Scripture: Philippians 1:27
Date: March 13, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Last Lord’s day I began to work through the names of our local body, Trinity Evangel Church. I said that to the degree that we ignore the Trinity—the eternal, intimate, loving relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—we will fail to be the baptized community of disciples Christ commissioned. We have individual roles and responsibilities, but we work with each other and for each other because God made us that way because He is that way.
I mentioned briefly that there is a major hindrance to this eternal-God life. More than a hindrance, this life of unified diversity and intimate fellowship is impossible because of sin. Sin separates. Sin magnifies differences to exalt itself. Sin wants power, not a partner, or at least it wants a partner to be better than and boss around. Sin turns an affections-producing heart in the wrong direction, usually ending on oneself and not others. Trinitarian life and community sounds great, but it is no longer available to fallen man…without the evangel, the gospel.
This morning we’ll consider the evangel message, the evangel movement, and the evangel ministry.
Evangel is a third hand English word that came from Latin that came from Greek. The Latin word is evangel(ium) (classically pronounced ewangel), that came from the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον, translated “good news” or “gospel.” The verb is εὐαγγελίζω, to announce or proclaim the εὐαγγέλιον, means to herald the good news.
The εὐαγγέλιον word family is found everywhere in the New Testament (133 times in various forms). Jesus preached it, His apostles also proclaimed it and explained it. The gospel is about Christ, about the need for a Savior from sin, about Christ’s work to bear God’s righteous wrath for sinners, and the promises of life, forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, justification, adoption. Disciples are to proclaim the gospel throughout the whole world as a testimony to the nations (Matthew 24:14; Mark 16:15). It is called the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul summarized the message of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the εὐαγγέλιον I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you— unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
Paul defined and refined the gospel in Romans. His thesis was: “I am not ashamed of the εὐαγγέλιον, for it is the power of God to salvation, for it is the power of God to salvation, for the Jew first and also for the Gentiles” (Romans 1:16). In light of God’s wrath (1:18-3:20), there is good news, the hope of justification, sanctification, and glorification (chapters 3:21-8:39), as well as a life based on those mercies (chapters 12-16).
Luke, in the book of Acts, chronicled the spread of the gospel in the early church, from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.
The Vulgate—the Latin translation in the 4th century—still used through the Reformation by the church and scholars, had the evangel word group. It was a transliteration of the Greek word, evangel(ium), new letters that make the same sounds as the original letters of the other language.
The Roman Catholic detractors of Protestants sometimes called them “gospellers,” or evangelicals.
William Tyndale gave us the earliest recorded (English) appearance of the word evangelical. In 1531, in his commentary on the gospel of John (published 5 years before Tyndale died and just 16 years after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg), Tyndale wrote, “He exhorteth them to proceed constantly in the evangelical truth.” Tyndale was not using the word to describe a theological position. It was simply an adjective meaning “of or pertaining to the gospel.” (Phil Johnson, What Is an Evangelical?)
When we say evangel we mean gospel. When we say gospel, we mean “the good tidings of the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ” (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language). The evangel is our message.
I really don’t want to take a long time on this point, but it does impact our name. Here’s a jet tour, moving fast and from 30,000 feet above.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Liberalism (higher criticism, social gospel) was on the rise, questioning everything about the Bible and in the Bible. Those who loved the Bible banded together to defend the faith and wrote the Fundamentals. The fundamentalists wrote out their doctrinal beliefs, later compiled into 12 large volumes, defending the essential doctrines of Christianity. They began nobly, though they tended to define themselves by what they were against, and that made them more narrow. Everything was suspect; a liberal could be behind any door. After a while some faithful Christians (and some not so faithful) within Fundamentalism realized the constricting circles and broke off, not necessarily in a denial of the Fundamentals, but with a desire to promote the gospel. This new movement came to be called Evangelicalism.
Evangelicals tended to be uncomfortable with the nonstop militancy of the fundamentalists; fundamentalists thought the evangelicals’ desire to be as positive as possible was a sign of weakness and compromise. (Johnson, ibid.)
As a observation application, there is an important difference between conviction and contention, between vigorously believing truth and looking for fights. A fine line exists between being known more by what we’re against or more by what we’re for.
The desire to be broader than the Fundamentals didn’t stop for some Evangelicals; some moved back toward Liberalism purposefully or naively. Today, that has made “evangelical” an almost useless word, a vague catch-all term. While we are in the evangelical bowl, it is almost useless because within the bowl one finds soup to nuts and covers all sorts of non-evangel practices.
When we talked about a name for our merry band, we initially considered Trinity Evangelical because it flowed well and while still attached to the gospel. I hate when our good words are stolen and think we should not let others have our words. But maybe it flowed too well. It sounded like something you could say and not really know what you were referring to.
So we went with evangel. It begs for definition, and should open doors into evangelism time after time with people to whom the word sounds funny.
Evangel is meant to provoke more than conversation about a church name and more than a simple reminder about the content of our teaching. It is what we proclaim and it must also be what we practice. Our evangel lives are the platform from which we preach, from which we evangelize. To the degree that we leave the gospel at our justification we will suffer in our sanctification and in our witness.
