Written by Alan D. Strange |
Monday, April 29, 2024
The gospel is a spiritual message for a world whose greatest need is spiritual: redemption from sin and new life in Christ. This is not to say, however, that the effects of the gospel do not have consequences for the world in which we live. Indeed, the effects of the gospel, when the church obeys the Great Commission and the gospel is taken worldwide, is that the nations, in the comprehensive obedience taught to the faithful, come to have among them those who both trust (fundamentally) and obey (consequentially); thus the Christian faith and its fruits do, in fact, profoundly change the world because those touched by the gospel are new creations and because that spiritual rebirth affects them and those around them.

The True Calling of the Church
The calling, or mission, of the church as the church is to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth, not to be another merely (or even chiefly) political, social, or economic institution. The church, in its full-orbed existence, may have political, economic, or social concerns that develop out of its mission, but those aspects are not what primarily mark and define it. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is head and King of the church, made it clear in his marching orders to the church—what we’ve come to call the Great Commission—that he intended the church to go to every people group (often translated “nations”) and to evangelize and disciple them (Matt. 28:18–20), enfolding them into his kingdom, which is “not of this world” (John 18:36), a kingdom that does not have the transitory but the eternal at its heart (2 Cor. 4:18). It is Christ himself, our heavenly King—since he is with us even now by his Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45)—who gathers and perfects his church (Westminster Confession of Faith 25.3) through the appointed means.
The gospel is not about worldly success in any proper sense, then, but is rather about deliverance from the penalty, power, and ultimately the presence of sin, a message that comes to permeate the whole of the lives of those transformed by it. We can rightly say that the message of the church is a spiritual one, coming to people of every sort in every land to bring them here and hereafter into the spiritual reality of the kingdom of Christ. Therefore, Paul encourages the Christians in Corinth, “In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Cor. 7:24). Paul makes clear that the bondservant may and should avail himself of the opportunity of freedom (1 Cor. 7:21). He also makes clear, however, that whatever condition one finds himself in, even whether one is married or not, is not paramount: what is most important is not one’s vocation or life circumstance but being called by and coming to Christ, being a new man or woman in Christ. Paul’s concern is that his readers are Christians, whatever else may be true of their lives. His concern for them, to put it another way, is chiefly spiritual.
This is the spiritual message that the church is privileged to herald to the world (salvation by grace alone), the good news—the meaning of gospel—without which there is no good news. The story of the world after Adam’s fall is nothing but bad news since all is sin, darkness, and hopelessness without the good news of the gospel. The gospel of salvation in Christ, however, is the good news that transforms the worst into the best, seen particularly at the cross, where humanity at its worst not only fails to defeat God but where God uses humanity’s attempt to do so as the centerpiece of our salvation. Christ has overcome the world. This is the message that the church joyfully preaches to the world. It does not preach itself, nor does it promote some sort of political, social, economic, or cultural utopia to be achieved in this age.
The church preaches that we are to live in this age not for this age but for the coming age that has broken in on this age and beckons us to a new heavens and a new earth that await all who trust in Christ alone. This is no “superspirituality” and certainly not any form of gnosticism but simply the recognition of what is central—the spiritual message of the gospel—out of which all else radiates and from which the full-orbed Christian life, with all its consequences, emerges.
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It’s simple: pastors are primarily teachers, and the goal of our teaching is the salvation of souls — a supernatural goal we can’t produce. This understanding leads us, naturally, to prayer. We ask God to do what only he can do, and this accompanies the task of preaching (and the whole of our work) with a heartfelt dependence on Jesus. And that’s where the power’s at.

