“Lite” beer and diet colas are designed to taste as much like the real thing as possible, but with fewer calories. We are always looking for ways to cheat the natural consequences of our behavior. Sadly, the substitute ingredients are often harmful to our health, and usually the “lite” version does not taste as well as the original. Almost always the more costly and “real” way of producing something will yield superior results, but people who have grown accustomed to the inferior product may actually prefer it over the original.
When it comes to the gospel, the same sort of thing is true.
Over the years, well meaning people have crafted the “gospel” in such a way as to make it quicker, easier, more “palatable,” and less costly to become a Christian in order to mass produce conversions.
Below I will compare and contrast the real gospel with what I perceive to be an inferior “lite” version.
| The True Gospel | Gospel Lite | |
| Message | Jesus is the Lamb of God who died for our sins. He rose again as Lord of Lords and commissioned his church to go and make disciples. Afterward he ascended to heaven, from where, as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and Lord of the Harvest, he poured out the Holy Spirit on the church, empowering her to fulfill the Great Commission. He will come in again in glory as the divine Son of Man to judge all peoples and rule over God’s kingdom forever. | Jesus died to provide forgiveness for our sins. |
| Response | Repent from our self-directed lifestyle, confess that Jesus is our Lord, receive the forgiveness he provides whereby we are made part of God’s eternal family, declare your allegiance to him through water baptism, receive the baptism in the Spirit, and join his Great Commission army. | Repent and receive forgiveness for your sins, whereby your membership in God’s eternal family is assured. |
| Big Difference | The true gospel emphasizes surrender to Christ’s lordship and participation in the Great Commission. | Gospel lite may lead to receiving the blessings of the gospel without a true surrender to Christ’s lordship. |
| Methods | The Holy Spirit must work in the heart of the hearer to bring him or her to a place of revelation of Christ’s lordship and surrender to it. This cannot be rushed. The preacher looks for some evidence of a true conversion. | Receiving the Lord is made straight forward and “easy.” If you want what the gospel has to offer, simply repeat the sinner’s prayer, as is often led by the person sharing the gospel. Afterward, you are told that you are saved, no matter what interaction the person has made with the Lord at the heart level. |
| Results | A life of surrendered discipleship. | A belief that one is saved and going to heaven. |
| Danger | A person may realize the high cost of following Christ as a disciple and choose not to become one. | A person may never truly “see” who Jesus is (Lord of Lords and King of Kings), but may merely go for the sales pitch – Pray this prayer and you can go to heaven. |
| Distinguishing Marks | A person coming to Christ under the true gospel will call Jesus Lord. | A person who is a product of Gospel Lite may only recognize Jesus his or her personal Savior. |
The Gospel Lite salvation process may be more like an assembly line than the fine work of a craftsman. If we want to maximize the number of people who get “saved” at a church service or evangelistic meeting, we should streamline the process, making it quick and simple. It might go something like this. After explaining that all men are sinners and need a savior because otherwise we are destined to hell, the preacher might invite all present who want to receive Jesus as their Savior, to raise a hand or come forward and pray the “sinner’s prayer” as led by the preacher. Such a process provides people with a simple one-step process to become a child of God and provides ministers with an easy way to count conversions. Afterward, the one who prayed is assured that he or she is now saved and going to heaven. But is this indeed the case?
Jesus said that it is necessary to “behold” him, to see who he really is, in order to believe in him and be saved. (John 6:40) This can only happen when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes. Faith is two-fold: it includes both trust and allegiance. When we behold the Lord, we surrender our lives to him and receive from him all he died to give us.
Jesus liked to ask people who they thought he was. He wanted to see what the Spirit of God had revealed to them. Like our Lord, we should be observing what the Spirit is revealing to people about the Lord. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?,” he did not ask them to repeat his leading words: “You are the Messiah King who will die for my sins and rise again as Lord of Lords.” Instead he simply allowed them to speak. When Peter confessed his faith in Jesus’ being Messiah, our Lord knew that God had revealed this to him. We likewise should encourage people to seek the Lord until they find him, ever watching to see what God is doing in their lives. When they are ready, we can assist in the birthing of a new person into God’s kingdom, as a kind of spiritual midwife. Salvation is always a miracle of recreation and transformation orchestrated by the Master Craftsman, the Holy Spirit.
