No Good News Without The Trinity

From an article entitled The God-Centered Gospel by Michael Horton in the latest edition of Tabletalk Magazine:

It’s terrific to see so many younger Christians excited about being “God-centered.” However, Islam and Orthodox Judaism claim to be “Godcentered,” too. The Christian faith is distinguished by its claim that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we know this from Scripture, preeminently in the Son’s entrance into a fallen world in our own flesh. We dare not approach “God” in His blinding majesty apart from Christ our Mediator. Apart from Christ, the Father is our Judge, and His glory is the worst thing we could ever encounter. That’s not because the Father is less loving than the Son, but because we are sinners. And we can say our “amen” to the Son only because of the Spirit who indwells us.

A Trinitarian understanding of the gospel clears up a lot of popular misunderstandings. For example, it challenges presentations of the gospel that make it sound as if a wrathful Father took out His anger toward us on His passive Son. On the contrary, the Father “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). It was the Father who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). And as for the Son, He was hardly a passive victim; He gave Himself up for His people. Jesus, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2; see Isa. 53). He was a willing sacrifice: “No one takes [my life] from me,” He said. “I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 4:34; 10:11, 18; see also Matt. 16:23; Luke 9:51; Heb 10:5–10). He went to the cross knowing that His suffering would lead to glory not only for Him but for His people. In spite of His grief, He determined, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11). The cross itself was far from a joy, but He endured it for the joy that lay beyond it. He had embraced the cross in eternity.

Wherever God’s sovereignty in predestination is strongly defended apart from such a covenantal framework, the concrete revelation of our election in Christ according to the gospel’s promise is often surrendered to theoretical debates and endless speculation on God’s hidden counsels. It is dangerous to talk about the glory and sovereignty of God unless the God we have in mind is the Trinity, to whom we have access only in the Son as He is revealed in the gospel.

Read the whole article HERE.

The Power of God

Outside of heaven, the power of God in its highest density is found inside the gospel. This must be so, for the Bible twice describes the gospel as "the power of God" [Rom 1:16; 1 Cor 1:18]. Nothing else in all of Scripture is ever described in this way, except for the Person of Jesus Christ. Such a description indicates that the gospel is not only powerful, but that it is the ultimate entity which God's power resides and does its greatest work.

Indeed, God's power is seen in erupting volcanoes, in the unimaginably hot boil of our massive sun, and in the lightening speed of a recently discovered star seen streaking through the heavens at 1.5 million miles per hour. Yet in Scripture such wonders are never labeled "the power of God." How powerful, then, must the gospel be that it would merit such a title! And how great is the salvation it could accomplish in my life, if I would only embrace it by faith and give it a central place in my thoughts each day!

From A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent

Rehearsing the Gospel

There is simply no other way to compete with the forebodings of my conscience, the condemnings of my heart, and the lies of the world and the Devil than to overwhelm such things with daily rehearsings of the gospel.

Milton Vincent from A Gospel Primer (p. 14)

The Mission of the Church OR Why the Gospel is not "escape from social oppression"

Dr. Albert Mohler and Jim Wallis will be debating each other soon on the question of whether social justice is a necessary part of the mission of the church. It is an important debate because it has direct implications upon the nature of the gospel. Again, the question is not whether it is good for the church to be engaged in matters of justice when it can, but whether it is integral to the mission of the church to do so.

From Denny Burk:

Oftentimes the differences between progressives and evangelicals on this question are not only about the mission of the church, but also about the nature of the gospel itself.

Tony Campolo’s recent critique of the Southern Baptist Convention’s immigration resolution is a case in point. He felt that the resolution did not go far enough and focused too narrowly on “spiritual salvation.” Embedded in his critique, Campolo offers what he thinks the gospel is:

Salvation for the soul is important to Southern Baptists, as it should be for all Evangelicals, but most of us call for a more holistic gospel that not only explains the way of salvation from sin, but also explains the way to escape from social oppression. To simply tell the undocumented immigrants in this country that we want to save their souls, but we have nothing to say about the fears they have of deportation is a cop-out. The Jesus that they love offers deliverance from both spiritual and social oppression, and the Southern Baptists should do the same.