For some, a single sentence has changed the trajectory of their ministry. For me, it was a paragraph from Richard Baxter’s classic book The Reformed Pastor.
Our whole work must be carried on under a deep sense of our own insufficiency, and of our entire dependence on Christ. We must go for light, and life, and strength to him who sends us on the work. And when we feel our own faith weak, and our hearts dull, and unsuitable to so great a work as we have to do, we must have recourse to him, and say, “Lord, wilt thou send me with such an unbelieving heart to persuade others to believe? Must I daily plead with sinners about everlasting life and everlasting death, and have no more belief or feeling of these weighty things myself? O, send me not naked and unprovided to the work; but as thou commandest me to do it, furnish me with a spirit suitable thereto.” Prayer must carry on our work as well as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people, that prayeth not earnestly for them. If we prevail not with God to give them faith and repentance we shall never prevail with them to believe and repent. (The Reformed Pastor, 105)
Richard Baxter has taught me at least three lessons that clarify the pastoral vocation and bring more of God’s power into the task of preaching. They’re summed up in the above passage, but I present them to pastors as a cascade, each point flowing from the one before it, starting with the fact that pastors are primarily teachers.
Pastors Are Primarily Teachers
Baxter (1615–1691), as the late J.I. Packer has described him, “usually called himself his people’s teacher, and teaching was to his mind the minister’s main task.” Baxter wrote his most famous book, The Reformed Pastor, to make this case, because he was convinced that unless pastors themselves understood their calling, there was little chance parishioners would. During Baxter’s day, and in ours, the question comes down to this: What are pastors for?
The New Testament makes it clear that pastors — the office of elder (presbyteros) or overseer (episkopos) — serve the church with official authority through teaching the apostolic gospel as handed down to us and preserved in the Bible. This is our chief task — a task that was widely understood in the early church and recovered during the Reformation, but that too often gets downplayed in our modern thinking.
To be sure, this downplaying is seen not so much in the church’s activity, but in the pastor’s own vocational clarity. When it comes to the church’s activity, most evangelical churches still feature the preaching moment as the high point of its weekly gatherings. Teaching has certainly not been abandoned, but I still doubt we appreciate its central place in how we conceive of our calling. I’m referring to the level of our basic self-understanding.
For example, imagine, pastor, that you meet a new neighbor and they ask you what you do for a living. You respond by saying, “I’m a pastor.” Now, doubtless, your neighbor has a category for that. They hear you say “pastor,” and they immediately picture something. At the bare minimum, especially if they’re secular, they hear you saying that you’re religious. Now what they think hardly matters, but what does matter, and what I’m most concerned about, is what you and I picture in our minds.
What are we thinking when we hear ourselves say, “I’m a pastor”? Do we think, as the New Testament would lead us, that we’re teachers? We should think that. Baxter would certainly say so.
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I realized that I was a sinner and needed to repent from my sin and trust in Christ alone for my salvation (I later learned the three elements of saving faith are: knowledge about Jesus, intellectual assent that the gospel is true, and entrusting ourselves to Christ for salvation). Because of the new life God breathed into me, I truly felt “born again” and like a new creation. I found that I genuinely desired to live a life of obedience out of gratitude.

Have you ever come to a significant fork in the road of your life and felt your very destiny, and the destiny of those you love, could be forever altered? A situation in which, as Morpheus said in The Matrix:
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
All of us have a story, but not all have a “Reformation” story.  Here’s mine: I was baptized as an infant and was raised in the American Lutheran Church, which later became a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). This was the more liberal branch, so I had both male and female pastors.
I went through my First Communion and then Confirmation, and what still frustrates me to this day is, I don’t remember ever actually being taught what the gospel was. Admittedly, I did learn about the historical facts (the Apostles and Nicene Creeds), but I never heard about the imputed righteousness of Christ or justification by faith alone. Ironically, in a church named after Martin Luther, I wasn’t taught the two concepts that formed the foundation of his theology!
I remember during a confirmation class, I asked one of the pastors if “good people” in different religions were going to be in heaven. Her reply: “There are many ways to God, but Christianity is the most direct path.” I look back on this as a cataclysmic moment.  If all paths ultimately lead to God, why not forge my own path?  That’s exactly what I did for the next decade.
Post Tenebras Lux: After Darkness, Light
God was gracious enough to place Christian co-workers around me. They challenged my claim that I was a Christian. Even my then-fiancée told me that if there was one thing she could change about me, it would be that I would become a Christian. Since Confirmation, I firmly believed all I had to do was intellectually “believe” in Jesus and I would be saved. He was one of the many roads to God.
My co-workers pointed out James 2:19 in which James says that, “even the demons believe, and shudder.”
The Holy Spirit illuminated my mind as I read these passages.  It was as if a light bulb went on.  I was able for the first time to understand, and care, what the Bible was saying. I realized that I was a sinner and needed to repent from my sin and trust in Christ alone for my salvation (I later learned the three elements of saving faith are: knowledge about Jesus, intellectual assent that the gospel is true, and entrusting ourselves to Christ for salvation).One night after work, I went out and bought a Bible. I was determined to prove to myself and others that I was a Christian. After reading the Gospel of John and Romans, I realized becoming a Christian involved more than just intellectually believing in Christ.
Because of the new life God breathed into me, I truly felt “born again” and like a new creation. I found that I genuinely desired to live a life of obedience out of gratitude.
Journey to Geneva
When the gospel took root in my life, I decided to return to the Lutheran church.  I was delighted to find the Missouri Synod was committed to the inerrancy of Scripture.
Our first-born son was baptized in the Lutheran church.  So, metaphorically speaking, it was from Wittenberg that my small family began our journey to Geneva.
As I grew in my faith, I found how life transforming the Scriptures were.  The concept of grace permeated to the core of my being.
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