The Unadjusted Gospel

Introduction

Ligon Duncan

In the course of the church’s history, there have been times when God has called a minister of the gospel to minister alone for a season. One might think of the missionary and his wife who set foot among an unreached people for the very first time and spend years before seeing a convert. Praise God for the fortitude and perseverance of such saints.

More commonly, God in his grace has seen fit to have his ministers live and minister together for the gospel. And how heartening and sustaining this fellowship of ministers is! Indeed, does it not prepare us for those times when, by God’s strange providences, we are called to minister alone?

The Together for the Gospel Conference, first hosted in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky, grew out of my friendship with three other ministers of the gospel: Mark Dever, C. J. Mahaney, and Al Mohler. They remain dear friends and partners in the gospel to this day. All four of us are delighted to present you these chapters drawn from the third conference of Together for the Gospel, which was held in 2010, called The Unadjusted Gospel.

Four Observations and Two Hopes

From the very beginning the apostles warned that teachers would enter our churches with this or that version of an adjusted gospel. Not that such teachers would bear all the blame—their adjustments would find a ready market among the itching ears that demanded them.

Yet God in his grace has granted that most of us minister together for the gospel so that we might encourage one another to stand for an unadjusted gospel. It is this goal that brought the conference together in 2010 and that I have been privileged to watch in an increasing number of ministers today, especially in the younger generation represented at the various Together for the Gospel conferences and other gospel-centered conferences like it.

Let me point to four things in particular that I have observed and that I pray will continue to flourish. First, I have been grateful to see a commitment to truth among a growing generation of ministers. More and more young pastors recognize that truth, doctrine, and theology matter. Their ministerial lives testify to this.

Ironically, you see this even among points of disagreement. People often ask what I think about Mark Dever’s teasing me about the sin of infant of baptism. I smile inside whenever I get this query. Mark is absolutely, deadly serious about being biblical in his practice of baptism. This is not teasing that you are seeing. You haven’t been there at night when he’s gone after me! And even though Mark thinks (he would say knows) I’m wrong, I love him for it. And I do so not in spite of our difference on baptism but (at least in part) because of it. I love him because he cares about the truth, and he loves me enough to challenge me about it, and because he also loves me enough to forbear with me in what he considers a not insignificant error.

It seems that I have begun to see more of this posture among young ministers in our day. Some still mistakenly decide that secondary matters are unimportant matters, especially if they pertain to ecclesiology. But the unity that results from this type of calculus is, We stand together because our differences don’t matter that much. It is a shallow and shortsighted unity. One of the things I love about the generation of ministers represented at Together for the Gospel is that they know better. Everyone at the T4G conferences, I think, has been encouraged to look out and know that the crowd represents a variety of fellowships and denominational settings across which there is typically minimal interaction: fundamentalists, Sovereign Grace, Presbyterians (of various ilk, mainline and otherwise), Acts29, Methodists, Mennonites, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Bible church independents, Southern Baptists, Anglicans, Congregationalists, and more. In spite of our differences on secondary matters, many of us have discovered a unity not because the truth doesn’t matter or because we have deemed important things secondary, but because we share profound things in common and love one another. So even though we disagree about important things, we rejoice in one another and in the shared theological commitments we hold.

Second, I also deeply appreciate the growing commitment to confessionalism among this rising generation of ministers, that is, commitment to public, deep, clear, churchly theological statements and standards. Whether it is the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Abstract of Principles, the New Hampshire Confession, the Three Forms of Unity, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Baptist Faith and Message, or the Sovereign Grace Ministries Statement of Faith, more and more brother pastors have personally and ecclesially resisted the theological reductionism so typical of parts of evangelicalism in our time. People have sometimes said that to be truly together for the gospel you should care only about the gospel, while other theological commitments (such as inerrancy or a historical Adam or complementarianism) shouldn’t matter. Well, the many brothers whom I have had the privilege to rub shoulders with in 2006, 2008, and 2010 understand the fatal flaw of that kind of theological reductionism and indifferentism. In the mid-twentieth century, some evangelicals suggested unity around mission instead of doctrine. The saying went, Doctrine divides, mission unites. This enterprise failed because you can’t have true unity in mission if you don’t have unity in the message. Others pitted the gospel against theology and argued for a doctrinal minimalism. More and more pastors are seeing through that and so model within their own fellowships a kind of unity based on deep truth. The gospel is theology and is set in a profound theological context. Theological reductionism cannot create or sustain unity. It only marginalizes and compromises truth, and ultimately it destroys unity and undermines the gospel. There is an exhilarating gospel movement afoot today. For it to continue, it must be unashamedly and emphatically doctrinal. This is one reason we produced the T4G Affirmations and Denials.