I do not think that Campolo has a fair characterization of the resolution or of Southern Baptists, but that is not the main point here. The item I want to highlight is Campolo’s definition of the gospel. For him it is not merely “the way of salvation” but also “the way of escape from social oppression.” In other words, the gospel is not merely the promise of eternal life rooted in Jesus’ death and resurrection for sinners. The gospel is also the promise of deliverance from poverty, from social inequality, from racial injustice, etc. on this side of the new heavens and the new earth.

Campolo’s view of the mission of the church is decisively shaped by what he thinks the gospel is, and that is why the aforementioned debate is important. We draw our view of the church’s mission in part from our understanding of what the good news actually promises. This no doubt is a part of what the Mohler-Wallis debate will be about.

Read Denny's entire post HERE.

The Moment-by-Moment Power of the Gospel

Justin Taylor posted the following exerpt from Francis Schaeffer's article "Why and How I Write My Books":

The way to read my books, then, is to realize that I came through a real struggle in those early days, and I’ve tried to be honest in my study ever since. I try to approach every problem as though I were not a Christian and see what the answer would be.

Later on in my ministry I faced another crisis that equally influenced the writing of my books. It came after I had already been a pastor for ten years in the U.S. and a missionary to Europe for five years. Throughout this period one thing was dinned into my thinking: “Why,” I asked, “is there so little reality among orthodox evangelical Christians? Why is there so little beauty in the way Christians deal with one another?”

This led to doubts about the reality of spiritual things in my own life. I realized that although I had been studying for years and although I had been active in Christian ministry and although I was becoming more and more known in certain Christian circles, the reality of my own spiritual life was diminished. Somehow I had lost what I had when I first became a Christian.

For about two months I walked out in the Swiss mountains. When it rained, I walked in the old hayloft above our chalet. And as I prayed, I went all the way back to my agnosticism. With as much honesty as I could, I asked myself, “Was I right in
becoming a Christian as a young man?” The unreality I had found in the Christian world, the ugliness I saw in Christian relationships, the fact that Christians were not able to talk to twentieth-century people—all these things made me ask, “Was I right?”

And finally the sun came out. I saw that my earlier decisions to step from agnosticism to Bible-believing Christianity was right, and I also discovered that I had been missing something vital in my biblical understanding. It was this: that the finished work of Christ on the cross, back there in time and space, has a moment-by-moment meaning. Christ meant His promise to be taken literally when He said that He would bear His fruit through us if we allowed Him to do so, not only in our religious life but in all of our life. Christ meant to be Lord of my whole life. This brought my life to a great shattering moment. What began as struggle ended in a song. Without that crisis, I could never have written True Spirituality, for that book is the outcome of that personal struggle.

Never Assume the Gospel

From D.A. Carson:

In a fair bit of Western evangelicalism, there is a worrying tendency to focus on the periphery. [My] colleague . . . Dr. Paul Hiebert . . . . springs from Mennonite stock and analyzes his heritage in a fashion that he himself would acknowledge is something of a simplistic caricature, but a useful one nonetheless.

One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments.

The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments.

The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything.

Assuming this sort of scheme for evangelicalism, one suspects that large swaths of the movement are lodged in the second step, with some drifting toward the third.

. . . What is it in the Christian faith that excites you? . . . Today there are endless subgroups of confessing Christians who invest enormous quantities of time and energy in one issue or another: abortion, pornography, home schooling, women’s ordination (for or against), economic justice, a certain style of worship, the defense of a particular Bible version, and countries have a full agenda of urgent, peripheral demands. Not for a moment am I suggesting we should not think about such matters or throw our weight behind some of them. But when such matters devour most of our time and passion, each of us must ask: In what fashion am I confessing the centrality of the gospel?

