What is Half a Gospel?

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27 May 2009 No Comment

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“Come to Christ and He will take away all of your sadness and fill you with peace, joy, and happiness”. Have you ever heard anyone say this before? While following Jesus Christ does bring true peace, joy and happiness, it would be easy for someone to say, “I don’t need Christ because I’m already happy.” It is not beyond reason to see that many people who don’t believe in God live happy lives and are very happy in their sin; and they don’t want to let go of it. To only focus on the love, joy, and peace that faith in God brings, is to overlook the huge problem that we face because of our sin. It is therefore only “half a gospel” to proclaim that someone should come to Christ because it will make them “happy”.

The other half of the gospel is the fact that we have a spiritual death sentence. The bible says that the wages of sin is death. Sin may bring some measure of pleasure for the moment, but at the end of the line there will be a payment that must be made. The price of sin is eternal punishment. The apostle Paul said in Acts 20:26,27 “Therefore I testify to you this day, that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.” In other words, he didn’t give them half a gospel. Looking at the context of this bible passage, Paul says in Acts 20:21,22 that he didn’t shrink from declaring that they needed to repent and have faith in Jesus. To repent means to completing turn away from sin and turn towards obedience to God.

Someone may believe that it’s better to only focus on the good news of the gospel, but the good news can’t be fully understood without understanding the bad news. Believing in Christ without repenting of sin is not accepting the true gospel at all.

In the video below, Alistair Begg talks about the issue of only proclaiming “half a gospel”. He talks about how the old testament law pinpoints our sin and shows us the immensity of our problem. Alistair states that the good news of the gospel can only be understood in the context of the bad news; the problem of sin. It is only when we fully understand “our own sorry state” that we are able to embrace what Christ did for us on the cross.

The first thing that has to be understood is how God responds to sin. God is holy, pure, and without sin. He hates sin and He will bring justice to all the evil in the world. While it may sound comforting to know that God will deal with the wicked people in the world (the child molesters, murderers, etc.) it is also unsettling to realize that God will deal with ALL sin, even the small white lies, and even the wrong intentions of the heart. Revelation 21:8 has a list of sins that are worthy of the lake of fire, and liars are mentioned in that list. Someone may say, “But I’m a good person; surely God will overlook my white lies and small misdeeds”. The problem with that thinking is that it doesn’t understand that every sin, no matter how small someone may think it is, has a price. I spoke with someone recently who told me she received a speeding ticket for over $200. When she told me that she had only been going 67 and the speed limit was 65, I was outraged. How could she be stopped for that? But she calmly told me that she recognized that she had gone over the speed limit, and she had to pay the ticket. Just like we have to pay for breaking the law in the natural world, no matter how small the transgressing of the law may be, we also have to pay for transgressing God’s law.

Once we understand that our sin must be punished, and we can’t escape God’s judgment, we are then in the position to understand that we have a choice. We can pay the fine for our own sin, or we can accept the payment that was made for us on the cross through Jesus Christ.

Galatians 1:4 says, “who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father”.

Titus 2:11,12 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.”

John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 2:3 says, “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”