In connection with this, there is a third thing that I see in more and more ministers and for which I praise God. They understand the connection between theology and ministry, truth and practice, doctrine and church life. There are many in evangelicalism today who see no connection between theology and methodology (or who do not ground their method adequately in their theology). The motto seems to be, Fixed in our theology but flexible in our methodology. Now, flexibility is all good and fine, but is there any connection between what we believe and how we minister, between the gospel and our methodology, between truth and discipleship? If so, you wouldn’t know it from this slogan. Christian ministry is informed by Christian doctrine and is therefore not infinitely flexible. The late James Boice, who served as president of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and founded the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, often said this about the connection between theology and methodology: What you win them by, you win them to. His point was that the way we go about making a disciple will determine the kind of disciple we make. Our methods teach a theology, whether or not we realize it . So two questions are always appropriate to ask about our methods: (1) What are our methods teaching our people, and (2) Are our methods biblical; that is, are they derived from the Scriptures and sufficiently related to the gospel?

Connected to this, finally, is the commitment to the primacy of the local church and the ordinary means of grace that I observe in more and more ministers today. This is one reason we have held the T4G conference only every other year and why we have been deliberately minimalist organizationally. The conference is meant to encourage the local church, not compete with it. True and lasting change comes through the weekly diet of the preached Word.

I could easily go on, but these are important things that I have observed in the lives, views, and ministries of a growing generation of ministers.

Looking forward, then, what do we hope to see come of all this? In some ways the answer is, More of the same! We praise God for what he’s already given. But here are two things that many of us hope and pray for:

1) We long to see the old evangelical alliances renewed around the gospel and to see a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring, Christ-exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign-grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-lifestyle-pursuing, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien-righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing preaching, inerrancy-affirming, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for so many of these words and thoughts).

2) We also want to see those pastors leading strong evangelical churches that both aim to be biblically faithfully in their doctrinal distinctives and band together for the gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, Reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-loving, Bible-preaching, scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep-biblical-evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing disciple-making, and biblical church leadership teaching and obeying—for the display of God’s glory in the churches.

May the Lord continue to raise up such a ministerial fraternity—not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but on shared conviction of the truth and gospel forbearance in the areas we differ; not to the detriment of our distinctives in faith and church practice but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that display the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.

If the T4G conferences can play a small part in encouraging these things, we will feel the effort worthwhile.

The Book

The contents of this book are, as noted, the refined presentations of T4G 2010 in Louisville. The overall theme of the conference was the unadjusted gospel, and though not all the talks directly addressed that theme, many did.

In the first chapter Mark Dever makes the case that the church is the gospel made visible. This is one reason we cannot afford to be indifferent or unbiblical in our ecclesiology. The life of the church is a gospel issue. Unhealthy churches undermine gospel proclamation. So Mark sets out to show how the local church displays the great truths of the unadjusted gospel about God, humanity, Christ, and the necessary response. This chapter is classic Mark and very edifying.

In chapter 2 R. C. Sproul reflects on fifty years of ministry and on the theological developments and problems that he has seen over the last half-century. His chapter is called The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel and explores two important ways that the gospel has been adjusted in evangelicalism. First, he brilliantly surveys the problem of syncretism. Then he looks at compromises of the gospel itself, exemplified in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement on justification. No one is better suited or more qualified to speak to these things than R. C.

Al Mohler addresses trajectories toward an adjusted gospel, in chapter 3. Noting that the gospel is most often adjusted by those purporting to rescue it from obsolescence and imbue it with new relevance, Al asks: How does the gospel come to be adjusted? How is it that, given the impulse to save Christianity for relevance in a modern age, some decide to make huge doctrinal adjustments? How do we trace the motivations and the patterns? He argues that we must take a sober look at past trajectories toward adjusted gospels in an attempt to avoid similar catastrophes in the future. Then he catalogues and discusses eight different trajectories toward an adjusted gospel. I found this address riveting.

