Jan 6, 2021
Ways To Know the Real Gospel and Avoid False Gospels
By Nick Kersten
Director of Education and History
Even as God is in the process of saturating the world with the good news of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, there are spiritual forces and human sinful tendencies that tempt all of us to depart from “the faith that was once and for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3), to another Gospel. This human tendency has been identified clearly in the New Testament epistles as well as by nearly every significant theologian in Christian history, from Augustine to C.S. Lewis. There is a true Gospel. There are also false ones. How can we know the real Gospel when we hear it? What identifies a false gospel?
The first and most obvious tests for determining the real Gospel are Biblical. The texts themselves tell us what the real Gospel is and what false ones look like. As one example, the real Gospel will always proclaim that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:1-3). Likewise, no one who believes the real Gospel curses Jesus (1 Corinthians 12:3). The real Gospel is honest about sin and human fallenness, God’s forgiveness, and the call to holy living. In addition, the Bible tells us as believers what we can expect from the unbelieving world. A Gospel which denies or promises to protect us from what the Bible promises we will experience (suffering, for example) is not the real Gospel.
There is also a second group of tests, which spring from the Biblical tests, and relate to the scope of the Gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ is sufficient to save every person who has ever lived. If that is true, that means that we can also know that…
…any supposed Gospel that would not be good news for all the people currently alive is not the real Gospel. False teaching will exalt individuals, groups and secular nations instead of Jesus Christ and will make unhealthy connections between any identity besides Christ and the saving of the world. This exaltation of people instead of Christ can come in any way that people divide themselves: economically, ethnically, geographically, politically, racially, religiously, sexually, or otherwise. Cults that suggest one person has special revelation from God also fit in this category, as do the many historical examples of nationalistic brands of Christianity where God depends on a secular nation in a special way to accomplish His will. If it’s not good news for all the people on earth right now, it’s not the real Gospel.
…any supposed Gospel that would not be good news for the generations of believers who have come before us is not the real Gospel. If a teaching wouldn’t make sense (because of its content, not its context) to the first century believer in Palestine, or Africa, or Rome, the believer in medieval Europe, or the believer suffering persecution in China 70 years ago, then it’s not the real Gospel. Contexts change. The truth of the Scriptures does not.
These secondary tests require us to know enough about our world and the history of our faith to be able to get perspective on what we hear. We are always in danger of believing a false Gospel when we sinfully separate ourselves from people God loves or lose connection with the generations of believers who have come before us. It is easy to lose perspective. The real Gospel and the story of its work in our world always brings us back to the truth.
No matter how we would try to discern false Gospels, our best defense is our own continued engagement with the real one. There is an oft-told story about how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police historically trained their officers to identify counterfeit currency. Rather than presenting officers with an array of counterfeits, officers were presented instead with real currency and told to learn and know the real thing—if you know the real thing, the counterfeit will always stand out. In the end, the best defense against false doctrine is to seek hard after the real Jesus and trust in the true Gospel. As always, if the real Gospel is going to go out from us, it will be a result of the real Gospel at work IN us. May you, by the Holy Spirit’s leading and the Scripture’s firm guidance, trust fully in the true Gospel of Jesus Christ in this difficult season.