The Gospel Is Something You Obey

Here is my second complaint against the often-repeated evangelical slogan, "The gospel isn't good advice, it's good news."

This slogan strikes me as a deliberate and misguided attempt to strip the gospel message of its imperative force and turn it into something merely indicative. I will first explain these grammatical terms.

The indicative mood is a statement of reality, as in the sentence, "The door is shut." This statement is either true or false, depending on whether the door is really shut. It is "news" - and as news, it is a report that can either be believed or disbelieved. If I say to you, "The door is shut," you can either believe me or disbelieve me.

The imperative mood is a command to do something, as in the sentence, "Shut the door." This statement, as it stands, is neither true nor false. Instead, it is a command that can either be obeyed or disobeyed. If I tell you, "Shut the door," you can either obey me or disobey me.

Now consider a combination of the two. Suppose I say, "Shut that door that is now open." Grammatically the sentence is still an imperative, a command to do something. But I buried an indicative in there too. The relative clause after the word "door" is indicative; I'm affirming that the door is now open, and that is a statement you can either believe or disbelieve.

Here is a question I would like all preachers of the gospel to consider (and answer correctly!): "Is gospel proclamation indicative, imperative, or a combination of both?"

In recent years, I have noticed that many capable and orthodox expositors of the Word have been eager to insist that the gospel is merely indicative, that it is news and only news. In this characterization, the gospel is not a matter of what you should do (imperative) but what has been done (indicative). What has been done is that God has appeased his own wrath and accomplished our salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Complex God. Jesus bore our sins on the cross, died, and rose again on the third day. Now he reigns forever as King and Lord of all.

You will notice that there is not a single imperative in the above paragraph. It is 100% indicative. My question is, "If we proclaim the news in that paragraph, have we preached the gospel as the Bible understands the word "gospel"? Can you call it "gospel" if there is no command to submit, surrender, repent, obey?

I know that many colleagues in the ministry will answer with a resounding "Yes!" The gospel to them is purely what God has done and never something that he commands us to do. To be sure, there are still commandments out there - you ought to be faithful to your spouse, for example - but those are not part of the gospel. Behaving well and shunning evil are things you do in response to the purely indicative gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now I believe I have detected what I regard to be some rhetorical fudging when evangelical teachers of this persuasion gravitate to the word "respond" or the phrase "in response to". Remember that for them the gospel is news, mere news. It is like the sentence, "The door is shut." Now imagine the following interchange:

"The door is shut!"
"Ok, good, the door is shut. Got it."
"Well, don't you think that maybe you should respond to the news that the door is shut by getting up and doing something about it? Like, say, opening a window perhaps?"
"Very well. But why didn't you just tell me in the first place to open the window?"
"Because that's advice, and my message is not advice but news. Everyone else gives advice and commandments about what you have to do. Not me! I don't tell you what you must do but declare to you the news of what has been done. Here is the news of what's been done: 'The door is shut.' And now, maybe, you really ought to consider what would be an appropriate way to respond to that news and live your life in accordance with its truth. Because if you really believed that the door was shut, I'd expect to see a response."
"Like opening the window?"
"Exactly."
"Because if I don't I'll suffocate and die?"
"Right again."
"Ok, look, for clarity's sake, the next time you do this, could you just tell a guy to open the window? Maybe you could say something like, 'The door is shut, but the window is unlocked. Go open it, and you will breathe and live.'"
"Can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because you included a command regarding what the person has to do in order to live. I insist that my message is not about what people have to do, but what's been done. The door is shut and the window is unlocked. That's the message. And now, well, yeah, of course there really ought to be a response to that message that will just flow naturally out of gratitude and logic."
"You mean like obedience to a command?"
"STOP CALLING IT A COMMAND!"

And that is why I don't like the word "respond". It's much too weasely. It seems to be hiding the imperative that we all know is there but that some are reluctant to acknowledge. The phrase, "respond to the news" is safer for some preachers than the stark, "obey the order." But to those who insist on using the soft term "respond", I would like to ask, "Do you believe that people have to respond to the gospel?" If so, then obviously it's a lot more than news. You never have to respond to news. You only have to obey commands.

And the gospel is, in part, a command. I believe I can prove that from Scripture. Three New Testament texts refer to obedience to the gospel. They are below:

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?”
(Romans 10:16)

...when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
(2 Thessalonians 1:7b-8)

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
(1 Peter 4:17)

There, in a nutshell, is why the gospel necessarily includes an imperative element. You cannot disobey an indicative, you can only disbelieve it. But an imperative - an order, a command - is something you can obey or disobey. An indicative is something you accept or deny, but an imperative is something you submit to or rebel against. In the Bible, the gospel is something you believe and obey, something you accept and submit to. The best way to persuade yourself of this is to do what I have done: get a Greek concordance and read, in context, every occurrence of euangelion (gospel) and euangelizomai (preach the gospel). The thesis that the gospel is news and only news will not survive this scrutiny. The gospel as the New Testament presents it is an imperative-indicative mix, as in the example sentence, "Shut that door that now is open." Gospel news is embedded in gospel imperative. In practical terms, it looks something like, "Bow the knee and surrender your life to the Son of God who died and rose again on your behalf."

When preachers say, "The gospel isn't good advice; it's good news," and, "all other religions give you advice about what to do, but Christianity gives you news about what has already been done", I'm afraid they're making a royal mess of the gospel. The word "advice" in that slogan seems to be an oddly dismissive way of referring to a sober command. Of course we don't "advise". But we do command in the name of the Lord. And if we have not done so, then we have not preached the gospel. The gospel is good news and it is good commandment. The gospel is something you believe and something you obey.