The Missing Piece Of Today’s “Gospel” Preaching
Introduction
As a retired former Senior Pastor, I’ve had the time to hear a variety of sermons in conservative Reformed churches, primarily in the PCA. I admit that, as a preacher, I suffer from the urge to critique sermons from time to time. While mellowing in this over the years, there is only one issue that deeply concerns me when I notice it in a sermon: the deficit of gospel preaching.
In my denomination, we affirm a sincere desire to promote God’s glory in the gospel of His Son. In the ordination process, we are examined in our call to preach the gospel, and we are specifically licensed and ordained to preach the gospel. Preaching and living out the gospel is fundamental to our calling, as I am sure it is for all pastors in Bible-believing and Reformed churches. The gospel, the very heart of our faith, is not just a word to be used in sermons, but a truth to be thoroughly explained and applied.
The Gospel Deficit
I do not think I have ever heard a Reformed preacher who did not use the word “gospel” (even numerous times in a sermon). But what I have noticed is that the word “gospel” is rarely adequately explained and applied.
The generic meaning of “gospel” means good news. When we see how the writers of the New Testament used it, they gave a robust definition. To understand the good news, we must first understand the bad news. God is holy and righteous and demands perfect obedience to his commandments. Man is corrupted with original sin passed down from Adam. He is not righteous and cannot fulfill God’s perfect requirements in thought, word, or deed. He is, therefore, under God’s wrath and judgment without hope. He is under the penalty of death, judgment, and hell except through God’s grace.
The good news is that God provided a way to save man through sending His Son, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, to become a man. While remaining God, Jesus took on human flesh and a nature like ours, yet without an inherited sinful nature. He did this to live and die in our place. He was our representative substitute—our Second Adam. He lived a perfect life in accordance with God’s commands to earn a perfect record of righteousness, which would be imputed to believers at conversion. He suffered and died on the cross, having the sins of those He came to save imputed to his account. Through His suffering and death, He received the just punishment we deserved, which is hell itself. He rose bodily from the dead on the third day, gaining victory over sin, death, and the devil, so that believers would receive a new, eternal, resurrected spiritual life and the sure promise of resurrected bodies in heaven. He then ascended to heaven and reigns on behalf of His people. This salvation is applied by the Holy Spirit, who unites believers to Christ and all His benefits. This gospel is offered to all types of sinners to trust in Christ alone. This union with Christ brings Holy Spirit-empowered repentance of sins and obedience to God’s Law.
No doubt there is a lot to fill in between the lines in explaining the gospel. But the above summary is the minimum. My deep concern is that this deficiency appears in many sermons. If I do hear an explanation, it is usually a reference to Christ’s substitutionary atoning death (passive obedience) to satisfy God’s judgment. Very little, if any, emphasis is on His substitutionary life of righteousness (active obedience) to satisfy God’s holy requirements in His Law.
Why this deficit? When I was regularly preaching, the temptation was to think the congregation already heard these truths. Another temptation was that the gospel specifics were not really in the text. Sometimes I thought I did not have time to cover it in the sermon. These reasons may be why some preachers use the word “gospel” without explaining it. However, it is crucial for us as preachers to delve deeper into the gospel, to understand its nuances and implications, and to convey this understanding to our congregations.
Gospel Preaching
Here is what I believe gospel preaching ought to be. After His resurrection, when Jesus caught up to the men on the road to Emmaus, He taught them how the Christ needed to suffer to enter His glory. Then in Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
When Jesus revealed Himself to them in breaking bread then vanishing, they exclaimed, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). This, I believe, is the pattern for good biblical exposition.
We are to open the Scriptures, declaring to them the Person and Work of Christ. The Bible is a unified story of God’s redeeming work through Christ. Each text has a place in this redemptive narrative. Preaching the Word of God means interpreting the Scriptures in light of their fulfillment in Christ. The preacher is to be faithful to how the passage functions in God’s redemptive plan while connecting the needs and sins addressed in the text to the provision of God’s grace in the gospel.
