Preach Christ-He is good news when you realize you're deranged

This is not really a blog post. It is a "master class" I gave at the 2018 Wesley Center for Practical Theology Conference at Northwest Nazarene University. I will try to break down portions of the class in blog posts over time but, for those interested in preaching the gospel, I think the larger picture given here is helpful. It is a part of the intent of this blog to address the gospel in historical theology.

“Preach Christ-He is good news when you realize you're deranged”

Wesley Center for Practical Theology Conference 2018, Feb. 1, 1:15pm, Rm 204

Karl Ganske, practicaldivinity@live.com

   The basic material that I want us to base our conversation on today is historical but I went looking for it because of questions that I had for preaching. I want to lay out some of that journey first because I expect that it will resonate with questions in your own journey and that you will notice the possible relevance in some of my summaries of the historical material. I hope that this first bit is going to be review not only of what you have heard or read but review of what you are preaching.

   If I go back in my preaching calendar to the middle of 2014 I find a series in which I worked a lot with the idea that the Bible is one big unified story. In that story humanity was created in the image of God. Over the past three years I have refined the definition I give of what it means to be created in the image of God. Humanity was created to represent God in creation and to reveal God to the rest of creation. This is what we were supposed to be and do when the book of Genesis talks about “dominion”[1]: to represent God in the world and to reveal God to the world. Our place of dominion was to serve as stewards representing the One who has ultimate dominion. As the biblical story continues we (humanity) made ourselves unable to live out this vocation. God sets apart Abraham and, through a covenant relationship, gives this vocation to Abraham and his descendants. The people of God, the covenant people, have the vocation to represent God in the world and to reveal God to the world. This covenant includes promises that actually have to do with their ability to carry out this vocation.[2] Like humanity as a whole, the nation of Israel did not perform this vocation well but God is faithful to the covenant promises. God will fulfil the covenant promises and he does so through Jesus. Jesus and those who are the people of God in him now have the vocation of representing God in the world and revealing God to the world. God will make all creation new and God will work through those restored in the image of God/the body of Christ/the church/those who have faith in the faithfulness of God to fulfil his covenant promises to Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and to them. This is the story that the Bible tells. It is the story of how God establishes his reign through Jesus to make the world right.

   I expect that this summary was nothing new to you but for some of you the connection of that story with the term “the gospel” might be a stretch. But, “the gospel” is just a word and defining it only matters to an extent, so I might say for some of you the identification of conveying that story with the most important message of the Bible might be a stretch. There will be some of you who think that there is a different most important message. There will be some of you who think that is pretty much the most important message but you struggle with how to preach that story in a way that makes a difference to your hearers and that determines the way that we live together as the church.

   By the middle of 2015 I was preaching a series on the reign of God in Christ.[3] The over-riding challenge for me in preaching in and around that series was the meaning of “the gospel.” I had become convinced that, biblically, the gospel is the announcement that, in Jesus, God was fulfilling his covenant promises and establishing his reign/the Kingdom of God.[i]

Romans 1:2-4 NLT “God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets in the holy Scriptures. The Good News is about his Son. In his earthly life he was born into King David’s family line, and he was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus Christ our Lord.”

   I was wrestling with the realization that the central message of the scriptures was that God is God and that God will bring about a good creation because Jesus is Lord. In the world I live in it is at least implied but usually outright argued that the forgiveness of individuals from the guilt of sin is the central message of the Bible. That is a good and biblical message but, if the convictions that I just described are right, the idea of personal salvation is only a supporting piece of the truth of the Bible. It is dependant for its meaningfulness on God’s purposes in Christ to establish his Kingdom. The ability of God’s image-bearers to represent God in the world and to reveal God to the world is very important but it is not the overall point of the biblical story. Another way to say this is that the biblical good news is not a formula for my salvation but we could say that it is the saving story of Jesus.

   Preaching these things to the church and to the world is challenging because this is not the announcement of good news that most people in either the church or in the world have heard. Preaching the gospel is the most exciting and challenging and upsetting thing I have ever done.