HT: Justin Taylor

"The Crucial Doctrine that Fuels Beautiful Living"

Great post by Dane Ortlund concerning Francis Schaeffer:

In 1951 Francis Schaeffer’s life and ministry were turned upside down, despite already having walked with the Lord for many years and having seen much fruit in ministry. He was 39.

In the introduction to his book True Spirituality, Schaeffer recounts what happened.

I faced a spiritual crisis in my own life. I had become a Christian from agnosticism many years ago. After that I had become a pastor for ten years in the United States, and then for several years my wife, Edith, and I had been working in Europe. During this time I felt a strong burden to stand for the historical Christian position and for the purity of the visible church. Gradually, however, a problem came to me—the problem of reality. This has two parts: first, it seemed to me that among many of those who held the orthodox position one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so clearly says should be the result of Christianity. Second, it gradually grew on me that my reality was less than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian. I realized that in honesty I had to go back and rethink my whole position.

We were living in Champéry [Switzerland] at the time, and I told Edith that for the sake of honesty I had to go all the way back to my agnosticism and think through the whole matter. I’m sure that she prayed much for me in those days. I walked in the mountains when it was clear, and when it was rainy I walked backward and forward in the hayloft of the old chalet in which we lived. I walked, prayed, and thought through what the Scriptures taught, reviewing my own reasons for being a Christian. . . .

I searched through what the Bible said concerning reality as a Christian. Gradually I saw that the problem was that with all the teaching I had received after I was a Christian, I had heard little about what the Bible says about the meaning of the finished work of Christ for our present lives. Gradually the sun came out and the song came. Interestingly enough, although I had written no poetry for many years, in that time of joy and song I found poetry beginning to flow again.

Three things are striking here, and worth considering for our own time.

1. Right doctrine matters.
Schaeffer says that he spent many of his early Christian years working for “the historical Christian position.” That means orthodoxy. Right belief. And nowhere in this autobiographical reflection does Schaeffer go back on the importance of such orthodoxy. On the contrary, he says that after going back and rethinking his foundational reasons for believing, he identified his lack of vibrancy as due to something other than his theology. The problem was not his doctrine. It was something else—the absence of “reality.”

2. Right doctrine exists not ultimately for correct thinking but for beautiful living.
True doctrine, as Paul tells Titus, is to be “adorned” (Titus 2:10). To lack grace in our lives is to deny grace in our theology. We can unsay with our lives in the living room what we say with our lips in the pew. The doctrines of grace generate a culture of grace. If they don’t, the doctrines of grace are not truly believed. We may say we believe them. We may even think we do. But we don’t. Not really.

A man who says he believes his treasure is in heaven as he drives a Bentley, owns five homes on three continents, and refuses to give any resources to the church or anyone else doesn’t really believe what he says he believes. You can see what he believes.

And if a man says he believes the doctrines of grace but does not exude what Schaeffer calls the “reality” of those doctrines, such a man does not really believe those doctrines. He might align himself with the doctrines of grace creedally. But he has not adorned the doctrines of grace.

“Dead orthodoxy,” Schaeffer once preached, “is always a contradiction in terms.”

3. The crucial doctrine that fuels beautiful living is the gospel.
“I had heard little,” Schaeffer says, “about what the Bible says about the meaning of the finished work of Christ for our present lives.”

Francis Schaeffer came to discover, many years after his conversion, that the finished work of Christ mattered—mattered tremendously—for his present life. Not just for his past moment of conversion and not only for the future moment when he would stand before God. For today. As he says elsewhere, “I become a Christian once for all on the basis of the finished work of Christ through faith; that is justification. But the Christian life, sanctification, operates on the same basis, but moment by moment.”

The gospel is a home, not a hotel. We pass through a hotel; we reside in a home. And it was when this washed over him—note this, now—it was when his heart came to dwell in the finished work of Christ that his soul began to live again. “Gradually the sun came out and the song came.” Poetry flowed once more. Vitality returned. Orthodoxy had never left; life, however, had.

