Are You Still Gospel-Centered?

From Gospel Translations

We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. (Hebrews 2:1)

Gospel-centrality is not as popular as it once was. At least, the marketing movement built on gospel-centrality has declined over the past fifteen years. As an early adherent of the gospel-centered, “young, restless, and Reformed” whatchamacallit, I have watched many of my fellow tribesmen, usually leaders around my same age, gradually undergo a shift in their ministry emphases and spiritual priorities over the last decade, and it’s left me scratching my head a bit.

In the gospel-centered heyday, many young ministers, like myself, abandoned the seeker-sensitive church movement. Burned out by ever-demanding needs of innovative methodology and disillusioned by a pragmatic consumerism that appeared less and less tethered to the Scriptures, we ached for something with theological depth, biblical rigor, and historical roots.

Many others of us began to find our ministerial footing in burgeoning coalitions and organizations led by some elder statesmen who’d already been faithfully preaching the gospel for decades (men like John Piper, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, D.A. Carson, and others) alongside a gang of younger and louder leaders (like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and David Platt). For many Gen-X leaders, this mix of old and young, traditional and contemporary, scholarly and “culturally relevant” — all oriented around the gospel — held a potent attraction. It felt like we’d finally found our tribe. It felt like a homecoming.

Then the house fell apart.

Gospel-Confusion

Multiple stress fractures contributed to the splintering of the various ministry and ideological continents that today are the remnants of that once-large gospel-centered Pangaea. Leftist drift among some, fundamentalist drift among others, ministry scandals, political division, rivalries — all these (and more) contributed to the fracture. What is rather curious, however, is the disavowal of — and in some cases, the outright hostility toward — gospel-centrality that has emerged from many former gospel-centered guys.

As leaders grow up and gain experience, ideology shifts and theology develops — inevitably. But it’s become apparent, at least to me, that many of the currently gospel-un-centered guys never really embraced the substantial ideas of the gospel-centered paradigm in the first place. What they’d found, perhaps, was a marketing scheme that appealed to their disillusionment and desires.

And I’m not sure they’re entirely to blame. As one who has published multiple books and delivered messages using the language of “gospel-centered,” “gospel-driven,” and “gospel-whatever,” I admit that there is a real danger of adjectivizing the word “gospel” to the point of (sorry) gospel-confusion.

I once spoke with another pastor about our apparently differing approaches to ministry. He and I share core theological commitments. We’re both Baptists. We’re both Reformed. We’re both biblical expositors. We even like a lot of the same famous writers and preachers. But when he referred to my being “gospel-centered,” he made scare quotes around the phrase with his fingers, indicating his sense of its otherness, its murkiness, its superficiality. I realized then that we need to work harder to explain the what and the why of gospel-centrality. I was reminded that, for many, gospel-centrality is not a biblical paradigm but a cultural reference.

Truth Never Outgrown

When I ask the students in my ministry courses what “gospel-centered” means, they typically give some kind of circular answer: “It means to center everything on the gospel.” Okay. But what does that mean for life and ministry? What are the implications of that? I don’t often receive substantive answers. For many of these young men, being gospel-centered means listening to certain podcasts, favoring certain preachers, buying books from certain publishers, and going to certain conferences.

We can wring our hands about all of this. But there’s no going back. Movements come and go. Marketing speak that is tailored to the times will go (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) where all times go. I’m not particularly interested in recovering a bygone lingo. But I think we should all be interested in recovering gospel-centrality itself.

We should take great care that, in outgrowing particular cultural moments, we do not outgrow the central place of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Unadulterated Gospel

The first place I take students to consider the biblical argument for the gospel-centered paradigm is 1 Corinthians 15:1–4:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you — unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

These four short verses hold a treasure trove of information. First, Paul clarifies what the gospel actually is. This articulation played an integral role in the beginning of the gospel-centered movement, before we got a little scattered in the consideration of “gospel issues.” The gospel is not law. The gospel is not anything we do. The gospel is an announcement. It’s a newspaper headline. It’s something God has done in and through Jesus Christ. The gospel is the good news that “Christ died for our sins,” that “he was buried,” and that “he was raised on the third day.” You can say a lot more about the gospel — and the Scriptures certainly do — but you can’t say any less.

But beyond the helpful rearticulation of the basic gospel message, we also see some incredible things that inform how we think about that gospel message. For instance, Paul says that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again “in accordance with the Scriptures.” When we put this claim in composite with Jesus’s own words about Scripture (Luke 24:27, 44), the sermons in Acts (2:16–36; 7:1–50; 28:23), and the apostolic writings elsewhere (Romans 10:5–11:36 or Galatians 4:21–31, for example, or the whole book of Hebrews), we can see that the entire Bible is about Jesus. The whole Bible anticipates, foreshadows, prophesies, or proclaims the gospel. So, gospel-centrality necessarily entails a Christ-centered hermeneutic. That’s hugely important for ministry, not to mention the ordinary Christian life!

Consider also the phrasing in 1 Corinthians 15:1–2 about the effects of the gospel. Paul says to the believers in Corinth that they “received” the message (past tense), are standing in the message (present tense), and “are being saved” by the message (present-future tense). Herein lies the crux of gospel-centrality. We do not graduate from the good news. We don’t receive it at conversion and then move on to other, more pressing subjects. The gospel that justified us also sanctifies us. The gospel that grounds our right standing before God in the moment of new birth also grounds our right standing before God every day of our Christian life — even the good days. And the gospel that declares our sanctification in Christ empowers our progressive sanctification by the Spirit of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

All Gospel, But Not Only

Of course, none of this means we reject the need for obedience under the guise of being “gospel-centered.” I try to regularly remind my seminary students and ministry residents that gospel-centrism isn’t gospel-onlyism. The Lord has given us two words: law and gospel. And faithful preaching preaches both words. But the biblical proportion and biblical dynamic between these two words is crucial. Law and gospel are not some kind of Christian yin and yang to keep constantly in tension. We must rightly and faithfully preach obedience to God’s commands. And we must rightly and faithfully preach the gospel, which announces both our freedom from the law’s curse and our empowerment for the law’s instructions. As Paul writes in Titus 2:11–12, it is grace that trains us “to renounce ungodliness . . . and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.”

It doesn’t really pain me to say that we don’t need to get back to the (finger quotes) “gospel-centered movement.” Well, okay, it doesn’t pain me much. But we do need to be constantly centered on the gospel. We don’t have to use that particular label or lingo. But we do need to take care that our aversion to it isn’t an aversion to the Bible’s centering message, hope, and power. Let others have their wisdom or eloquence. Let us resolve to know nothing but Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2).