   In Oregon was blessed to have a handful of individuals who would interact with me over the messages I gave. (For preachers who thought that was code for “I had some irritating critics” that is not what I meant in this case—I was truly blessed to have folk who were sincerely on the journey with me.) Let me share about two of those individuals who pressed me in different ways. One helped me see more clearly that the biblical idea of “Jesus as our representative” does not mean that the Father’s wrath was ever against the Son. (“Look it up,” he said. “The Father never wraths against the Son.”) As I followed up on our conversations, my suspicion was confirmed that “substitutionary atonement” as some kind of legal process is not the dominant message that the scriptures declare. (In the biblical story, God did not create humanity so that we could sin and then be forgiven.) So, I would say that the challenge I received from this friend encouraged me in my developing understanding of the gospel that I have described.

   It is true. I focus my message on who we need to be as the people of God for the sake of who God is and what God is doing. I would say that the model that says that our sinful rule breaking incurs guilt which requires punishment and that Jesus received the punishment that we deserved does not feature prominently in my preaching.

   But let me tell you about the other conversation partner. This friend pressed me to give an eye to more individualized moral issues, guilt, and the need for forgiveness needed to be addressed. This friend also has good words for me. There is a guilt that needs to be preached because there is a guilt that the scriptures speak of. It is just that the models that I hear most often make the forgiveness of guilt the purpose of the Christian faith. It is not. Forgiveness is something that happens as part of the fulfillment of God’s promises. Forgiveness is part of God bringing about God’s purposes. Individual persons are a part of that. We are a part of God’s story.[4] Without an overwhelming number of common models from the recent past it can be difficult to address dealing with guilt and sinfulness for the sake of being the people we are supposed to be so that we can participate in what God is doing. This has been, and continues to be a challenge for me…but it is a challenge that I gladly take up.

   I hope that one of the things that we have a chance to take up in our discussion and question time is the struggle of preaching to both millennials and boomers in the same church because I think that it an interesting challenge but we will set that aside for the time being.

   The title of this master class is Preach Christ—He is good news when you realize you're deranged. It could be that the title of the session, in the context of trying to cope with this challenge, suggests that I had a mental breakdown in the struggle to preach the gospel or that I discovered that I had all the wrong motives in ministry and had to make a big change. Neither of these are true but I did set off on a pretty big project to explore the challenge.

   Six months ago I packed the family out of a great church in Gresham, Oregon on the east side of the Portland metro area and the four of us went to Manchester England so that I could look back into the evangelical tradition, and in particular the Wesleyan tradition, to see how the gospel was defined in some especially formative days of the movement. I did a five month post-doctoral fellowship at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre researching what John Wesley had to say about the meaning of the gospel and what it means to preach it. I found some things in that tradition that I would like to talk to other preachers about. So thanks for being here.

   I am not recommending resigning your pastorate and going somewhere else to research the gospel but if the thought comes to you that you would like to do research at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre for your pastoral sabbatical or want to research Wesley in further study I can talk to you about the sabbatical and academic opportunities at the centre.

   I am still unpacking everything that I found looking at Wesley’s instructions for preaching the gospel but let me just say for now that I was really encouraged at what I found and how I think it will help me preach the gospel especially to a multi-generational church.

   It is easy to think in either the big theological categories or to think at the “save the world” level. These are both important but if we are talking about how this impacts preaching in the local church I think that we find that we need to see the gospel in the little things of life and in the daily things of life. There will be people that we preach to who will dismiss some of these concepts but in whose hearts and influence you can see the image of God and in whose lives you can see the Kingdom of God. A lot of preaching the gospel in the local church is having your eyes open to the places where the reign of God is happening even though it is not a big program that travels to high profile catastrophes. I think that perspective can help even as we review the historical material I have for us to consider today.

   Two of John Wesley’s published sermons are on Mark 1:15. This passage is from the beginning of Jesus public ministry.

Mark 1:14b-15 NASB “14b Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

In the first sermon Wesley gave the translation, “The kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”[5] In the second of these sermons Wesley narrowed in on the words “repent and believe the gospel.”[6]

   I sought out these sermons because I was looking for Wesley’s definition of the gospel but the first definition to look at in both of these sermons isn’t “the gospel.” It is “repentance.” Wesley was being very careful about definitions and his definition of repentance is different. He says that repentance is a kind of self-knowledge. To repent is to know yourself. Repentance is to see your character, your heart, what you are capable of, and what you are not capable of.