Doctrine matters. But doctrine is meant to fuel some thing else—beautiful, radiant living. Standing immovably on the finished work of Christ will get us there.

You never grow beyond the Gospel

I still come across Christians who consider the Gospel to be the "abc's" of Christianity. That concerns me because we never truly outgrow our need for the Gospel. Indeed we will never grow beyond the Gospel. If we believe the Gospel to be a very basic thing, merely baby food for baby Christians then we will not grow beyond infancy. For the Gospel is the food we need not only at the moment of our conversion but until the day we die.

I am looking forward to reading The Gospel Is For Christians by Mitchell Chase.

From the Publisher:
Christian discipleship cannot be achieved by following clever formulas or spiritual shortcuts. Believers achieve true growth by holding firmly to and continually appropriating the gospel of God’s grace. While some people consider the gospel to be relevant only for conversion, the Bible teaches that the gospel is indispensable for the Christian life.

The gospel must shape our discipleship.

• Non-gospel messages do not foster spiritual growth
• Faithful churches are gospel-driven churches
• Gospel-driven churches obey the Great Commission
• The marital covenant points to the New Covenant
• Every generation must declare the words and wonders of God

“Mitch Chase joins a growing group of leaders on mission to help the church rediscover the truth that the gospel isn’t just the power of God to save us; it’s the power of God to grow us once we’re saved.”
— Tullian Tchividjian, Author of Surprised by Grace

“Getting the gospel right is an absolute imperative for Christ’s church. Understanding how the gospel applies to every dimension of life is one of the ongoing challenges and joys for every believer. Mitch Chase brings great wisdom and clarity for this challenge as he writes The Gospel is for Christians. Read it for the sound counsel and good news you will find here.”
- Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The gospel is not just for unbelievers. The gospel is not just a kind of good news key that allows people to unlock the doors to heaven. The gospel is life. The gospel saves and it sustains. Mitch Chase loves this gospel and in this book he faithfully proclaims it. Written in an engaging, winsome way, his book will challenge and shape you. It will tell you why you need to believe the gospel to have eternal life and why you need to dwell upon this gospel, love it, feed upon it, depend upon it every day. The gospel is for Christians and so too is this book. I highly recommend it to you.”
-Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, Sexual Detox: A Guide For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn, and The Next Story

Misunderstanding the Gospel

What are some misunderstandings people have about the Gospel? from Crossway on Vimeo.

Yes, we still must contend for the gospel within the church...

"Although known as gospel people, evangelicals no longer share any consensus on the gospel's meaning."

- Carl Trueman from The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Scorning what is holy...

“There’s nothing wrong with talking and singing about how the ‘Blood will never lose its power’ and ‘Nothing but the blood will save us.' Those are powerful metaphors. But we don’t live any longer in a culture in which people offer animal sacrifices to the gods.

“People did live that way for thousands of years, and there are pockets of primitive cultures around the world that do continue to understand sin, guilt, and atonement in those ways. But most of us don’t. What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand.”

- Rob Bell on the atonement from Love Wins

To strip the atonement of its substitutionary nature, as Rob Bell does, is to strip it of its power. It is to take the "good" out of the good news. It is to rip the heart out of the Gospel and therefore the hope out of human hearts. It is an act of profound cruelty for it robs the sinner of what he truly needs: a guilt-bearing substitute.

This is nothing new. Theological liberals have been diluting and even neutering the gospel for generations. In the 1920's J. Gresham Machen saw this clearly.

