What Is Essential to 'The Message'?

From a JD Greear article at The Gospel Coalition:

"I want to say this to church leaders in America: Don't make it hard for Republicans or Democrats to find God. Don't make it hard for black or white seekers, or for brown or Asian seekers. Don't make it hard for police officers or for public-school teachers. Preach the whole counsel of God, but don't make it hard for anyone turning to God by encumbering the message with things not essential to the message."

I appreciate his call to 'not make it hard' for anyone based on some important aspect of who they are (their skin color, their job, etc). If a church is making it hard for someone based on something other than their human being-ness, they're doing it wrong.

It's that last line though, that kind of begs a question. "don't make it hard for anyone turning to God by encumbering the message with things not essential to the message."...what is essential to the message?

What Is Essential to the Message?

I love the places in Scripture where the imperatives are simple and direct. Micah 6:8 for example, "He has shown you, o mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." That is just two simple sentences, but it is packed with meaning and it's direct. Jesus makes several of those kinds of statements too:

John 5:

Jesus is in Jerusalem observing a Jewish festival and visits the pool called Bethesda. He comes across a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus asks him, "Do you want to get well?" "Sir," the paralyzed man replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." Then Jesus says to the man, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." He is healed. Then an interesting follow up a few verses later..."Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you."

John 8:

A woman is caught in adultery and brought before Jesus. Jesus invites the person who is without sin to 'throw the first stone' and everyone walks away. After everyone is left, he says to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she replied. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Mark 1:

"After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the Gospel.""

Mark 10:

A rich man comes to Jesus as he is speaking and asks, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus tells him "you must not murder, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not bear false testimony, you must not withhold wages, honor your father and mother." Basically a shortened version of the Ten Commandments. The man says to him, "these things, all of them, I have carefully observed since I was a young man." Jesus is moved by this man's devotion and then says to him, "you are lacking one thing: Go and sell this - everything you own - and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure stored away in Heaven." Jesus doesn't tell this man that he has missed the point by carefully observing God's law...rather, this man's sincerity moves Jesus - but Jesus knows that this man loves one thing more than Him, and it's his money, and his command to him is to let it go.

Stop sinning. Repent and believe the Gospel. Store up for yourself treasure in Heaven. Short, simple, direct sentences. One might argue that these things are the essential elements of the message. I think it's even reasonable to argue that this short message IS the 'whole counsel of God'. That phrase comes from Acts 20 - Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, stopping at various places along the way and is addressing the gathering of elders of Ephesus, whom he called to Miletus because he had decided not to visit Ephesus. He says to them:

"You yourselves know that from the first day I set foot in the province of Asia, I lived and worked among you in the same manner until the very day I left, serving the Lord with the utmost humility and with tears despite the trials that befell me because of the plots of the unbelieving Jews, and that I didn't shrink back from proclaiming to you anything that would be helpful, or from teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly warning both Jews and Gentiles that they must turn to God in repentance and put their faith in our Lord Jesus." (Acts 20:18-21)

He then tells them where he is going and why, and what he expects to find when he gets to Jerusalem.

"That is why I am solemnly declaring to you, on this very day, that I am in no way responsible for anyone's blood. For I did not shrink back from proclaiming to you the whole plan (some translations substitute, "counsel") of God." (Acts 20:27)

The full counsel/plan of God, as it's laid out here by Paul, seems to mean what he refers to just a few verses before that statement, which is 'the necessity of turning to God in repentance and having faith in Jesus.'

Don't Make it Hard...

The problem now sits plainly...the essential elements of the message are, by their very nature, confrontational. They force a choice. 'Repent and believe' is simple to say, but hard to hear. This is where I see a little bit of a rub for Greear's statement because while I agree that we should not make it hard for anyone to come to faith with the non-essential...the essential is still hard. God himself recognizes that it is difficult...but not beyond our ability:

"Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor it is beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it." No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live in increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess." (Deuteronomy 30:11-16, NASB)

I love that image of God being near - to help! Paul channels this same idea in Acts, standing before the Greek Aeropagus:

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of Heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, they they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us." (Acts 17:24-27, NASB)

Paul goes on to say that, in light of this, "now [God] commands all people everywhere to repent." God is not far off and through general revelation, through Creation itself, He is making himself known to all people. The message is simple, but it is hard and confrontational. It requires a response from us - on the hand humility, confession and submission, or on the other - stubbornness, arrogance and resistance. Either He is King and Lord, or we are. The good news is that he's not leaving us on our own to flail and flounder.

Wrapping Up

Greear's call to 'not make it hard' comes from Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council where Peter, along with Paul and Barnabus, recite to all of the Apostles in Jerusalem all about what God has been doing in and amongst the Gentiles. The part everyone knows is, "It is my judgement, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." (Acts 15:19-20) The verse everyone leaves out though, is Verse 21 which says, "For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." Verse 21 is pretty key to the whole thing, because at least to my reading it is the Apostles ASSUMING that everyone who wants to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be going to the synagogue and they will hear the FULL COUNSEL of God. Afterall, where else would early Gentile believers have gone? Who else had the Scriptures? Who else knew about God, save for the people and communities within the synagogues?

The Council's decision has more to do with conversion to Judaism than anything else - the 'circumcision group' (which is mentioned earlier in the chapter as the main opponents of Paul and Barnabus) were loudly lobbying that any Gentile that wanted to come to God ought to first be circumcized, which means, convert to Judaism. The Law itself was not in their minds when they're saying "don't make it hard"...and they assume that new believers will end up hearing the Law when they go to learn about God at the synagogue.

For what it's worth, I think Greear's article is a good article - this isn't my screed against what he's saying. My only hesitation with what he's saying is the acknowledgement that sometimes the gospel message itself, faithfully presented and defended, is hard - it's going to turn some people away. In particular, I think that hardline members of the modern Lefist movement will have serious trouble discerning between maxims we all accept as believers (abortion is sinful, homosexuality is sinful) and the Republican party. In their minds, there is an equivalency there, there's no way around that.