One of the scariest passages in scripture is Matthew 7:21-23 where Jesus tells us there will be people who stand before Him on the last day fully believing they are Christians only to find out too late they are not.

Make no mistake about it, it is supremely important to get the gospel right. If I die believing a false gospel I will face the fate Jesus describes in Matthew 7. If I teach a false gospel I will be condemning others to that fate. It is for this reason (getting the gospel right) that Dan Phillips wrote The World Tilting Gospel. He shares the concern which drove him to write the book in the introduction:

The greatest need of the church today is a strategic, full-orbed, robust, biblical grasp of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its transformative implications. We don’t need more glitz or glamour, better marketing or programs, snazzier décor or entertainment. We do need a whole-Bible grasp of the gospel.

Phillips presents the gospel not as a few truths that must be acknowledged or a prayer that must be prayed or an experience that must be had but something that impacts all of life. Something also that is the overarching subject of scripture from beginning to end. To do this, he covers four areas:

• Who Are We?
• What Has God Done for Us?
• How Do We Get In?
• How Do We Get Going?

These cover respectively the condition of man, God’s response, justification and sanctification. All of these must be understood for a “full-orbed, robust, biblical grasp of the Gospel of Jesus Christ…” and Phillips does an excellent job of showing what scripture teaches about each of these topics. My only criticism is that he sometimes spends too much time on a topic once he’s made his point. A couple of times I wanted to (did!) say “OK, got it, let’s move on.”

The chapters on sanctification are some of the best I’ve read on that topic and would be helpful to any believer seeking to understand what the Bible says about living as a Christian and growing in Christ. Phillips’ approach is to take some of the most common misconceptions about sanctification (‘let go and let God’, ‘Jesus is your savior, now make Him Lord’, etc.) and compare them with what the scriptures actually teach. He then lays out a case for how sanctification works that is solidly biblical – if a bit at odds with much Christian teaching today. Sanctification is not flashy, it’s not instantaneous, it’s not about seeking some new experience or uncovering some secret technique. Sanctification is pursued via the daily application of the means of grace (reading our Bibles, prayer, sitting under sound teaching, etc.). He goes so far as to use the term “plod” to describe it:

We mustn’t look for or to experiences of any kind. We must look to Jesus, and we must resolutely and hopefully and joyfully plod on toward Him and His kingdom. (p.212)

And to top it off, this plodding will never get us completely there this side of heaven – yet we’re called to press on. As he points out, a biblical approach to sanctification doesn’t always look like our best life now.

I highly recommend this book. I believe any Christian will benefit from it but I think it could be especially useful to those discipling new believers. Nothing is more important in the Christian walk than getting off to a biblically well grounded start. This book would be an excellent tool for making that happen in someone’s life.