They [liberal preachers] speak with disgust of those who believe ‘that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner.’ Against the doctrine of the Cross they use every weapon of caricature and vilification. Thus they pour out their scorn upon a thing so holy and so precious that in the presence of it the Christian heart melts in gratitude too deep for words. It never seems to occur to modern liberals that in deriding the Christian doctrine of the cross, they are trampling upon human hearts. (Christianity and Liberalism, 120 [pagination may differ])

HT: Kevin DeYoung

Al Mohler Responds to Brian McLaren

The other day Brian McLaren decided to point out Al Mohler's many errors in his critique of Rob Bell's Love Wins. It's the usual post-modern emergent fogginess. You know the routine. It's the, "We can't really know the Gospel so we can't really critique another person's version because it's only an interpretation anyway which makes your critique invalid but my critique of your critique is valid," sort of thing. In the end, McLaren's challenge to Mohler falls quickly under the weight of its own inconsistencies.

Helpfully, Mohler weighs in with a response to McLaren.

We do not know who God is by knowing what love is. We understand love by knowing who God is. But Brian McLaren seems quite ready to judge God by human standards of love and justice. In his most important book, A New Kind of Christianity, he rejects the Genesis account of God’s actions in the story of Noah, describing the story as “profoundly disturbing.” As he concluded, “In this light, a god who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship.” He responds to other texts in a similar way.

But God explicitly rejects such a human determination of his character. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah declared. [Isaiah 55:8] Instead, God defines his loving character like this: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8]

McLaren’s rejection of the Noah account is based on his own view of the Bible — a truly radical view that, taken in full force, explains McLaren’s theological method and positions. He rejects the Bible as a “legal constitution” and proposes that it be seen as a “community library” that reveals an evolving human understanding of God — one in which some texts effectively nullify other texts.

He asserts that there can “be no new kind of Christian faith without a new approach to the Bible.” That statement is profoundly true, and it points to a central problem. McLaren’s new approach to the Bible is a straightforward and amazingly honest call to relativize passages that are deemed to be inferior or unacceptable. We should not wonder that he, like Bell, argues against the traditional doctrine of hell.

Read the entire article HERE.

These are important discussions because what is at stake is nothing less than the Gospel itself which the church has lost in the past and will again if not for the grace of God through the means of faithful men.

The Bigger Issue...

That's right, we're still on the same topic.

The bigger issue with denying hell as Rob Bell does in Love Wins...Okay, okay, I know he says he believes in "hell" but he is using a radically different dictionary. For Bell, hell is not the just punishment of a holy God poured out on the unrepentant but a temporary kind of earthly mess we make for ourselves by not letting God love us.

As I was saying, the bigger issue with Bell's style of "Christian universalism" or inclusivism is that it is ultimately a denial of the atonement of Jesus Christ for sinners. Bell entirely dismisses the substitutionary atonement of Jesus (the heart beat of the Gospel) as an outmoded metaphor entirely unhelpful for advanced people such as ourselves. Indeed he mocks the very idea of Jesus dying for our sins as a propitiation.

“There’s nothing wrong with talking and singing about how the ‘Blood will never lose its power’ and ‘Nothing but the blood will save us,’” Bell writes. “Those are powerful metaphors. But we don’t live any longer in a culture in which people offer animal sacrifices to the gods.

“People did live that way for thousands of years, and there are pockets of primitive cultures around the world that do continue to understand sin, guilt, and atonement in those ways,” he continues. “But most of us don’t. What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand.”

After the obvious heresy, I'm not sure which is worse: the historical revisionism or the generational arrogance.

Tragically, Bell's "good news" of a God who is not angry over sin has deafened him (and who knows how many more) to the truly good news of a holy and just God who marvelously sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Rob's shrunken god simply does not have the capacity to provide that which he requires. His "gospel" cannot proclaim: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1) because there was no condemnation to begin with. Bell cannot rejoice in the fact that "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand..." (Rom 5:1-2). There was, according to Bell, no justification or reconciliation necessary for "the gods are not angry."

Rob Bell's draining of hell from the biblical narrative is merely a symptom of his draining the life blood from the Gospel.

Russel Moore has written an excellent article on this connection.

