The 2020 Gospel Test
Jon Payne recently sent me this post and I thought it would serve you men as we close 2020.
The 2020 Gospel Test
2020 has provided a host of cultural and personal challenges. Churches face division over preferences and perspectives about the right way to live in a shaking culture. Political parties are simultaneously outraged and divided. The political, medical, and economic future of our country is uncertain, except in the perfect knowledge of our Lord.
There are many issues that require Biblical teaching in 2020. How does the Bible address death? Or race? Or loving our neighbors? Or politics? Or economics? Or government? Or issues of conscience? Or the end times? The wise pastor will not try to address every issue that the culture is facing, but will prioritize those issues most necessary for the faithfulness of his own congregation. These are issues that do need Biblical teaching. He is a fool who will not bring God's word to bear on the most challenging cultural and personal issues of his own church members. But the wisest pastor will, above all, be determined to keep the gospel central and prioritized. Being a gospel pastor in times when the culture is largely placid is simple, unifying, enjoyable. 2020 has tested this determination. It is one thing to talk about Christ and him crucified when few other topics shout for our attention. It is much harder when the culture and sectors of the church are demanding that we speak to many legitimate moral and theological issues.
Being gospel-centered means that whenever we address another topic, we discuss it in terms of its theological relationship to the gospel. We are determined to view our discussion of death, or race, or love, or politics, or economics, or government from a gospel centric perspective. In other words, we refuse to make these gospel implications the central point of our teaching, such that everything we teach begins to revolve around them. Everything is not centered around health, or love, or race, or politics, or generosity--all of those topics are centered around Christ.
We are also determined to keep the gospel prioritized so that our passion and our greatest effort and time is given to extolling Christ and him crucified and risen. This means, of course, that we must be self-controlled in addressing other topics, however urgent or culturally central they are at the time. We do not ignore them, but we do not apportion to them the height of our passion or the majority of our content. Our highest goal in preaching and teaching and leading is that our churches would know Christ and him crucified. Our desire is that the person and work of Christ would outshine, in our ministry, every other light, even as we allow those other lights to shine in right proportion to Christ.
Let us test ourselves, pastor brothers, by the 2020 test. Are we preaching Christ and him crucified as the first thing, even as we navigate the many other needs of our churches in this tumultuous year? I thank God for the many brothers who are, and I pray God will give me strength to follow their example. And wherever we have not passed the 2020 test, may we resolve with fresh dependence to keep Christ first in 2021.