Paul says in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” He also says in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” The “word of Christ” is the Bible as it is understood through the lens of God’s redemptive plan in Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul says, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” This should be every gospel preacher’s burden as well. God’s ordinary means of bringing people to faith is through the faithful preaching of His Word, which includes the whole gospel.
Gospel preaching must consist of man’s greatest need in light of God’s requirements for perfect righteousness and judgment for sins. These can only be satisfied by the Person and Work of Christ through His active obedience to God’s commands and the imputation of His perfect righteousness to believers. Their sins are imputed to Him and His obedience of suffering on the cross for them. Without His active obedience we would still lack the righteousness required to stand before a holy God. For unregenerate people to be saved, they must be confronted with these truths and the offer of salvation for those who repent and believe in the gospel.
The Gospel Is Still For Christians
Hearing the gospel preached is not only necessary for conversion but also for sanctification. Christians desperately need the gospel preached to them, too. I have always been impressed in Paul’s epistles with his passion to teach and preach the whole gospel to the regenerate as well as to the unregenerate.
In the epistle of Romans, he goes to great lengths to explain the gospel to the church and only then makes application. This pattern is prevalent in God’s Word, where it typically teaches the indicatives of God’s gracious work, then the imperatives of God’s commands. This is an emphasis on what God has done and who believers are by His grace as the basis for obedience. Preaching the commands in Scripture without providing the motivation and power of the gospel only leads to despair, legalism, or self-righteousness.
Yet, in my experiences, I have heard many sermons calling people to Christian obedience of some form or another without giving the critical why and how. They hear a message of “you fall short” and “you need to do better” without the encouragement that brings actual lasting change. What Christians need is a message of hope and confidence in what Christ has done for them and who they are in Christ. The gospel benefits of their union with Christ, along with the inner working of the Holy Spirit, provide the only transforming motivation and power to put sin to death and live righteously.
Union With Christ
Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation. Author and pastor, Sinclair Ferguson, writes that in “Paul’s thirteen letters. You will find the expression ‘in Christ’ or a variant of it over eighty times. Equivalent expressions ‘in the Lord’ (or sometimes ‘in the Lord Jesus’) virtually double that number.” (1) Union with Christ holds the highest degree of importance for understanding justification and sanctification. It is the source of every element of our salvation.
Paul says in 1Corinthians 1:30, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption…” Believers are united at all points to His redemptive work. This union is the mystical bond effected by the Holy Spirit through which believers are engrafted into Christ’s life, sanctification, righteousness, holiness, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, and more. These are the riches believers have in the grace of Christ.
This union, effected by the Holy Spirit through faith, transforms believers by enabling them to live out Christ’s life—making sanctification a participation in Christ’s holiness rather than a self-driven effort. Sanctification is the progressive outworking of this union, where the Holy Spirit applies Christ’s redemptive work to conform believers to His likeness. Believing the gospel benefits of union with Christ is the key to Christian growth. Sinclair Ferguson writes, “The more we grasp the riches of the grace of God in Christ, the more ready we are for the rigor of the New Testament’s exhortations to holiness.” (2)
Sanctification is dying to sin and living unto righteousness. It is an outworking of this union with Christ as the Holy Spirit applies these benefits to the believer. Relying on this union is indeed what Christ taught in His famous teaching on Him being the True Vine (John 15). Believers must abide in Him to bear much fruit.
The Why And How
Reminding believers of the gospel benefits and their union with Christ gives them assurance and motivation of gratitude and joy for all Christ has done for them. It gives them the great hope of their permanent standing before God, no matter how much they will fall short. It helps them grasp by faith the resources they have in Him to fight against sin and live in obedience to God’s commands. Preachers must include in each sermon the why and how of God’s commands in the Scriptures.
I contend they are not doing this unless they include in each message the necessity of faith in the whole gospel and the benefits of their union with Christ. The gospel and union with Christ, along with the Spirit’s work, cause the use of the means of grace (Word, sacraments, and prayer) to be effectual. Suppose the gospel and union with Christ are not incorporated (preached) in every sermon and message. In that case, believers are missing the chief motivation and resources for living the Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit. By default, obedience to the imperatives of God’s commands will be interpreted as a means “to” grace (works righteousness) rather than a means “of” grace.