Dr. Moore writes:

Blood means judgment. When the Holy One of Israel wishes to remind Pharaoh that he is a man and not a god, he turns the king’s life-giving Nile River into blood (Ex. 7:17-25). The Apostle John sees the same judgment on a self-worshiping humanity. The waters they need for life turn to blood (Rev. 8:8).

By removing the blood language, the language of sacrifice, we remove what it means to sing with the redeemed of all of the ages, “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). If you remove the blood from the doorposts of Egypt, all that’s left is judgment. The same thing happens when you remove the blood from the gospel.

Jesus offends us with our own blood, reminding us that what runs through our veins will one day run cold. He tells us then that in order to live, we must be united to the life-blood of another, a blood spilled for rebels like us. Jesus’ blood speaks a better word than Abel’s. It tells us precisely what Bell would like us to ignore: God is just and judgment is sure.

The people around us already believe in hell, and not because they’ve heard a guilt-inducing message from the church. They may deny it consciously; everyone does, at first. But the Scripture tells us that, apart from Christ, we are all in captivity to the devil who holds us in bondage “through fear of death” (Heb. 2:15). How does anyone get free of this? It’s only by countering the accusations of Satan, and that can only happen, if there’s a just God, if there is a judgment. In Christ, we’ve already been to hell. In Christ, the devil’s indictments are answered. We have conquered him “by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:10).

That’s why every church that has embraced universalism had died out, withering away from the gospel. In order for people to see Christ, they must see sin and, yes, judgment. In order to see justification, you must also see justice. If you drain the blood out of the church, all you are left with is a corpse.

Read the entire article HERE.

"Whoever finds his life..."

Thanks to my wife for calling my attention to this stunning interview.

Near the end of the interview Reiko Rizzuto reflects on what would have happened if she had returned to her family. She would have done "that thing that I didn't want to do, which was give up my life...for someone else."

What is on display in Miss Rizzuto's interview is a heinous kind of narcissism which is able to justify the abandonment of one's spouse and children and call it "good." It is a corrosive morality that seeks the highest good in serving self at the expense of those who need us most.

But I must confess that the same depravity that Miss Rizzuto wears so proudly lurks in the recesses of my own heart. The same impulse to live entirely for self is a siren's song with which I am well acquainted. Indeed, what, in the end, could provide any of us with sufficient motive to lay down our lives for anyone else?

Only a suffering Savior, a King who takes up a cross, a Lord who lays down his life can give us sufficient cause to give up ourselves for the good of another. Only the cross makes sense of Jesus words: "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt 10:39).

The Propriety of Public Rebuke

In a recent interview by the Dean at Point Looma Nazarene College Rob Bell responded to Mark Driscoll's pronouncement that Bell is a heretic:

Nelson: Time Magazine, a year or two ago, called you the next Billy Graham. And then you’ve got a pastor at another Mars Hill church calling you a heretic.

Bell: Well, uh, if I were to read the gospels for the first time, and I was stuck in a motel room, and I opened up a Bible and I read the story of Jesus for the first time, and then somebody asked me, “Well, what’s this story about?” One of the things I might say is, “Huh, seems like the sinners and the tax collectors and the prostitutes loved this guy, but it seems like the religious establishment was scared to death of him.” (laughter) So, uh, that’s what I think about that. (laughter and applause). I don’t know what, um, ok, let me give you concrete answers: In the Sermon on the Mount…no, in Matthew 18 actually, Jesus says if you have a problem with your brother or sister you go to them.

Rob's call for private meetings from those who speak up against his errors is a fundamental misunderstanding of Matthew 18. Those of us who publicly challenge Rob Bell are not responding to a personal offense but to this man's very public ministry. There have been people within Bell's church who have made known their grave concerns about his errors. Nevertheless, Bell has pressed on. Prominent evangelical pastors and theologians have called upon Bell to repent of his false teachings but still he persists. He preaches, writes books, and travels the world on speaking tours. He dismisses biblical orthodoxy with a wave of his postmodern hand and is then surprised when someone objects? His protests are disingenuous at best.

