the contrast. This secular gospel is awful. It is in fact terrible. People are blind to that because of how prevalent it has become.
- They constantly tell young men, your biggest problem is that you are white and male, and many young men say “screw it,” and they become white nationalist. Others capitulate and are forever subservient. We have a better gospel because we tell them that you don’t have to change a thing externally. Young men’s biggest problem in fact is that they look at porn.
So, our conviction is that we live by faith in the grace of God to strengthen us to speak the truth in love. As opportunities present themselves we can live this out and speak about it to people who have little or no hope. That is the contrast. Our gospel is far better and far more effective.
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