Thabiti Anyabwile’s address is found in chapter 4, Fine-Sounding Arguments: How Wrongly ‘Engaging the Culture’ Adjusts the Gospel. One doesn’t have to listen to conversations for long in our theological neck of the woods before hearing someone speak of cultural engagement. Thabiti provocatively argues that the very language engaging the culture, winning the culture, or changing the culture, ambiguous as it is, signifies that mission drift is already underway. Thabiti puts on his Van Til, as they say, and teaches us a little about antithesis, and calls us to be gospel men.

The next chapter is John MacArthur’s Sowing Seed and Sleeping Well. In it John, reflecting on a phrase in Mark 4:27, addresses the issue of God’s sovereignty and our responsibility in the matter of evangelism. He explains how knowing that God is the one who converts allows us to spend ourselves in gospel work and yet rest in confidence that God is the one who ultimately draws his people to himself. I loved how this message encouraged me to be confident in the might of the Word and to rely on the gospel as the power of God unto salvation.

John Piper’s Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism? is chapter 6. It is the best address I have ever heard on the topic. Don’t be fooled by the title. His purpose is not to critique or question evangelicalism’s presentation of the gospel but rather to ask, Did Jesus preach Paul’s gospel?—the gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Christ’s blood and righteousness alone, for the glory of God alone. He tackles the question, because there is a history of scholars alleging a dichotomy between Jesus’s and Paul’s messages. Piper offers a riveting exegetical demonstration that Jesus’s gospel is also Paul’s. Indeed, Piper’s explanation of Luke 18:9–14 was alone worth coming to Louisville. And his Implications section is theologically rich and pastorally profound. Get ready to enjoy and re-read.

In chapter 7 I ask, Did the Fathers know the gospel? In other words, was the gospel lost or obscured in the post-apostolic era, and did the early church fathers understand and proclaim the gospel? My chapter is not a polemic against Roman Catholicism but a commendation of the early church fathers to conservative evangelicals. I argue that we need to read the Fathers respectfully, but carefully, under the authority of Scripture. I further suggest that the gospel was not lost in the days of the church fathers but that neither did the church fathers articulate the gospel (and especially imputation) clearly, sufficiently, and specifically enough to settle current controversies about the substance of the gospel.

Finally, C. J. Mahaney gives us a real treasure in chapter 8, Ordinary Pastors. This message deeply affected me. Few people encourage pastors like C. J., and few seem to have such a deft ability to apply this kind of material to shepherds of souls in a ministerial conference. C. J. expounded 2 Timothy 4:1–5, giving us a biblical definition of ministry in order to clarify our goals, purify our hearts, and liberate our souls in gospel service. He leads us to God’s Word in order to help protect us from the temptation to compare ourselves with others, to realign our motivations for ministry, to shield us from discouragement, and to sustain us in joyful service to God’s people. It is outstanding.

Read with joy and then serve with gladness.

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The Church Is the Gospel Made Visible

Mark Dever

How does your church make the gospel visible?

Imagine a church in which faith in Christ is affirmed but the lives of everyone in the church are otherwise, well, normal. Some people in the church are more religious. Some are less. But all of them are happy together. The cross is regularly, though vaguely, affirmed. In fact, all the talk about God and Christ is indistinct and muted. Sin is not really discussed. And prejudices are not confronted. Do you think this church would commend the gospel?

In fact, such a church reminds me of one English bishop’s response to a question about the mission of the church. Richard John Neuhaus wrote of this bishop, He seemed a little taken aback by the question, but finally allowed that he supposed the mission, so to speak, was something like ‘keeping alive aspects of the Christian heritage for those who are interested in that sort of thing.’¹

In a similar vein, I remember the strong words of Frank Thielman’s father, Cal Thielman, who was a wonderful Presbyterian pastor and preacher for many years in Montreat, North Carolina. While driving him to his hotel during a stay in New England, I pointed out an historic church building. He asked me about the theology taught at that church. I said, It’s quite liberal. They don’t really believe the Bible is true. Mr. Thielman frowned, shook his head, and snorted, I wish God would just burn it down!

I wonder how many churches would actually help spread the gospel by closing down. And how many more churches simply don’t matter much.

Has your life been full of spiritually unhelpful churches? Has church been a place of testing more than resting, of trial more than triumph, of employment more than enjoyment? Would you and other members in your church say that spiritual growth has come from publishers and college fellowships, from musicians and authors, from friends and family, from websites and Internet preachers—but not really from your church itself?

In fact, a local church exists to make the unadjusted gospel visible. And the purpose of this chapter is to consider how the local church then displays the great truths of the unadjusted gospel