Hi friends,
I was asked a really good question following Sunday’s sermon, and I think it is something that others might be wondering about too. Before sharing the question, let me give the context. I was preaching on Jude 3-4 and the call for Christians to contend for the faith. We took a deeper dive and saw that this call is not a charge for Christians to argue about every matter related to Christian doctrine. Jude’s call is for Christians to contend for the truth about the One in whom they place their faith. In other words, it is a call to fight for the gospel, the good news of Jesus. Interestingly, when Jude goes on in verse 4 to talk about the threat facing their faith, he does not speak about those denying the truth of the gospel. So he is not calling Christians to contend with people who are not believers and deny what Jesus has done. We don’t contend for the gospel with unbelievers. We continue to share the gospel with them. Jude’s charge is to contend with those who claim to be Christians, those who would affirm the gospel but who at the same time also distort it. In Jude’s context, false teachers were teaching a false sexual ethic and, in doing so, “perverting the grace of God.” So when Jude urges Christians to “contend for the faith” and then shows that the threat to the faith was false teaching around sexuality, we see that sex is not a secondary issue but a gospel issue. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 tells us that the gospel is of “first importance,” so to say something is a “gospel issue” is to say it is of utmost importance to the Christian faith. So here is the question that I was asked. How can we determine if something is a gospel issue we must contend for versus a secondary matter on which Christians can respectfully agree to disagree?
In answer to this question, two categories come to mind from Scripture.
First, the gospel is that Christ has died to save us from our sins (Matthew 1:21, John 3:16, Hebrews 9:26, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Since the gospel is about our rescue from sin, whenever someone chooses to live in unrepentant sin, they are distorting the gospel. This is why Jude says these people encouraging a sinful lifestyle of sensuality were not just committing sexual sin but “denying the only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 4). Sinful thoughts or deeds are always gospel issues because they deny the Lordship of Jesus and the Spirit’s transformative presence in our lives. As Paul writes to the Romans, “How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:2). That word “live” is important. It shows that Paul is not speaking about struggling with sin. We all struggle with sin and continue to battle it daily (Romans 7, 1 John 1:8). But living in sin is a willful desire NOT to care about what God says but to indulge your sinful desires and expect God to “just forgive you.” This is the exact scenario that Paul describes when he asks if we should sin so that grace may abound. He answers it with a resounding “Certainly not!” (Romans 6:2). Unrepentant sin is a gospel issue because the gospel is that we have died with Christ, and the Spirit now lives in us. And so if the Spirit truly lives in us, then we will not want to live in sin. We will want to battle it and struggle against it. We will do that imperfectly with many struggles along the way. Yet, the Spirit-filled Christian’s desire is to “be holy as He is holy” (1 Peter 1:15), for through the Spirit, we’ve been given a “heart of flesh and not of stone” (Ezekiel 36:26). So when Paul sees Peter committing the sin of racism in Galatians 2, or when James writes against the sin of exploiting the poor in James 2, or when Jude writes about sensuality, all of those issues are linked to the gospel because they involve sinning in ways that are inconsistent with the redemption that is in the gospel. We can never excuse sin because to do so is a gospel issue that undercuts the work of Christ and what He has done to save us from our sin and empower us to live lives of repentance.
Second, something is a gospel issue if the acceptance/denial of it leads to a denial of the gospel. For example, the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation by baptism (“Justification is conferred in baptism, the sacrament of faith”-Catholic Christian Catechism, 1992) is a gospel issue because it denies that justification is by faith alone in Jesus alone. However, the doctrine of paedobaptism (baptizing a child as a sign of their being welcomed into the community of the new covenant) and credobaptism (baptizing someone based upon profession of faith in Christ) is not a gospel issue because, in those cases, both parties are still affirming that justification is by faith alone. Or when someone believes that Scripture teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased and another has a biblical conviction that they continue today, that disagreement is not a gospel issue because no sin is involved and no salvific doctrine is being compromised. That does not mean that having a biblical understanding of baptism or the gifts of the Spirit is not important. They certainly are. But sincere Christians can disagree about how to interpret and apply the Scriptures on these issues and still be “in the faith” because they are secondary issues and not gospel issues.
So something is a gospel issue if 1) Sin is being excused. 2) The doctrine of salvation by faith is being compromised.
I hope that helps.
With affection in Christ,
Jeff