In math, if you get the first step wrong in an equation, the whole equation will be wrong. It is the same in the Christian life. If you get the first step of the Christian life wrong, all of the other steps will be wrong. So it is important to get the first step right.

Before becoming Paul the Great Apostle, Paul was Saul the Great Pharisee. And we see in Acts 9, that he was on the way to persecute Christians when a bright light knocked him off his horse and a voice said to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me.” Saul answered, “Who are you, Lord?”

Saul had probably memorized most of the Old Testament. He was faultless according to the law (Philippians 4:6). But because he got the first step wrong, he is here at step one, asking God “Who are you, Lord?” By the grace of God, Saul was granted the humility to be able to start again at the first step.

Martin Luther also had the experience of having to begin again. He was ordained as a priest in 1507. He was extremely serious about his faith. He fasted frequently and prayed for hours. He confessed his sins often. He taught theology at a university and chaired the theology department. And then the Lord showed Luther through Paul’s letter to the Romans that Luther had gotten the first step wrong. Luther later wrote: “To make progress in the Christian life means to begin again.”

For both Paul and Luther, they didn’t focus on beginning again in order to sin less or increase personal holiness. Instead, they began again by recalibrating to a proper understanding of the gospel.

The way forward for the church is to begin again by re-examining what our understanding of the gospel is. Not only what the content of the gospel is but, even more fundamentally, what kind of a “thing” the gospel is in the first place.

So, what kind of a “thing” is the gospel?

The gospel is the name for the specific message given by God to the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to proclaim to the people of God, Israel. Jesus was the first preacher of the gospel. He commissioned his disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world exactly as he preached it in both content and method.

This understanding of what the gospel is is not a new idea, nor should it be considered controversial. Scripture is clear that God sends His Son to bring a message:

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

 “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,” (Hebrews 2:3)

 We see in the gospels how Jesus is described as proclaiming the “gospel of God”:

 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)

 “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” (John 12:49)

 Paul claimed to be an apostle of “the gospel of God” and claimed that there is no other gospel:

 “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,” (Romans 1:1)

 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Romans 1:6-8)

Scripture is clear that the gospel is a message entrusted by God to Christ to give to his disciples. We are not given the right to adjust, reformulate, or update the gospel message. We are specifically denied that right. This not only applies to what we say, but how we say it (i.e. the method of proclaiming the gospel).

In Luke 10, Jesus commissions the disciples to go to the places where he is about to go. And he tells the disciples “Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.” (Luke 10:3-4)

Jesus laid out the method which the disciples consistently followed when they went out to preach the gospel throughout the New Testament. The gospel is never to be proclaimed from any position considered desirable or advantageous from a human perspective. It is to be proclaimed by lambs to wolves. Messengers of the gospel are to go out with nothing to give other than the gospel.

Messengers of the gospel are not to “greet anyone on the road”. Preaching the gospel is not about friendship evangelism.

The place where they are to stay is the first place that does not throw them out, and their wages are the food and lodging the hosts of such a house give them.

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.” (Luke 10:5-7)

They are not to rent the house, set up a mission center, and host short-term mission groups for tours. They are to immediately proclaim the gospel to the people in the town. And, if they are rejected, they are to announce to the town that its residents are in trouble and then move on to the next town.

“But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’” (Luke 10:10-11)

In 1 Corinthians 2, we see that this method of preaching the gospel from a position of weakness continued on to the mission of the gentiles as well.

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (Luke 10:3-5)

This method was not peculiar to Jesus and Paul. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4 that this method was the common experience of all the apostles.

“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” (1 Corinthians 4:9-13)

The reason why Jesus sent the apostles to preach the gospel in this way is because it is the way that the Father sent Jesus to preach the gospel. Christ tells those who want to be Christ followers these things:

“As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62)

 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)

So, if Christianity is a math equation, the first step is to get the content and method of preaching the gospel right. That is, to know what the gospel is and how it must be preached. We are not permitted to change the content of the gospel nor the method which it is proclaimed. That method is the method of human weakness.

 To be very clear, you are called to leave behind all earthly ties in service of a message.

You may be asking yourself, “What does that mean? Should I quit my job? Forsake my family? Leave my parents alone in their old age?”

 Interestingly, those are the same kinds of questions which people ask throughout the New Testament. And Jesus is clear that we should remove anything in our lives that stops us from following him.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matthew 5:29-30)

This doesn’t mean that Jesus is against us having jobs and families. But it does mean that Jesus expects that when we are forced to choose between our calling as servants of the word and our worldly responsibilities that we will always choose our calling as servants of the word even if it means being thrown out of our job, thrown out of our families, or losing our material possessions.

We hired a young woman for a job at VOMK one year ago. She had been using her talents in the world and making a lot of money. But she told us that she felt it was meaningless and that the Lord was giving her the opportunity to use her talents for him. But then, right before she was scheduled to start work, she sent us a short text message saying that she had decided not to accept the job because her parents felt it was too dangerous.

That is an example of a wrong choice.

Another woman worked at VOMK for about a year. Then her father died. Her mother said, “Now you need to come and take of me. I am lonely.” So the woman quit and went to take care of her mother.

That is an example of a wrong choice.

Paul talks to the Corinthians about what to do if you are married to a nonbeliever. He says

“To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you[b] to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”

He is not saying that if you have an unbelieving spouse that you are excused from your role as a servant of the Lord. Paul is not saying that you have permission not to talk about Jesus in front of your unbelieving spouse and children. Christians are never excused from our role as servants of the word. This is true in public, in your family, with your children, and certainly your spouse.

In the same way, if you have a home and many material possessions, the counsel of the New Testament is this: Hold on to your role as a messenger of the gospel tightly and hold on to your material possessions loosely, removing anything from your life that prevents you from proclaiming the gospel in human weakness.

Do you own a dog? When a dog gets sick, the way that you get a dog to take pills is to wrap the pills in meat because dogs love to eat meat.

Today, Christian workers think of the gospel as a pill that must be wrapped up in meat in order to get people to accept it. The meat that they wrap the gospel in is things this world finds desirable like food, money, relationships, security, comfort, wealth, physical attractiveness.

But the gospel is not a pill and people are not dogs. The desires of this world cannot be used to make the gospel of God more appealing.

“Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:56)

The word of the Lord which has been given to us in the gospel of God is real food. And the gospel can only be proclaimed in human weakness and believed in human weakness.