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Some scholars and church leaders argue that penal substitutionary atonement—the doctrine that when Jesus died on the cross God punished him for the sins of his people, in whose place he stood—is at best one scriptural metaphor among many. Such teachers argue that we should push penal substitution to the sidelines of the gospel message.
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In order to share the gospel you must tell someone the truth about
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It’s impossible to answer what’s “most” dangerous to the gospel today without God’s knowledge of everything. But here are some prominent threats that loom on the horizon:
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The gospel is the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to reconcile sinners to God. Here’s the whole story:
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First Corinthians 14 provides us with some of the most detailed instruction about the corporate gatherings of Christians in all of the New Testament. In this chapter, Paul explains that church services should primarily be for building up Christians.
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Historical revisionism. Many missional authors make a far bigger deal out of our culture’s move to postmodernity than a sober biblical assessment warrants.
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Corporate witness. Some missional authors rightly emphasize that the church’s corporate witness hugely impacts its faithfulness and success in carrying out the mission God has given it.
Missional living. Missional writers rightly urge evangelical Christians to adopt a missional posture, gearing all of their lives around fulfilling the Great Commission.
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According to Scripture, the local church’s mission is to proclaim, preserve, and display the gospel.
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The basic premise of the missional church is that mission is the very essence of the church. This is a larger claim than saying that every individual member of the church is a missionary: it is a claim that the church itself is a sign, a foretaste, an instrument, and an agent of God’s kingdom reign on earth.
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The short answer is that some individuals identifying themselves as “emerging” get the gospel right and some don’t. And often it’s not easy to tell whether someone has “crossed the line” and denied the gospel. Some individuals affirm the right things but emphasize the wrong things. Others affirm the right things but entirely redefine them. Still others affirm parts of the truth and say nothing about the rest of the truth.
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Absolutely not. The main point of the gospel is the forgiveness of sins through the death of Christ (Luke 24:47).
One promise of God that is bound up with the gospel is that one day God will graciously re-create a new earth in which his people will dwell with him in perfect harmony (Rom. 18-25; Rev. 21:1-22:5). So, one day there will be a totally transformed culture, composed entirely of God’s perfected people dwelling in a new earth.
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A lot of people today are talking about contextualization because it’s a fancy way to justify targeting the subset of the population they like best.
Some people argue that we have to “contextualize” the gospel and the church into punk rock culture, or elite urban culture, or artsy hipster culture, or rich suburban culture in order to reach such groups of people.
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Preach expositionally. As your people hear God’s word every week they will increasingly reflect his glory to the world. Week by week their lives will become a more focused picture of their savior, Jesus Christ.
Preach the gospel every week. As your people hear the gospel every week they will grow in their appreciation for it, their understanding of it, and their ability to share it with others.