This is a continuation of the original post on Assumed Evangelicalism.

To diagnose when a individual, organization, or church is sliding into the ‘assumed’ state, Gibson asks two questions. The first question is as follows.

1. To what extent does the gospel dictate our priorities in life, and the visions and strategies of our churches, movements and institutions?

In Romans 1:1-6, Paul summarises the gospel that the rest of the letter will unpack. Paul says that the gospel is God’s (v. 1); is in the whole Bible (v. 2); is about Jesus as man and divine king; concerns his death and resurrection (v. 3); and is confrontational (v. 5). The organising principle or heart of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is Lord (v. 4b).

Of course, such compact sentences are not the absolutely last word on the gospel, but they at least provide a framework for the truths that are at the very centre of our lives and the proclamation in our churches and evangelical organisations. The spiritual health-check for assumed evangelicalism is to look at these key gospel truths and to ask: are we gradually beginning to move on from these truths to new initiatives which are effectively leaving the gospel behind… or are we pouring our lives into reliving, retelling, re-believing this same gospel story? Are we doing so day after day, with increasing personal understanding and deepening joy and gratitude?

He then goes on to paint a picture of assumed evangelicalism manifesting itself in two seemingly polar opposite ways: legalism and licence. In reality these two close cousins because each forsakes the gospel in it’s own way.

Here is Gibson on legalism…

It is quite possible that the gospel is preached in the life of the church but the Christian congregation do not make the connection between that gospel and their own lives. One of the hallmarks of an assumed gospel in an evangelical church is that the gospel is regarded as being for the outsiders, the non-Christians who ever so rarely slip in to one of the services. When we limit the gospel in this way to unbelievers we begin to adopt extra ways of relating to God and to others, and they all fall under the label of legalism. This is the opposite of the gospel of grace – striving to be acceptable first of all to God and then to others by keeping rules and by outward behaviour. Churches at the Reformed or conservative end of the spectrum can be especially prone to their own set of extra rules: what we wear on a Sunday, how many services we attend, the version of Bible and hymn book that we use, what must happen at which point in the service, whether we keep the pews or the organ. Churches like this are often only a generation away from extinction and from denying the gospel by losing sight of its primacy.

And..

The antidote to legalism is always to recover the sheer scandal of the gospel of grace. In this church the question to ask is: when was the last time my pulse quickened because of the wonder of God’s forgiveness of my sin that was so clearly being presented? Expounding Romans 6:1, Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones had this penetrating insight:

There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this: that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret to mean that – because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace – If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding then it is not the gospel.

Here he is on license…

The other symptom of assuming the gospel is exactly what we meet in Romans 6:1 and in the Lloyd-Jones quote above – licence. This is thinking that because the gospel of grace is so amazing it really does not matter how we live from now on. Licence means we assume the gospel is what makes us right with God but because of that we can now do whatever we want.

And…

What happens here is that the gospel is assumed as being true and important but the actual practice of the church has little to do with the structure and content of the gospel. So for instance, a church that is just assuming the gospel in this way will begin to foster distorted spirituality. We know about the contemporary fascination with spirituality, where the word is used to mean any way which you choose to relate to the divine – whether that’s he, she, it or yourself. We are, however, less aware of our evangelical approaches to spirituality that are distorted. The gospel tells us that we draw near to God only by ‘the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body’ (Heb. 10:19-20). But we act licentiously towards a truth like that when we regard singing or ‘worship’ as what actually draws us close to God, or anything else that we can think of: religious art, breathtaking scenery, a church building. The fact is that we are no closer to God in the pew than the pub. I once heard a conference speaker recommend that evangelical churches learn from other Christian traditions and deepen their spirituality by adopting the best of Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and so on. This is profoundly mistaken because it is assuming that the gospel is true but we can draw near to God by other means as well. It is practical licence.