What is a Concession?
A concession, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “the act of granting as a right or privilege” or “to accept as as true valid or accurate” or “to acknowledge grudgingly or hesitantly”. All three of these definitions can fit the main idea of this writing.
If you can take time to look back at the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s with men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and look at the sermons recited and literature written from then up through The Great Awakenings involving men like John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainard and others; and further forward to the last 200 years of Church history with the sermons and writings of Charles Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, D.L. Moody, A.W. Tozer, Arthur Pink, Marten Lloyd Jones, Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson; and even to the itinerant preachers and pastors of today with men like Paul Washer, John Piper, John McArthur, and Voddie Baucham; do you know what differences you find? The answer is few, the differences you will find mostly involve the vernacular of the day, the delivery of the message (the use of microphones and multimedia to broadcast, i.e. YouTube, podcasts) and certain issues that are more prevalent today; i.e., homosexuality, premarital relations, lectures on the need for biblical courtship rather than dating, denominational issues, and more use of the original languages of the text due to the availability of software and books to help the average lay person to understand it. Now, take the prevalent Christian literature of no more than 50 years ago and compare it the popular “christian” (I use quotations because I use the term loosely) books of today. What kind of difference do you see? Massive!
Take a man like Arthur W. Pink who wrote books on things like the doctrine of justification and the attributes of God, who used expository teaching to educate the readers as a good teacher educates his students; and compare that to the dribble of mainstream contemporary christian literature of today. Compare it to something of a cult classic, “Your Best Life Now”, where the power of the Holy Spirit is completely removed and it is based on the “believer's” performance level and completion of the steps laid out by the author that God will give you what you want. Take a book like “The Pilgrim's Progress” by John Bunyan or even a series like “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis and compare them respectively to books like “The Shack” and the “Left Behind” series. Do you see the difference?
The church in America today has conceded an almost utter defeat to culture. This is by in large attributed to a mass evangelism that began back in the 1960's involving a very superficial Gospel proclamation and invitation. This movement beheld thousands upon thousands of people raise their hand at the invitation, come forward to the stage, pray a little prayer with the counselor, and then be announced as saved. Little did they know, thanks to the evangelist, that many were not saved. They had merely attempted to engage in a transaction with God to add to their already wonderful life joy, peace, happiness, and prosperity and accept Jesus so that they could go to heaven. The “success” of it, based upon numbers of “decisions” alone, was enough for the local churches to adopt the practice. Years later, when being a “christian” wasn't the cool thing to be and going to church was no longer part of society, there was a mass exodus out of the church and into the world, which sadly proved Scripture true in that, “They went out from us because they were not really of us; for if that had been of us they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they are all are not of us.” (1st John 2:19 NASB).
Then came the need for personal discipleship. The claim was that just as many people were going out the back door of the church as going in the front. Now, the point to be made here is not that personal discipleship is a bad thing. Jesus took 12 ignorant fisherman and discipled them into the foundation and pillars of Christ's Church. The same can be said with Paul taking Timothy “under his wing”, so to speak. But, the point to be made here is that an abbreviated Gospel was not used to get those men to follow and then when they started acting like the world, try to disciple them (or “plug them in”) so that they would stick around. There is nothing wrong with personal discipleship or being heavily involved in local church activity, but reason why you didn't see Peter, James, and John finding people to be discipleship counselors and come up with retention packages is because people were saved by the power of the Holy Spirit and discipled through the preaching and teaching of the apostles and elders (ref. Acts 2:42). This brings me to the point to be made of our concession.
As was stated before, the methodology of this mass evangelism was deemed so successful that it was adopted by local churches all over the country and therefore sadly exported all over the world by well-meaning, good-intentioned missionaries and commercialized by televangelism. This, therefore, weakened the state of the pulpit. Why? Well, while engaged in this sort of a truncated Gospel message and scripturally weak evangelism we weaken the church. With a superficial Gospel Proclamation/Invitation you have a superficial believer and a superficial church.
