The gospel is not banal.

Alexander Maclaren on the enduring primacy of the gospel.

Photo by Rose Galloway Green on Unsplash

I am always intrigued to hear analysis from the past that remains trenchant in the present. The Preacher, it would seem, spoke prophetically when he suggested that there was nothing new under the sun. “That which is, already has been,” he remarks (Eccl. 3:15). Many of the most recent ecclesiological trends that often instigate something between worry or disgust from evangelically-minded theologians are not entirely novel movements or mutations. They are, in many respects, old dilemmas repackaged for a new generation of believers to confront and, ultimately, resist.

This, I think, is because as much as mankind’s environment changes, his heart does not. The same heart that is wracked by sin and sedition resides in the heart of every human, whether they are collecting materials for a new tower in Babel or they are scrolling social media. Nineteenth-century Scottish Baptist minister Alexander Maclaren, whom I cite frequently, once proposed that the “mistakes and errors” that have plagued Christianity can all be traced back to a failure to understand the gospel. He writes:

For my part, I believe that almost all the mistakes and errors and evaporations of Christianity into a mere dead nothing which have characterised the various ages of the Church come mainly from this, that men fail to see how deep and how fatal are the wounds of sin, and so fail to apprehend the Gospel as being mainly and primarily a system of redemption. There are many other most beautiful aspects about it, much else in it, that is lovely and of good report, and fitted to draw men’s hearts and admiration; but all is rooted in this, the life and death of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice by whom we are forgiven, and in whom we are healed. And if you strike that out, you have a dead nothing left — an eviscerated Gospel. (14:2.321–22)

As fashionable as it may be to assert one’s “gospel-centeredness,” the gospel’s profundity remains undiminished. Even though churches use the gospel to market their variety of programs and outreach ministries, the gospel is not overused. It can never be banal, even if our treatment of it is. After all, the good news remains steady, sure, and solid in what the Christ of God has done. In his death and resurrection, forgiveness is offered to frazzled and weary sinners. This announcement has defined the Body of Christ since its inception and, as Paul says, is a matter of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3–4). Nothing comes close to the church’s obligation to offer good news to the lost and dying. Above every tertiary endeavor the church pursues, its supreme mission remains to proclaim the gospel of God’s redemption of sinners through the dying and rising again of his Son. If this gets lost, as Maclaren notes, we’re left with nothing.

Grace and peace.

Works cited:

Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Vols. 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1944).