Rob Bell preaches another Gospel. This is a serious charge, I know. But Bell proclaims that salvation has nothing to do with sinners being saved from the just wrath of God. Of course, this puts him at odds with Jesus himself who warned about the coming wrath. The New Testament clearly proclaims that Jesus is our propitiation; one who took upon himself the wrath we deserved that we might have peace with God. Rob Bell, on the other hand, says that there is no wrath from which we must be saved. Jesus proclaimed that the way of salvation is narrow and few will find it. Rob Bells says this is not true. He denies that we are justified before God through faith in Christ claiming that all people regardless of faith will be saved. This once again puts him squarely at odds with the Lord Jesus who proclaimed, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3:18).

This is why I say that Rob Bell proclaims another Gospel. And in case you were wondering whether or not this is a big deal:
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:6-10).

Rob Bell sets himself against God...

So, we've known for a while that Rob Bell was going to release a book denying the doctrines of Hell and the final judgement. It's a sentimental message that will certainly resonate with many contemporary evangelicals who cannot cope with any notion of exclusion. These are the same folks who loved Velvet Elvis wherein Bell states that Christ need not be resurrected and that Christian doctrines are like springs on a trampoline - disconnect some of them and you can still enjoy a rather satisfying jump. Rob Bell, Brian MacLaren, Tony Jones and the like are giving less discerning Christians a reason to reject the very words of Scripture. Sadder still, these men are giving unbelievers a reason to be comforted in their unbelief.

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Rob Bell denies that we are saved from the wrath of God by grace through faith in Jesus. He denies the reality of hell. He denies the very words of Jesus that few find the way of life. And yet this is exactly what the Scriptures teach:

Matthew 5:22 - "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire."

Matthew 2:29 - "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell."

Matthew 7:13-14 - "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

Matthew 10:28 - "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

Matthew 13:40 - "Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age."

Matthew 23:33 - "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?"

Matthew 25:41 - "Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"

Luke 3:9 - "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Luke 3:17 - "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Luke 12:5 - "But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!"

Luke 12:49 - "I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!"

Luke 13:23-27 - "And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!'"

John 3:36 - "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."

John 15:6 - "If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned."

Romans 1:18 - "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth."

Romans 2:5 - "But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."

Romans 3:5 - "But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?"

Romans 5:9 - "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God."

Romans 9:22 - "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction..."

Ephesians 2:3 - "...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."

Hebrews 10:26-27 - "For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries."

1 Thessalonians 1:10 - "...and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come."

2 Thessalonians 1:5-8 - "This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus."

2 Peter 2:4-10 - "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority."

Revelation 6:16-17 - "...calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

It is a grievous sin to deny the very Word of God. This is precisely the project of Rob Bell and others within the dwindling emergent movement. Woe to those who speak falsehood and call it the gospel.

Always Preach the Gospel

Non-Christian listeners need instruction in the truths of Scripture, particularly concerning Christ and his redeeming work, if the preacher’s call to “believe” is to be meaningful to them. Christians likewise need instruction in the truths of Scripture, if preaching is to achieve its objective to edify them. Apart from the truths of the gospel of grace, preaching to edify sinks into moralism, for imperatives ungrounded in the indicative of God’s gracious initiative breed in hearers either self righteous hypocrisy or self-condemning despair.

Dennis Johnson, Him We Proclaim

The Gospel answer to pornography...

Non-Negotiables...

Don't have faith in your good works

There is always a danger that when we begin to see fruit in our lives, we’ll subtly begin to rely on that fruit for our salvation, instead of on Christ. Guard against that temptation, Christian. Realize that the fruit you bear is merely that — the fruit of a tree already made good by God’s grace in Christ. To rely on your own Christian fruit to secure God’s favor is ultimately to shift your faith from Jesus to yourself. And that is no salvation at all.

Greg Gilbert from What is the Gospel?