   In particular this self-knowledge is awareness of the ‘corrupted’ powers and faculties of the soul. Wesley’s description of this self-awareness is what inspired the title to this talk.

Know thyself to be a sinner, and what manner of sinner thou art. Know that corruption of thy inmost nature, whereby thou art very far gone from original righteousness, whereby ‘the flesh lusteth’ always ‘contrary to the Spirit,’ through that carnal mind which is enmity against God,’ which ‘is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.’ Know that thou art corrupted in every power, in every faculty of the soul, that thou art totally corrupted in every one of these, all the foundations being out of course. The eyes of thine understanding are darkened, so that they cannot discern God or the things of God. The clouds of ignorance and error rest upon thee, and cover thee with the shadow of death. Thou knowest nothing yet as thou oughtest to know, neither God, nor the world, nor thyself. Thy will is no longer the will of God, but is utterly perverse and distorted, averse from all good, from all which God loves, and prone to all evil, to every abomination which God hateth. Thy affections are alienated from God, and scattered abroad over all the earth. All thy passions, both thy desires and aversions, thy joys and sorrows, thy hopes and fears, are out of frame, are either undue in their degree, or placed on undue objects. So that there is no soundness in thy soul, but ‘from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot’ (to use the strong expression of the prophet) there are only ‘wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.’ Such is the inbred corruption of thy heart, of thy very inmost nature. And what manner of branches canst thou expect to grow from such an evil root?”[7]

   Ever had one of those days when you come face to face with the fact that you are deranged?

   I don’t know how fluent you are in 18^th century religious psychological vocabulary. I can explain some of those phrases as we talk about this just in case your vocabulary on the faculties of the soul and the placement of the affections and passions on undue objects is rusty.

  Wesley’s definition of repentance is very significant to the meaning of the gospel.  Here is why I find that worth reading out to you today. What we need to notice about this self-knowledge is that it is not a list of the things that you have done wrong. “Repent and believe the gospel.” This does not mean, at least not principally, confess your past failures and decide that you will make better choices in the future. This does not mean see your guilt before God the Judge and ask for forgiveness so that you can be admitted to heaven.

   “Repent,” in Wesley’s explanation of scripture, means know that “what you want in life,” your motives, your understanding of what is healthy and good, your view on the value of others, your interpretation of events, conversations, and motivations…all this is not appropriate to what God intends for you. I probably don’t even have to paraphrase Wesley’s explanation that your “desires and aversions” “joys and sorrows” “hopes and fears” are set on the wrong objects. All of this is corrupted and is not according to the will of God.

   It is not actions that Wesley turns to first but to (a) our ability to even comprehend the world around us and (b) to the motives that direct our values and actions. This might not seem especially abnormal (especially for holiness folk). I will skip ahead so that we can see why this is so important to Wesley and why it might be a corrective to some ways of preaching that we might participate in even today.

   In this general discussion over several sermons another verse that comes up as key is Jeremiah 31:33 (and is quoted in Hebrews 8:10).

Jeremiah 31:33 NASB “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

   The will of God/God’s intent is that there will be a covenant relationship in which the human heart will be made to resemble the heart of God and the identity and vocation and belonging and fulfilment of the people will be determined by the fact that they are a people set apart as God’s people.

  

   So that is what God’s intent is. But repentance is our seeing ourselves as people who, at the core of who we are, are so very far from being that kind of people. Even more significantly, Wesley is identifying a place in which we do not even want to be that kind of people. I think it is supposed to be depressing…for a time. But what is “the gospel” that we are supposed to “believe” after we get this “repentance” anyhow?

   Wesley wrote a letter to an evangelical layman in which he explains what he means by “preaching the gospel.” In his journal he mentions that he had written this explanation—only in his journal he does not say that he had written about “preaching the gospel.” Instead, he recorded that he had written on what it means “to preach Christ.”

   Jesus as the Christ is, himself, the good news.

Jesus as Messiah of the Kingdom

   I have to admit—this actually surprized me in my research: Wesley’s definition of the gospel was not based on an abstracted Savior...one who operated as a part of a cosmic legal system. Wesley’s Savior was identified as the one who was the fulfilment of God’s covenant promises to Israel. As Wesley was talking about what “believe the gospel” means in his second sermon on Mark 1:15 he used “belief” and  “faith” interchangeably.* Wesley clarified that faith is not only in what God is capable of but in what God has promised to do. ‘Indeed his bare power to do this is not a sufficient foundation for our faith that he will do it, that he will thus exert his power, unless he hath promised it.’[8] Wesley claimed scriptural evidence in both the Old and New Testament of these promises. When he turned to quote specific claims he began with Deuteronomy 30:6.

