Give Me that Old Time Religion: Back to the Basics of the Simple Gospel Message
“So you are saying that to become Christian, I believe that Jesus died for my sin and He rose
again?” asked Ben. “Works of justice and righteousness do not make me good to God, Jesus
makes me good to God?” Ben continued.
Ben is a university student who had recently moved to the U.S. from mainland China for college.
Ben was befriended by members of an InterVarsity chapter and had been studying the Bible for
several weeks before he heard me preach at one of InterVarsity’s weekly meetings.
Ben had many questions about what makes us ‘good to God’ and much of his confusion came
from a lack of clarity about the ‘goodness’ or righteousness that the death and resurrection of
Christ establish in the lives of those who choose to follow Him. Some of Ben’s challenges came
from his newness to Christian teaching and to his new American context, but it was also clear
that after being around Christians for several weeks, he had heard lots of things about lots of
issues. Ben had not adequately heard a clear articulation of the gospel, nor had he been given an
opportunity to personally respond.
Often, in our work to help people come to Chris, we either teach too little of the gospel, or we
make the gospel so big and comprehensive, that it becomes unintelligible to those we are sharing
it with. Both extremes are a problem. In today’s new American evangelicalism, we are often in
danger of the latter: of making the gospel too big and fuzzy.
In our new religion, the theological error we are committing is confusing the Kingdom of God
with the simple message of the gospel. In America, we are overreacting to the past generation’s
sin of simplifying the gospel to such a degree that issues like social justice, racial reconciliation,
creation stewardship, and caring for the poor rarely entered into discussions about
evangelization. Instead, there was an old-timey focus on Ben’s need to pray a simple prayer and
begin his highly individualized faith journey of Bible reading, church attendance and prayer.
The danger we are in with Ben today, however, is just as dangerous, perhaps even more. Today,
we are so tempted to make sure Ben gets the ‘big picture’ or the full gospel that we fail to bring
him to the foot of the cross for his initial step of faith and trust in Christ. As an abolitionist and
‘justice evangelist,’ I have made my career out of seeking to meaningfully practice kingdom
justice while proclaiming the cross and resurrection, but we do not have the luxury of conflating
the two, nor, as in the past, of dividing them.
We preach Christ as we practice the kingdom.
One way we see this conversation playing out is in the idea that Jesus preached a different gospel
than that of the first Church—that he preached the ‘kingdom message’ and the Church preached
the cross. It is true that more frequently than not, the message Jesus taught centered on the
Kingdom of God or Heaven. This, however, does not eclipse the fact that when it came to the
message of the gospel, Jesus did in fact preach the same content.
Though existentially, the death and resurrection of Jesus had not occurred, Christ’s proclamation
of the kingdom was based on these certain coming historic events. In many ways, we see Christ’s
message so preoccupied with the certitude of His death and resurrection that we cannot
understand his teaching on the Kingdom of God without seeing the centrality of these events. In
the book of Matthew we see this ‘interpretative primacy’ of Christ’s death and resurrection in
Jesus’ preaching:
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Matthew 16:21: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must
go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and
teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Matthew 17:23: “They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life." And
the disciples were filled with grief.
Matthew 18:31-33: “Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to
Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be
fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on
him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.’"
Matthew 26:2: "As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will
be handed over to be crucified."
What Ben needed was some ‘old time religion.’ Ben needed a simple understanding of Christ’s
death and resurrection with an invitation to repent of sin and confess Christ as Lord.
While the Christian faith is more than these simple truths, it is never anything less than them.
The adequacy of this simple message still has the wonder-working power to save sinners! This
old time religion is the pathway to the kingdom, to a fuller understanding of what it means to be
a World Christian. The pathway for caring for the poor, of seeking release for the oppressed, of
binding up the brokenhearted begins with having our sins washed away by the blood of the
Lamb. It comes by embracing the power of the resurrection and the indwelling of the Spirit of
God that recreates us from the inside out so that we can become the good we long to see in the
world.
The gospel is a simple, soul-saving message with the capacity to unleash a power capable of
restoring our society. This is what Ben needed to know and receive. He needed that old time
religion and as the old timers use to sing, ‘It’s good enough for me!’ After explaining the gospel
in these terms, Ben was overjoyed to ‘enter into the kingdom’ of Christ and prayed to receive
God’s forgiveness and life. In evangelism, we would do well to focus on the adequacy of the
gospel, to rest in the fact that it is, indeed, ‘Good enough for me!’ We are reminded of this in the
words of Paul to the Corinthians:
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you
in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and
him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and
my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the
Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
(1 Cor. 2:1-5)
After Ben prayed to receive Jesus, he said, “I know there is so much more I must learn and do,
but none of it made sense before tonight. Thank you, Mr. Moore, for helping me to understand
God’s love. Thank you for making it clear to me so that I can be good to God.”
Ben’s newfound faith in Christ rests in the power of God, not on human wisdom or plausible
words: on the proclamation of a simple, old time religion that is based on the finished work of
Jesus Christ.
R. York Moore is national evangelist for InterVarsity USA. He is the author of Growing Your Faith by Giving it
Away and Making All Things New: God’s Dream for Global Justice.