The Solution Illustrated
Let me briefly illustrate how I think incorporating the whole gospel and union with Christ is applied in the preaching of a text of Scripture. Take, for example, Jesus’ answer to the question of what is the greatest commandment in the law in Matthew 22:37-40. He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
For brevity’s sake, let’s assume the preacher uses the proper homiletical elements for an expository treatment of a passage or verse. At some point, he would explain the all-encompassing nature of these requirements relating to man’s deeds, motives, and thoughts. To the non-believer, he would explain that the law shows God’s holy and perfect requirements and how all mankind falls short, either in failing to do them at all or in striving to do them with less than perfect worship and love for God. Mankind falls short because we have a sinful nature inherited from Adam. We actively and passively disobey. Apart from God’s grace, all are separated from fellowship with God and under His wrath and condemnation.
But God provided His Son, who came to satisfy God’s requirements of righteousness and judgment in our place. He fulfilled these commands perfectly, loving God and His neighbor in thought, word, and deed. He then made atonement for all our sins on the cross. Those who, through the Spirit’s work, receive a new nature and believe in Him, receive His record of righteousness before God, and their sins are forgiven and removed from God’s record against them.
Part of the sermon should be oriented to the lost, calling them to repentance for falling short of God’s commands, and calling them to faith in who Jesus is and His work in the gospel for them.
But this passage is also for believers. The gospel reminds them not only of how undeserving they are, but how loved they are in God as adopted sons. Out of gratitude for what God did for them in the gospel and having received a new nature with the indwelling Holy Spirit, believers in turn want to live out their new identity. The law of God is now written on their hearts, and they want to obey it. They are to believe who they are in union with Christ.
They were in Christ when Jesus lived a perfect life and grew in sanctification. They were in Christ when He resisted sin. They were in Christ when He made payment for sin through His suffering and death on the cross. They were in Him when He rose from the dead in victory over the powers of sin, darkness, and death. They were in Christ as He ascended and was enthroned in heaven. They are in Christ as He is seated on His throne. Believers share in His resurrected life through His indwelling Spirit. Therefore, they must draw upon these benefits and riches to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil to live obedient lives. Believers have all they need in this life in Christ for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
Of course, this illustration is very abbreviated. But I hope you see that without preaching the whole gospel and the resources of who believers are in Christ, the application of a sermon leads to responses in our people like: “I’ve blown it,” “I’ll never be good enough,” “I just need to try harder,” “God is never pleased with me,” etc. We must give non-believers the answers to exactly what they must believe to be right with God. We must provide believers with the motivation for loving and obeying God and how they can do so by drawing upon the gospel benefits of their union with Christ.
Conclusion
When you are calling people to repent and believe, what are you calling them precisely to believe? What if a non-Christian was only going to hear your message one time before he died? Would he hear what he needed to know and believe about himself and the person and work of Christ to be saved? What if a believer was only going to hear you one time? Would he hear not only how he needs to repent of particular sins, but the certainty of His union with Christ, supplying Him with why and how to obey God’s commands? If these are not present, it will lead to the conclusion that salvation and sanctification are at least, in part, based on his works, contributing to a form of moralism, despair, or self-righteousness.
So, I humbly exhort you, my fellow pastors, please do not gloss over or forget in each sermon and Bible lesson to preach Christ, His whole gospel, and the blessings and power of being in union with Him. Do not just use the words “gospel” or “in Christ” and assume people know them or do not have a need to be reminded of them again and again. Explain their meanings and how believing these truths brings salvation to the lost, and hope, joy, and sanctification to believers. Pray for God to renew in you what should be the necessity and burden of each gospel preacher: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”
(1) Ferguson, Sinclair B. Union with Christ: The Blessings of Being in Him. Ligonier Ministries, p.4, 2025. Kindle.
(2) Ibid, 93.