the gospel...plus (part one)

The gospel is the only thing that saves and we receive this life-changing truth alone. We don't need the the gospel plus anything else. Beware of falling into the many traps that involve us believing the gospel plus anything else to be saved. In a series of posts I hope to bring some of the common ways we fall into this error.

The gospel plus common interests is a lie that abounds in our fallen church culture. People leave gospel-believing churches for all sorts of reasons, but most of these reasons comes down to not finding common interests (ie: there is no one here my age, there is nothing here for my kids, I don't like the style of music...). Conversely, people stay at churches because they find a social network there. Now, the church is about people, but the common reason we have for committing to a local church is the gospel, not the gospel plus anything else. We believe a 'gospel...plus' theology when we stay at a church because others that share our hobbies keep us there, or we leave a church because there are not enough people who share our hobbies. The gospel is enough to unite us, we do not need the gospel plus anything else. Many people who are highly involved in para-church organizations will often find that it is not the gospel that connects them to those they work with, but the task of the organization.

When people leave a local church in search of people they can spend time with on the weekend they ultimately leave with a powerless gospel that cannot redeem the relationships that don't involve a common goal. If your church is all people who hike together, or read the same books, or work in the same office, or whatever, it is likely that it is not a church, but a social gather of people who like that activity.

Do you have relationships with people in your church with whom you have little in common but the gospel? Develop those relationships, love those people, reconcile any fractured relationships only because you have the gospel in common.