Pastors, the most gospel-centered thing you can do is to preach the whole Bible fearlessly. Don’t let the false peace of gospel-onlyism rob you of your prophetic voice….We are called not merely to make converts, but to make disciples who obey all that Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:19–20).

Pastors, the most gospel-centered thing you can do is to preach the whole Bible fearlessly

There was a time when the phrase “gospel-centered” was a rallying cry for Christians longing to return to the heart of our faith. It was a needed correction to moralism, legalism, and the seeker-sensitive drift of the modern church. The gospel-centered movement rightly reasserted that Christ’s finished work is the foundation of all of life and ministry. All of us, in some ways, were positively influenced by a “gospel renewal” as Keller coined it.

But somewhere along the way, something changed. The movement that began as gospel-centered morphed into what I will call gospel-onlyism. This is a mindset that treats anything beyond the message of personal salvation as a “distraction,” encumbrance, or even a danger to the mission of the church.

What began as a recovery of grace has in many places become a retreat from truth. It has become a gateway to progressive ideology, and it casts conservatives as Pharisees to condemn, while liberals are just victims to be gentle with.

When the Gospel “Lens” Becomes a Stifling Filter

In gospel-onlyism, the gospel is not just the center, but the filter, a screen through which everything else must pass. That’s not a bad inclination by any means, but the way evangelical elites have applied it over the last decade has been disastrous.

Gospel-onlyism has become a subjective filter, often applied against right-wing political concerns (many of which are simply Christian political and moral truths, such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism). Those who implement it selectively and subjectively apply this filter to whatever they deem to be the more “gospel-centered” thing. Manufacturing diversity in the church? Yes, that’s gospel-centered. Preaching white hot truth against Christians who vote for the party of baby murder? Well, that’s a distraction from the gospel. You get the point.

The irony is that it replaces Scripture and mutes (one could even say “whispers”) areas where the Bible sets forth straightforward moral teachings about life, marriage, and human society. These are superseded by the “virtuous” cause of “keeping the main thing the main thing” to avoid offending non-Christians. If a moral truth, cultural statement, or biblical command risks offending someone, it’s frequently silenced in the name of “keeping the main thing the main thing.”

This has created a generation of pastors who believe the most “gospel-centered” thing to do is never to let any truth offend someone except the gospel itself. It has stripped pastors of their desire to give wise counsel and made everything a gospel issue. They are nuanced on fundamental truths like God’s design for marriage, government, sexuality, justice, and immigration. All of these things are reduced down to potential “obstacles” for evangelism.

Sunday gatherings have shifted from deep discipleship to “evangelistic showcases,” designed more for seekers than for the sanctification of the saints. In their preaching, they either don’t exhort or do it bound up by fear of being “legalistic.” Their grace-based approach to everything creates ditches on the “left” side of things, such as parenting without asserting authority or using discipline, and an inability to confront moral evils in the political realm.

The result is a church that overemphasizes evangelistic causes, confusing gentleness with silence and grace with avoidance.

But this is not the model of the apostles, nor of the Reformers, and we need to abandon it.

The Reformers and the Whole Counsel of God

The Reformers were radically gospel-centered, but never gospel-only.

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