Recently someone told me about a church in a
certain city where my name had come up in a conversation. Evidently someone in that church had suggested
that I be invited to come and preach or consult with them and “they” (whoever
“they” might be) said, “Randy has an agenda, we are just going to preach the
Gospel.” Now, I am not sure how
accurate this is, I certainly wasn’t told this to my face, but I did find the
whole thing interesting. I feel like I
need to write an apologetic for myself.
I have been preaching for well over forty
years and at times I have felt that some churches and preachers were putting me
in a “box,” so to speak. Maybe they
thought if they wanted to have someone speak on mercy, or poverty, or race, or
justice, or reconciliation then I might be a person they would consider, but
not for other Biblical or spiritual issues.
Of course, some put me in that box because those were things they didn’t
ever want to consider and so those particular churches never invited me to come
and visit.
Thankfully I am not writing about this
because I suffered from not getting enough speaking engagements. I am humbled by the fact that I have often
been invited to preach, and now even more so.
It has been a joy to go to other cities and churches and preach the Word
of God. I have been blessed to preach to
those who were enthusiastic for what I said and even for those who have been
skeptical.
My apologetic has to do with what it is
that I preach. I use the word not in
terms of giving an apology, and not as an admittance of failure or guilt. I give it as a defense of my calling, the
Scriptures, and my life. It is good for
me to ask myself as a preacher if I do indeed preach the Gospel. When I come among other churches and believers,
and even unbelievers, have I known something else besides “Jesus Christ and Him
crucified” when I proclaim the Word of God?
It would be interesting of course to ask
other preachers in my own denomination if they have had a particular agenda, maybe
such as “Reformed Theology?” Is that what
they were known for in their preaching?
Would they consider that wrong?
Would their defense be that they were attempting to preach “the whole
counsel of God?”
I
wonder how many preachers of any stripe have preached “hobby horses” (a
tendency to always come back to one of their favorite subjects) and maybe in
the midst of a moral encouragement, or theological explanation, seemed to have left
the cross of Jesus completely out of the sermon? Maybe a sermon was given on marriage, or how
to raise children, or how to manage money, or maybe on social issues like
abortion, or homosexuality, and somehow the explanation of salvation was not
given, the hope of the empty tomb completely left out?
Now, I admit there has been a movement to
preach “only the Gospel,” and by that I mean a preaching of grace that refuses
to make Christianity into a “works” religion by putting obligations for
righteousness on God’s people other than believing in Jesus and his
accomplished work. There are those who
become nervous with any moral or ethical implication or challenge as it might
tend to make people feel guilty. Maybe
the thinking is that those who have believed in the justification they received
from Christ, the imputation of his righteousness to them, and his adoption of
them as his sons, (as well as sanctification being the work of the Holy Spirit),
might be led (actually misled) into thinking that they have to do something besides
have faith in Christ in order to be saved.
This is a delicate subject because I do
believe many grace and Gospel preachers have been maligned as antinomian, and some
even ridiculously painted as those who are soft on sin. Now that may be true of some, but those whom
I have admired in the strong teaching of grace, and our relationship to God as
sons, actually teach a strong message of our fight against sin.
I grew up in a fundamentalist church where
the central preaching of the cross, the substitutionary atonement, and the need
for faith was always paramount. The fundamentalism
kept deflating the hope of what we were preaching. We were saved and forgiven but there were
still so many rules and I wasn’t too good at keeping them. This incipient legalism kept stealing my joy
and actually distorted my understanding of the grace that could and would
actually help me to live a holy life.
I have never lost my commitment to preach
the atonement, the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the necessity of
faith, and the power of God to save and deliver. God forbid that I should. In fact I try to weave those central ideas
into all my preaching. I have however read the Gospels and the entire New
Testament. I don’t think one can read
the teachings of Jesus and escape the ethical implications of what it means to
follow him. This is the very thing that
I believe saved me from simply preaching a “cheap grace” message for most of my
life. It is what helped turn me away
from preaching a “decisional regeneration” message, where all I did was call
people to make a decision and then assure them they were saved, even if they
never followed Jesus in discipleship.
I am sure many of those who would dismiss
my preaching, or criticize it for including
strong ethical components of discipleship, love, and justice, would
agree that Jesus wants disciples to live out the faith they proclaim that they
have. Maybe their problem with me isn’t that
they think I am not preaching the Gospel, but that while I do it I explicitly
teach that you can’t honestly claim to have believed the Gospel unless it has
changed you. Maybe it is that I often
emphasize that it is doubtful that you are actually a Christian unless you love
your brother whom you can see as you claim to love the God we cannot see. I mean I’m not trying to make stuff up and
add anything to the Gospel message. It
is just that when I read the Bible I seem to keep running into things like the
idea that loving your neighbor as yourself is important, and Jesus teaching
that love is the proof of our actually being his disciples.
Never have I preached that love, mercy,
justice, forgiveness, reconciliation and
unity with the saints are necessary for salvation, only the required
evidence of it, and totally possible through the power of the Holy Spirit that
works within us. Much of fundamentalist
preaching implied the necessity of moral change to be a Christian, and seemed
to confuse what came first. Obviously we
believe that grace comes first, then the moral change, or more specifically the
moral combat. Liberal preachers may have
taught that ethical involvement is what makes one a Christian, and sometimes
those ethics were set adrift and cut loose from a firm connection to Biblical absolutes
and followed the relativistic politics of the day.
It
seems obvious that there might be some disagreement as to how to affect the
social justice that the God of justice calls for, or how to heal racial
division, or how to provide ministry to the poor. I would submit that one would have to read the
Scriptures selectively to leave out God’s great compassion for the oppressed,
the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the hungry. Yet, many do just that, while claiming to
preach Christ and his gospel. I wonder
sometimes if some preachers really know and hear the heart of Jesus in the
Gospels, or simply see him as a forensic kind of instrument to take care of
their own guilt.
He is my savior from my sin, and I love
all that doctrine that the Reformers loved so dearly concerning grace and
faith. I confess and sincerely believe (and
here I do apologize) that I have at times failed in my preaching. Maybe I have been too harsh, too scary and
not gentle enough. Maybe I was too
confusing when I should have been more precise.
I am sure there have been times when I should have been more
encouraging, or even failed to be understandable, and tragically I may even at
times have failed to give due glory to God.
God forgive me if I have ever been legalistic, loading people with guilt
or giving anyone the idea that something other than God’s grace could save
them. In good conscience I don’t think
that has ever been the case, and certainly not by conscious choice. May God,
and the people who heard me, forgive me if I have called on them to do the
impossible and not told them to trust in the God for whom all things are
possible.
But to imply that I don’t preach the Gospel
while “they” are, as they consistently dodge and avoid the hard issues of discipleship,
(such as how to live out love and justice in this world, how to confront racism
and materialism), while they continue to leave off teaching that it is God’s
will to do those good works which he has prepared in advance for us to do is, I
believe, not only hypocritical but a slander and a lie. If I wasn’t
so busy with all these speaking engagements I might have time for my feelings
to be hurt.
END.