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:8-10 (NLT)
If we package the Gospel in a “lite” version, leaving out the time needed for the Spirit to do his work, we may unwittingly abort the conversion process.
Sadly, if we prompt someone to confess that Jesus is Lord before they know it by faith in their hearts, we may actually “inoculate” them against the possibility of a true conversion, leaving them convinced they are already “saved” without their ever having been born again.
During the first Great Awakening in the colonies in the late 18th century, preachers encouraged their hearers to seek God and, if necessary, to “wrestle” with him, until they found him, knowing that those who truly belong to Jesus will eventually “hear his voice.” (John 10:27)
Just as there is no way to instantly produce a human being, there is no shortcut to birthing someone into the kingdom of God.
Why, then, do we leave out the seeking the Lord part of the process, preferring to shorten things down to simply repeating a prayer? Do we skip the step of requiring people to seek God for themselves because we do not believe Jesus is able to communicate adequately with the seeker? Have we failed to grasp that unless the Spirit of God draws a person, they cannot come to Christ? (John 6:44) Do we not realize that no one can know the Father unless Jesus wills it and reveals the Father to them? (Matthew 11:27) Are we unwilling to simply leave people in the hands of God, knowing that he loves them far more than we do? Do we believe that the new birth depends more on God than on us?
Conclusion
Having made my point, that we must allow for the Spirit to do an inner work in a person before leading them to believe they are saved, let me emphasize that sometimes, many times, people are genuinely and deeply saved by responding to the preacher’s call to “pray after me.” That is because the Spirit has already been at work in their lives and prepared them for the moment. But in the case of those who are merely responding to a man, we must not lead them into the deception of thinking they already are saved, because they may cease the process of seeking the Lord.
Compounding the problem, our consumer culture draws people toward a message that encourages them to receive all the benefits of the gospel at the lowest possible cost.
They do not realize that when we receive all that Jesus died to give us, he asks us to give ourselves to him and his mission. Confessing him as Lord is much different that asking him to be Savior. According to Paul, the confession of Christ’s lordship is what actually saves us. (Romans 10:9)
The gospel does include receiving forgiveness of sins and eternal life, but those glorious benefits are not the whole gospel. They are benefits of our believing the gospel. The gospel is not only about my personal forgiveness and regeneration, which are indeed important, but it is about the restoration of all things under Christ. As Peter put it in another place:
Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Acts 3:19-21 (ESV)
The early Christians were hounded, persecuted, and put to death because they proclaimed that Jesus is Lord over all things, even Caesar. Christians were taught to be loyal subjects of the empire (pay taxes, obey magistrates, give respect), but they could not obey the government if they were commanded to acknowledge that the supposedly divine Caesar was Lord over all.
It is unlikely that Rome would have persecuted a group who merely claimed that Jesus is a personal Savior.
Jesus is much more. He deserves our complete allegiance and will ultimately rule over every nation and kingdom. Every knee one day shall bow to him. Proclaiming such a gospel will likely get us into trouble with those who hate Christ’s rule because it means that we can and will only give a qualified form of allegiance to every other person and institution. The evil and worldly powers that want to dominate and rule us do not like this.
So what do we do with all of this? I believe that it is crucial that we adjust how we present the gospel to conform to the message preached by Peter and the other early apostles.
We must not limit ourselves to the plan of salvation and merely ask for decisions for Christ. Instead, we must ask for and expect repentance, baptism in water, the infilling of the Spirit, and a commitment to the Great Commission. We must expect believers to immediately become disciples – followers of Christ and fishers of men, who apply Christ’s radical rules for living to their lives. We have short changed ourselves and God for far too long!
Prayer
Lord Jesus, forgive me for seeing you as less than you are. Forgive me for stripping the gospel of its power and minimizing it to a mere plan of salvation. Help me to fully devote myself to you and your kingdom. Help me to faithfully share your gospel every chance I get. Make me your follower and a fisher of men. Give us disciples who will go and make disciples. Amen.
