A Watered-Down Gospel Is Not the Gospel

Today, I’m thinking about my nearly 2 decades in ministry. In that time, I’ve seen many triumphs and tragedies. I’ve seen many come to faith in Jesus Christ, though a few, as Jesus said would happen, fell away. I’ve witnessed friends and mentors fall away, who have brought many to Christ themselves, and my heart aches and breaks. I’ve watched congregations rise, some growing to astronomical heights, and I’ve seen many fall. I’ve seen famous preachers caught in scandal, and I’ve witnessed many preachers, without the fanfare, march on through the hardships. And I ask myself: why do some fall, and some rise? Why do congregations that seem to be healthy have rotten hearts?

There are probably many reasons, but what I genuinely believe at the heart of the matter is this: many preachers are more enamored of their popularity than they are of the Gospel. They attempt to make the Gospel more palatable, and so they water it down. The fact is, the Gospel has always been about the cross and the empty tomb. People can’t handle the simplicity of it, or they can’t handle their own sin enough to accept that foregone conclusion. We want to make Jesus our life coach or our buddy. We want to make Christ’s Church about us instead of making it about Jesus, who died on the Cross to take away our sin and make us right with God, and who rose again and conquered death so that we may have New Life, now and in eternity. We fall because we lose our focus. We fail because we make it about crowds, numbers, and keeping our algorithm.

We cannot water down the Gospel. We cannot shift from it, to the right or to the left. Jesus died for me. That’s what matters. Because He lives, I live. That is the truth we cling to. This world holds nothing for us. Popularity comes and goes with each passing trend. Affirmation is not a Christian virtue: it is a death sentence! The Church needs to speak the truth of the Gospel! So don’t water it down. Speak the truth, even when no one’s listening. Jesus still raises the dead; we have to get out of His way and trust His process.

 Ephesians 2

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.