Maybe some other time I’ll address how needful the gospel is for Christian living after conversion. I’ll recommend some books on the church blog on how the gospel impacts our battle for personal holiness. But this morning, more than motivation for individual growth in Christlikeness, I want us to consider the gospel as a philosophy of ministry.
There is an evangel way of life, a way to be identified as evangel citizens.
Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Philippians 1:27)
The command is πολιτεύεσθε (a word that includes πόλις, “city”), so it means “to be a citizen,” “to conduct one’s life,” “to conduct oneself with proper reference to one’s obligations in relationship to others, as part of some community” (Louw & Nida). For example, Americans have some distinguishing characteristics. How we are living as gospel citizens? What will a congregation look like that preaches and practices evangel ministry?
A call to gospel ministry, a call for every Christian, requires (at least) dying: sacrificial service and suffering, forgiving: reconciling and peace-making travail, and hoping: consuming, happy confidence in God’s promises. These are three marks of evangel ministry.
A preacher’s work extends beyond the sacred desk (the pulpit) and beyond his study desk (in private). A preacher works with people, not merely at people or for people, and they often cause him pain. The preacher is called to model the gospel in a life of death.
Maybe some day I’ll write out posts for a few messages I taught from 2 Corinthians 4, but in summary, the privilege of gospel ministry includes slaving for others. Service is gospel work. Jesus didn’t come to be served but to serve (Matthew 20:26-28). Those who would lead like Jesus must be servants. So Paul said, “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).
The privilege of gospel ministry also involves suffering. That, too, is gospel work. Jesus gave His life for us (Matthew 20:26-28). Those who would lead like Jesus must also die. Paul said not only that he was brought to the breaking point over and over (2 Corinthians 4:8-9), but also that death was at work in him (which means that ministry is a dying life). He wrote:
[we are] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work (2 Corinthians 4:1-12) in us, but life in you.
It’s a dangerous buzzword, I know, and I used to argue against it, but “incarnational” is a good word. We usually think about Christ’s incarnation, God taking on flesh, taking on a body, and dwelling among us. In a different, but still similar, way we illustrate the gospel in our bodies, in our flesh.
In Colossians 1:24 the apostle wrote that “in [his] flesh” he was “filling up what [was] lacking in the afflictions of Christ.” Like Paul, a believer’s death isn’t redemptive, but it is illustrative of Christ and the gospel. We proclaim a message of death and resurrection from a platform of dying.
We preach forgiveness. We implore men, “be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:11-21). The gospel, Jesus’ substitutionary punishment taking, enables God to be righteous and forgive our unrighteousness (Romans 3:21-26). Vertical forgiveness restores relationship between God and repentant rebels. That is the powerful work of the gospel.
Horizontal forgiveness is secondary but it is not less relevant. In fact, because restored relationships between men and other men are only possible due to Christ’s work on the cross, we devalue the gospel to the degree that we don’t insist and work for sinners to be reconciled to each other. We are called to teach, counsel, and mediate reconciliation. We must also model forgiveness.
Forgiving is hard work because it means someone did something against us that required forgiveness. That’s part of what makes the practice of forgiveness a powerful platform. Love is not surprising when we love those who love us. Proclaiming forgiveness apart from living it isn’t surprising. There is nothing supernatural, nothing gospel about hurting those who hurt us, or merely getting far away from them. We’re not in the wrong place if there are others who hurt us. We’re in a better place to show how fantastic forgiveness looks.
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, all Christians are called to put on tender hearts like Christ, forgiving each other as Christ forgave us (Colossians 3:12-14).
We preach the “best” good news; none have a more hopeful message than those who know the gospel. And yet, it’s a short downhill slide into discouragement and pessimism. We see dead men everywhere. Many of the spiritually living men we’re around struggle with doubt and disobedience. We counsel broken people in broken relationships. We work against the flow in a fallen world and our efforts often appear futile.
Thing is, the gospel doesn’t require good circumstances for its effect. In fact, the gospel presupposes problems, problems that are above every preacher’s pay grade (think Obama). It is good news precisely because things are bad. The gospel makes alive! The gospel grows! The gospel sanctifies! The gospel heals! Because of the gospel promises, no ministry death is wasted. Fruit will be yielded in due season and our resurrection cannot be concealed. We can serve, suffer, die, and forgive with indulgence.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)
Yes, we’ll be burdened when we see sin in ourselves and in our flocks. Suffering is called suffering for a reason. But we have been born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3)! Of all the things people observe of gospel citizens, humble and explosive hope should be so obvious and surprising that they ask us about it (1 Peter 3:15).
Throwing around the word “gospel” is ironically faddish. It has emerged as a cover for all kinds of “evangelical” activity. But we desire to be identified by the gospel.
We are to be a community. We are created as image-bearers to reflect God who is Triune. But sin has made relationships rotten and spoiled our hope. Without the evangel we are dead in our trespasses and sin, separated from God and without hope in the world. Without the evangel we cannot have community, separated from others and without intimacy with each other. Whether it was part of our name or not, Trinity Evangel Church exists by the evangel and we will magnify the evangel both by proclaiming it boldly and also by dying, forgiving, and hoping.