The Consequences of Gospel Amnesia

Last Sunday, my pastor Mike Hanafee did a sermon entitled Gospel Centrality on how important the Gospel is for everyone from the unbeliever to the mature believer. Click on the title of the sermon to go to where you can listen to or download it. Our discussion in small group last night was on the same topic and it just culminated for me in reading chapter 10 of The Reason for God by Tim Keller. Instead of butchering something that so accurately portrays the importance of the Gospel (The good news of the person and work of Jesus Christ) I am going to quote a couple paragraphs from this chapter. In this quote, Keller is paraphrasing the argument made by Jonathan Edwards in his book The Nature of True Virtue.

If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then, says Edwards, we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness, then we will put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. Edwards concludes that only if God is our 'summum bonum', our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but the whole world in general.

How does this destruction of social relationships flow from the internal effects of sin? If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about politics, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. This means we must despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we have to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel very superior to people you think are licentious... There are no ways out of this conundrum.


This is really easy to say, and much harder to do. However, I think a good chunk of American Christianity has just assumed that the Gospel is known and understood and as a result, it has become a misunderstood afterthought for many believers, who make other things their ultimate. These things are often good things, but not the ultimate thing. I'll end by quoting the apostle Paul from chapter 15 in his first letter to the Corinthians:

For I delivered to you of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures... 1 Cor. 15:3-4 ESV

Let us keep the good news of Jesus Christ where it deserves to be as a priority in our lives: first importance!