‘So we read in the law, in the most ancient part of the oracles of God, “The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul”.’[9]

   He concluded his list of specific citations with Luke 1:68-69’s claim that, in Christ, God’s oath to David was being fulfilled.[10]

Luke 1:68-69 NASB “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant…”

   I think Wesley has set up a pretty stark contrast here. How are we supposed to hope for a life that offers an image of God to the world with our understanding and motives and emotions so deranged? Wesley says that the good news is that Jesus is enough to do just that and to include us as children of God. One of the ways that he relies on most to sum this up is to speak about the reign of God in the heart. This is the Kingdom of God. This is where God’s law of love defines life.

What is the Gospel?

   In the first of his sermons on Mark 1:15 Wesley described ‘the gospel’ in what he referred to as ‘the largest sense of the word’: '"The gospel" (that is, good tidings, good news for guilty helpless sinners) in the largest sense of the word means the whole revelation made to men by Jesus Christ; and sometimes the whole account of what our Lord did and suffered while he tabernacled among men. The substance of all is, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners;" or, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, to the end we might not perish, but have everlasting life," or, "He was bruised for our transgressions, he was wounded for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."'[11]

   “I mean by ‘preaching the gospel’ preaching the love of God to sinners, preaching the life, death, resurrection, and the intercession of Christ, with all the blessings which in consequence thereof are freely given to true believers.”

   In a letter summarizing Wesley’s instructions on preaching the gospel, preaching the gospel works hand in hand with preaching the law. So Wesley continued that by “preaching the law” [he] mean[t] explaining and enforcing the commands of Christ, briefly comprised in the Sermon on the Mount.’[12] Gospel was defined as the pronouncement of the love of God in Christ culminating in the life of blessings. Gospel and law, blessing and command, were meant to be seen as contrasting pairs. Gospel should be preached to show the intention of God to save, to show that the privilege ahead could be received—keeping the hearer fixed on God’s loving intent, and to instil hope to those convinced of the need for growth in grace that God will complete that work. Law should be preached to bring the hearers to the place where they are convinced that they are falling short of the command of Christ and also to keep the attention of the hearers fixed on the life that is to be lived according to the commands of Christ.

   Wesley clearly believed that the gospel had major consequences for the individual sinner but in recognizing that we can’t miss the actual definitions of “the gospel” that Wesley gave. In summary, the definition of “the gospel” given by Wesley is Jesus—the full biblical narrative concerning him and his teachings. The gospel is the proclamation that God will bring about the promised life of blessing through the life of Jesus with all of its details and events.

   To preach the gospel is to preach the story of Jesus as the Christ.

   The promises of God were all summarized in the one promise of God to write his law of love on the heart of his people. This was Wesley’s assertion even though he could describe the heart as so deranged. Christ is good news when you realize you’re deranged.

   We might say, though I don’t think that it catches the full impact of Wesley’s claims about the gospel, that the gospel is greater than the brokenness. Christ is greater than the deranged bent-ness of the human soul.

   I think that will preach—as they used to say.

   I got a glimpse of what that looks like in the plans of some friends that I met in Manchester years ago. We lived in a building with a Canadian couple. They were planning on returning to Canada, starting a family and living in the inner city for the sake of ministering to a particular set of needs that they saw there. I was unsure about the wisdom of their plans. They were assuming that there would be what I would call bad influences on their children there. It didn’t take long for me to realize that their plans were based on something that they believed. They believed that the God who would be with them and with their children in the midst of a bent and broken neighbourhood was able not only to sustain them but to use them. They believed that God was bigger than sin. They believed that their children would develop better being used by God as God made all things new than they would being safe amongst good influences.

   In the years since I have developed a shorthand way of thinking about what they believed. They believed the gospel.

   I think it was N.T. Wright that I was reading but I can’t find the citation. He said that he used to pray that God would keep his children safe. Now he prays that God would use his children in the Kingdom. I can comprehend the challenge in sincerely praying like that.

