Our efforts to promote justice, obey God, and love others are necessary implications of the Gospel, but they are not the Gospel itself. It is wrong to ignore the implications; it is also wrong to confuse the them with the Gospel.
In the context of the Gospel of the Cross - he is exactly right!
In the context of the Gospel of the Kingdom, then I would not agree with him as he wrote it. But then I don't think he was making this distinction and I'm sure both he and I would agree that the former is a prerequisite to the latter.
I continue to struggle with several friends trying to get them to understand this. They continuously confuse, even defend, that good works is the Gospel. They say that in spite of it being nearly 100% within their natural means and devoid of any "Gospel of the Cross". I'm befuddled.
1 comment:
Thanks for the link, Rick.
I like Keller's thing on the one gospel in different forms:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/002/9.74.html
That really helped me see the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the kingdom as two sides of the same thing.
I find that the conservatives minimize the kingdom part too much, but I see the opposite happening sometimes as well.
Post a Comment