Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. Here we go with episode number nine of Missions on point. This time I want to take the basics of the gospel, what it is and what it is not. I run into this all the time in helping churches, individuals in the church have a misunderstanding of what the gospel is and how they should go about it locally and even overseas. People make big assumptions that missionaries are communicating the gospel when in some cases they are not communicating the gospel. Even church leaders can get sucked into the vortex of other things. Sincerely believing that this or that desired end result is the gospel, when in actual fact it's not. There's much confusion in the missions world and in our pews with respect to just exactly what is the gospel. It gets confused by so many social messages.

What the Gospel is Not

I will attempt to rightly distill the principles here. So first, let's start with what the gospel is not. Let's consider what the gospel is not. The gospel is not good works done by believers. It is not community assistance, either physical, social or political. It is not economic development, job skills, opportunity enhancing upward mobility, neighborhood improvement. It is not stopping human trafficking or reducing human slavery. None of these in and of themselves is the gospel. In fact, none of these apart from the actual proclamation of the gospel as found in the scripture, is even the biblical responsibility of believers toward nonbelievers. The biblical mandate and scope of care for the poor is directed toward the poor, within the believing church, or in the case of the Old Testament, the Jewish community and not the community or world at large. This doesn't mean that all of these good works can't be the means of sharing the gospel or the platform by which we share the gospel, but it isn't sharing the gospel in and of itself. It's not communicating the gospel in and of itself.

What is the Gospel?

So what is the gospel? The gospel can be distilled to four main points.

1. First, God is the creator. He is the judge. He is holy. He's the one that makes the rules.
2. Second man is thoroughly sinful. We cannot make ourselves right before God in and of ourselves. Man is spiritually dead and incapable of even choosing God unless God grants mercy for regeneration, repentance, and faith.
3. Third, God has wonderfully provided a means for reconciling men to himself and still be holy, and just while doing so through the person, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross as our substitute for our penalty of our sin, and as such, God can be holy in justifying us because of Christ's sacrifice.
4. Fourthly, individuals receive this salvation through repentance that is agreeing with God about his sentence on our sin and trusting in an accepting Jesus's sacrifice apart from any merit or work of our own.

The consequences of this are enormous because our relationship with God is restored because of God's own work through Jesus Christ, and ultimately all of creation. The universe is restored to its original design because of God's work.

The consequences of this are enormous because our relationship with God is restored because of God's own work through Jesus Christ, and ultimately all of creation. The universe is restored to its original design because of God's work.

Communicating the Gospel

So let's take the next step and think about how Christians communicate the gospel. The gospel must be proclaimed. A lot of Christians have this confused with service ministry, which does not include gospel proclamation through personal witness or testimony, written form or media that is not gospel ministry. Presence of evangelism is not really evangelism. There is often a statement attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that says something like this, preach the gospel every day. Use words if necessary. Not only is that biblically false, but apparently it was never uttered by St. Francis himself. Community service or community development, apart from proclamation of the gospel is not evangelism ministry.

The Greatest Need

The greatest need of the neediest people on the planet is the gospel. We do a disservice to them as believers if we improve their life in route to hell without expressly proclaiming the gospel of grace. The Bible's commands, and many New Testament examples show that verbal proclamation of this gospel is necessary as a means of communicating the gospel. The life and ministry of Christ on earth are not defacto evidence for ministries of compassion, mercy, and miracles eclipsing or replacing proclamation and teaching of the gospel. Jesus himself explained this. The role of his acts of mercy and compassion and miracles were temporary and specifically aimed at the unique prophetic fulfillment and verification of his credentials as Messiah. We don't have that same function and role. What I've just said doesn't dismiss good works in this fallen world out of hand, not at all. We would say that good works and gospel ministry should not be confused with helping poor brothers and sisters in Christ.

Conversely, good works in helping local or even a distant community of people, even in the name of Christ should not be mistaken as actual gospel ministry or evangelism as an end in itself. So this distinction of what is and what is not the gospel should be clear in the kind of missions that we do and missions ministry that we support.

The Means of Regeneration

It should also be said that the gospel's content is the Bible. It may seem obvious in theory, but in practice so many Christians get this wrong. They want to demonstrate or model or be an example of the gospel, which is right and fine. But the Bible tells us about four God ordained means that God uses in this process, if you will, of regeneration.

