p. 3 | What Is the Gospel? by C. P. BOLLMAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 6, 1915

What Is the Gospel?

By C. P. BOLLMAN

C. P. BOLLMAN

I was reading a few days since, in a popular religious weekly, an article entitled “The Church of the Fat of the Land.” This heading did not reveal very much of the real nature of the article; but there were several pictures, and these with the descriptive lines under them disclosed the “slant” of the writer’s logic. It is not possible to reproduce the pictures, but here are some of the lines which appeared under them: “A church in a Western town has rented the opera house and exhibits ‘movies’ in it;” “Raising hens to the glory of God;” “Farmers gathering to hear a progressive pastor preach the gospel of better farming;” while a picture of road improvement is entitled “The Way of Salvation.”

For years I had been hearing of “the gospel of health,” “the gospel of good bread,” “the gospel of good housekeeping,” “the gospel of improved farming,” etc., but without thinking very much about what such expressions really meant, until I happened upon this article with its significant pictures and their still more significant descriptive titles, and

especially the one entitled “The Way of Salvation.”

That line set me thinking, and I said to myself, “What is the gospel? and what the way of salvation?” Then my early religious training came to my assistance, and my memory answered the double question in the words of the apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Rom. 1:16.

Then, too, I recalled Matt. 1:21: “She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save all his people from their sins.” And then there came to mind the words of the gospel commission, which threw some additional light upon the subject, or at least served to add another testimony as to what the gospel really is, and what the salvation which it offers: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark 16:15, 16.

All these texts agreed well with my childhood understanding of what the gospel is, or at least what it was when I was a boy; but inasmuch as they did not seem to agree entirely with the ideas advanced in the article I had been reading, I asked myself, “How did those to whom the great commission was directly given understand it? and what did they present to the people of their day as the gospel?”

I remembered that the impetuous Peter was one of the original twelve, and turning to the Book to look up his record, I came in a few moments to the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and to Luke’s account of that wonderful meeting in Jerusalem when the disciples were met together, not indeed to discuss the latest and most improved methods of farming, or road making, or fishing, but when they “all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication” for ten days.

I did not find in Luke’s record one word about any of the various “gospels” about which we now hear so much; but when Peter and the other apostles preached, their theme evidently was salvation from sin through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of the preaching many were pricked in their hearts and cried out, saying, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Peter did not say, Learn to be better farmers, more skillful fishermen, better bread makers, and in general more successful bread winners, but he did say, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

And so I found it all through the Acts and the entire New Testament. It is true we are told that the apostle Paul was a tent maker, and doubtless he did good, honest work, but he said very little about it, either in his sermons or in his epistles. Indeed, he seems to have preached a great deal as did Peter, even going so far in one of his epistles as to say, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” The apostle was not narrow; for he did make a very broad application of Christianity when he said, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” That of course calls for good, honest work everywhere and all the time.

There is, however, this difference between the modern idea and that of the apostles: the apostles sought to sanctify all human activities by means of religion, while the modern, progressive plan seems at least to be to make a religion of human activities. An apple tree bears apples, not that it may be an apple tree, but because it is an apple tree. In like manner the Christian bears the fruits of the Spirit, not that he may be a Christian, but because he is a Christian.

So far as the record goes, we have no knowledge that any of the apostles ever gave even so much as a single lecture on farming, bread making, road building, fishing, tent making, or indeed upon any of the various industries by which men and women earn their bread. Not that it would have been wrong for them to have done so; but I mention this simply to emphasize the patent fact that they did not seem to consider these things the gospel or any part of the gospel. Every one of them evidently regarded the gospel as the power of God for the eradication of sin from the heart and life of the individual believer. True, the gospel has a bearing upon material things, on the temporalities of life, in that it makes men honest in all their activities and chaste in all their relations; but it seems never to have occurred to any Bible writer that any of these things were the gospel. They were the results rather than the cause.

However, times change, and men change with them, and today we see the gospel pulpit transformed into a popular lecture platform, and whatever contributes in any degree to the physical and material welfare of men is misnamed “the gospel,” and is preached as the gospel. Let it be understood, however, that calling a thing “the gospel” does not make it such indeed. The gospel “is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” It is God’s remedy for sin, not a modern method of road building or poultry husbandry, not scientific farming. Neither is a good road “the way of salvation;” and to call it so is nothing short of blasphemy.

The gospel is a great civilizer, but civilization is not the object of the gospel: the end of the gospel is salvation from sin; and sin is just as common and just as deep under a high degree of civilization as under barbarism or even savagery. It is only to the extent that civilization is leavened and sanctified by the gospel that it becomes moral. Some of the highest civilizations have been the most corrupt. It is when men become vain in their imaginations, when they esteem themselves to be wise, that they forget God and depart the farthest from his law, as we learn from the first chapter of Romans.

Only that which has power to reach the heart and to transform the life, so that righteousness takes the place of unrighteousness, is entitled to be called the gospel, and this only the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ can do; therefore the preaching of the gospel is the preaching of Jesus Christ as the Saviour, and the only Saviour of sinners.

There are many things that may be found helpful in preparing hearts to receive the gospel, but they are not therefore the gospel. A hungry man is not in a good condition to hear the gospel; and no one is in so good a position to teach him the gospel as the one who feeds him: but almsgiving is not the gospel. The same is true of every sort of Christian help work: properly done and properly mingled with saving truth, all this is gospel work, but it is not the gospel.

It was Mr. Moody who said, “The world is a sinking ship, and my business is to save as many as possible out of it.” And such should be the viewpoint and the attitude of every Christian. William Carey, who later in life became so well known as a missionary, when asked his business, replied, “My business is to preach the gospel, but I cobble shoes to make expenses.”

Here was the secret of Carey’s success as a Christian worker. This is the principle that should govern every Christian; everything we do should be done only as a means to the spread of the gospel. When this ceases to be our attitude, we ourselves need the gospel to save us from the sin of worldliness. May God save us from the mistake of degrading the gospel, even in our own thought, to the level of common things, and from the sin of thinking that the kingdom of God is “meat and drink,” rather than “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”