By Brett Bigg - www.christian-witness.org
The issue of the gospel, sin and repentance is central to biblical Christianity. But it is when this centrality is usurped for a social gospel of love, tolerance and acceptance that the church detours from the straight and narrow path to a winding multilane highway leading away from God and the salvation He offers. The ‘gospel invitation’ made by Rick Warren in chapter 7 of The Purpose Driven Life is one such highway. But are the deficiencies in the presentation of the gospel in The Purpose Driven Life purely a disappointing isolated incident? Is this presentation of the gospel in The Purpose Driven Life an accurate representation of what Rick Warren believes the gospel is? Or does he believe there is something more?
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If we have no sense of responsibility for the condition of humanity at this moment, then there is only one thing to say — if we are Christians at all we are very poor ones. If we are only concerned about ourselves and our own happiness, and if the moral condition of society and the tragedy of the whole world does not grieve us, if we are not disturbed at the way in which men blaspheme the name of God and all the arrogance of sin — well, what can be said about us? *1
Some of the largest presumably evangelical churches have designed their services based upon what the ungodly want, and not on what they need. The “seeker-friendly” churches compromise the truth so as not to “offend” those they wish to attract to them. They pamper sinners with the fl attering “gospel” of self-esteem, self-love, and positive thinking—a “gospel” that is not a gospel, thus a mere philosophy devoid of all saving power. It may draw people to church, but not to Christ. The missing crucial elements in today’s corrupted gospel are the utter spiritual bankruptcy of the sinner, the fear of a holy God’s wrath against sin, and God’s demand for repentance… A.W. Tozer was so right when he said, “A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God … Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him”. (The Knowledge of the Holy, 11) *2