1. First is the spoken word of the saints through testimony, preaching and teaching.
2. Second is the reading, hearing, and speaking of the word itself.
3. Thirdly is the unseen work of the Holy Spirit over which we have no ultimate control.
4. And fourth is prayer.

Again, I wanna say that good works and human relief of pain and distress and catastrophe development, all of those things are legitimate means for coming into contact with people and proclaiming the gospel, but they are not in and of themselves the proclamation of the gospel.

all of those things are legitimate means for coming into contact with people and proclaiming the gospel, but they are not in and of themselves the proclamation of the gospel.

Priority of Proclamation

So how does this play out? How does this understanding play out in our expression of missions? Well, first of all, proclamation of the gospel needs to be part of the agenda. We need to know how to communicate the gospel, how to speak the gospel, how to turn a conversation toward the gospel, how to use whatever connection or relationship or good works that we're doing to move toward the gospel. It should be one of the most basic and fundamental training aspects of anything we do with teams and missions, and it certainly should be an expectation that those that we support or send to the field, whether through short term or long term, should be evangelists that is should consistently proclaim the gospel in their life and ministry.

If proclamation of the gospel is not a consistent priority for the missionary, they probably shouldn't be on the field. It doesn't matter whether the missionary is a technical missionary, a support missionary or a teacher type of missionary, whatever type of missionary they should know and understand the gospel and take every opportunity to share it with people they come in contact with.

If proclamation of the gospel is not a consistent priority for the missionary, they probably shouldn't be on the field. 

I should say that this doesn't necessarily translate into keeping track of numbers. How many people did you share the gospel with? How many gospel tracks or pieces of literature did you distribute? Most times, unbelievers don't come to faith in Christ through the first presentation of the gospel. They hear it takes several presentations or several opportunities, or several people that reinforce the gospel message before they really understand in God opens their heart to believe evangelism that is proclamation of the gospel is the first essential skill of every missionary.

Some wannabe missionary candidate might object by saying, oh, I'll do that when I get to the field. There's a couple of things wrong with that. Number one, how do you know they can do it at all? Number two, how do you know there are any good at it? You certainly want them to be good at it on the field. Number three, change of location doesn't automatically make you a missionary. If you're not doing it now, you're not gonna be doing it over there either.

Let me reiterate those. Four means that God uses in salvation in a slightly different way. First of all, speak the gospel, proclaim it, tell it. Let it be on your lips. Often. Second, use God's word. It is significant important. It is living in active. God intends for it to be used and promises that it will be used. Number three, trust God the Holy Spirit to open hearts.  It's a work that only he can do. And fourth pray. That's how we tell God that we are dependent upon him and beg God to open sinner's hearts to believe and come to salvation.

Pressured to adopt other means

In these present days of turmoil, we're often pressured to adopt other means or to look for other results than what the Bible tells us. It's so easy to let other messages eclipse the centrality that Jesus Christ is the message of salvation. That Christ alone is the means and power of salvation because of his work on the cross and his resurrection. This biblical gospel is exclusive. It doesn't share the limelight with any other end result, and there is no other way of salvation. But through faith in Jesus Christ, the gospel clearly is not political, social, developmental relief. It is not salvation out of a world of sin and sinners, transformation of individuals and even whole societies and systems are often the result of transformation of individuals by the power of Jesus Christ in personal salvation. Those good things are good to fight for from a human perspective. Yet they are neither the biblical means or end of salvation. Ultimately, we won't see the conclusion of salvation until Christ's restoration of all things in his kingdom.

The Witness of the Church

There is one more note I would add to this. It's a little more subtle in the scripture, but it's there. The gospel is expressed through the life and worship and witness of the local church. It's expressed in the ordinances of baptism and communion. It's expressed in the love of the body for each other and how they exercise hospitality and care for each other. It's expressed in the preaching of the word, in the fellowship of the saints, in their care for one another.

So here's the big overview. The gospel must be priority in our missions, ministry of all kinds, local and foreign. It must be proclaimed clearly. We don't apologize for it's exclusivity. There is only one gospel, only one way to salvation, one way to heaven. We don't soften it or change its content. The gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ is the primary message of missions.

Hey, thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. We trust that you'll find more resources and help on the website, propempo.com.