   So often I hear the claim that people cannot be like Christ because we are human. What Wesley was doing in every situation where he specifically took of the meaning of the gospel was saying that because of the gospel we can be like Christ. God can reign in our hearts. God can cleanse our hearts. We can represent God in the world and reveal God to the world.

   In the church I think that we know the deranged state of the world. Unfortunately I usually see us pray for safety. I usually see fear of the world. I am not sure that we believe the gospel on a personal level or the church level.

Movement into Dialogue

   I have summarized Wesley’s definition of the gospel in several ways.

The gospel is the saving story of Jesus. To preach the gospel is to preach the story of Jesus as the Christ.

Gospel was defined as the pronouncement of the love of God in Christ culminating in the life of blessings.

   Though they are not specifically the definition of the gospel, the gospel should be preached to show the intention of God to save, to show that the privilege ahead could be received. Preaching the gospel will keep the hearer fixed on God’s loving intent and will instil hope to those convinced of the need for growth in grace that God will complete that work.

Following the argument Wesley put forward in this sermon, what those who heard the gospel preached were to do was to have confidence (believe/have faith) in the whole revelation made to men by Jesus Christ including what he did and suffered (the gospel) when confronted with the realization that the powers, faculties, perception, affections, and passions of their hearts were corrupted so that they did not reflect the rule of God in the heart (repentance).

(1) Let’s hear some stories broader than mine. How have you preached the gospel? How has the local church that you are a part of been shaped by the gospel?

(2) I live in a space where I am preaching to and pastoring people of all ages—from the nursery to the grave. Some of the people I preach to see the gospel as the process of confession and forgiveness based on the punishment of Jesus for our sins that gets us into heaven. Some of the people I preach to tell me that they can’t see the difference between that version of the gospel and the version of the gospel that says that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is the vindication of the faithfulness of God to the covenant promises.

   How do we preach in such a way that draws out the difference without attacking personal salvation (which I am assuming that we do not want to do)?

   How do we connect this reading of the gospel with the experience of “old time gospel Christians?” [see the little things on p. 4]

   For those who see the gospel as a saving narrative of Jesus as fulfilment of the covenants and as the restoration of the imago dei in humanity how do we help them see that the gospel has not in fact been missing between the early church and the 21^st century?

(3) What we need to notice about this self-knowledge is that it is not a list of the things that you have done wrong. “Repent and believe the gospel.” This does not mean, at least not principally, confess your past failures and decide that you will make better choices in the future. This does not mean see your guilt before God the Judge and ask for forgiveness so that you can be admitted to heaven.

   How easy is it to fall into preaching this as the good news?

   Where does the church go from that message?

   Where does the church go from the gospel?

(4) Let’s talk about how we can best “preach the law?”

(5) How does the world look different on Monday because we preached the gospel on Sunday?

[When we take something like “the gospel” story really seriously for our own lives we will come up with stories about the difference it makes in the simplest things. This is essential but I think that we also need to be listening to others stories and helping them make connections between Monday and the gospel.]

(6) Wesley could envision a heart in which God reigned and the believer was not bound to disobey or fail to worship God but where, in short, the heart was still corrupted. Sin, Wesley explained, ‘does not reign, but it does remain.’[13] Maybe this is “advanced gospel preaching.”

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[1] That is the King James word. The NASB Gen. 1:26 says Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

[2] The promises (children, land, blessing, Presence) are not so much “things that they get” as resources that allow for them to represent and reveal God.

[3] It built up to “Stories of the King”- a children’s “story camp.”

[4] Even I.

[5] “The Way to the Kingdom,” Works [BE] 1:218-234.

[6] “The Repentance of Believers,” Works [BE] 1:335-352.

[7] 1:225, 226.

[8] Works [BE] 1:347.

[9] Works [BE] 1:347.

[10] Works [BE] 1:348.

[11] Works [BE] 1:229. By his stripes we are “healed.” (The emphasis is on spiritual life not forgiveness.)

[12] John Wesley, Works [BE] 26:482.

[13] Works [BE] 1:337.

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[i] My introductory reading list to these themes is: James Garlow, The Blood Covenant. Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel. N.T. Wright, How God Became King. N.T. Wright, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is New and What Makes it Good.