The adoption of this methodology, hence the departure of biblical and historical Christian teaching and church development, replaced the role of pastor with high school guidance counselor, replaced the role of itinerant preacher with motivational speaker, and the role of elders with light-hearted grandpas or young, culturally sensitive post-modernists. We conceded defeat, or at least a cease-fire, with terms of peace with culture. We gave up truth for pragmatism and holiness preaching and teaching for utilitarian religion. We did this so that we could fill our pews, or seats, with men and give them relevant or life application teaching and a “worship” experience that could contend with a secular rock concert and we could, in our minds, fulfill the Great Commission and be fishers of men. But rather than placing Christ at the forefront so that He would be high and lifted up and He be the drawer of men, we found something that would draw all kinds of men; a church that looks like, talks like, acts like, smells like, and does everything else like the world. Hence the once underground, now prevalent; liberal Emergent church. We have conceded defeat and brought shame to the Name of the Almighty Christ.
One last thing I would like to point out. Do you know what Christ's last command was to the Church? Most would say it was the Great Commission; go, make disciples, baptize them, teach them. Actually, that is incorrect. Jesus Christ's last command to the Church was, “...be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:19). I do not to take away from the need and importance to go and make disciples and fulfill the Great Commission. BUT, we must not stray away from the teaching of Christ and the apostles (Ephesians 2:20) the way we have started to. We need to repent of these things. We need God to supernaturally invade our lives and awaken us for Kingdom work*. But He will not come and bless this mess that we have made in trying to make peace with our culture by watering the Gospel down so that it is not so strong that the carnal man may drink of it. We must repent and look to Christ, for He is the only hope for the American church to wake up and be revived, hence what Christ said to the church at Laodecia, “be zealous and repent” (ref. Revelation 3:19).
The Concession:
The “Repackaging” of Gospel Preaching
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16 NASB). I think it is absolutely amazing to look at Paul's ministry. He preached in every capitol of the world at the time. He preached in the religious capitol of the world, Jerusalem; the intellectual capitol of the world, Athens; the military capitol of the world, Rome; and the sensual capitol of the world, Corinth; and his Gospel never changed. In our day, Paul did the equivalent of preaching in the Vatican; Paris, France; Washington, D.C.; and Las Vegas, Nevada and never found the need to send questionnaires to these places to see what kind of churches they would be more likely to attend, nor did he see the need in studying demographics to see where he would have a more “successful” following at or how he needed to tweak his message so that people would better respond to his message. He preached to the Jews and the Greeks and never changed a thing about his Gospel. He preached to impoverished slave and rich slave owner, to the intellectual and the ignorant, to the civilized and the barbarian, to the religious and the secular and the message was the same; Jesus Christ crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended, seated at the right hand of the Father, and returning to judge the world in righteousness. That type of Gospel message is seldom found in the local American Evangelical church, itinerant preaching ministries, and missions. We have traded the saving and life changing power of the Gospel for the attendance results of pragmatic motivational speaking. Our concession in this area is to repackage the Gospel into a more inclusive, more believable romantic story that only needs to be touched on once, maybe twice per year.
There is only ONE true Gospel. That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ as written in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and preached by the apostles. Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”(John 14:6 NASB). That is the most radically exclusive and scandalous statement that can be made. ONE way, ONE truth, ONE life, and any other way, truth, or life is no way, truth, or life at all. When Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel”, he had every reason to be. Understand this, to the Jew the Gospel was the absolute worst sort of blasphemy anyone could ever speak. It claims that this Nazarene, a son of a carpenter, born under questionable circumstances born in the most despised region of Judea (“can anything good come from Nazareth?”), that was crucified as a blasphemer was actually the Son of God and the Messiah of whom all of the Old Testament prophesied. Look at Deuteronomy 21:23, “...anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse...”(Deuteronomy 21:23 HCSB). This was the message he was bringing to the Jews.
To the Greeks, the Gospel was the most absurd and asinine teaching that could be taught. Why? It claimed that this man Jesus was God in the flesh; fully God and fully man, and was crucified and raised from the dead 3 days later. Greek mythology and philosophy of that day show that they did not believe that spirit and flesh could be one nor did they believe that a man could be raised from the dead. To say that God came in the flesh was ridiculous. Look at Hercules, or any of the sons that Zeus had with mortal women. Son of Zeus, the “god of gods”, but the flesh of the humans defiled the spirit of gods, so Hercules had superhuman strength, but still human, still corrupted not fully a god and fully a man, just some of the attributes of a god in a man's body. There was no way that Godhood could be kept in tact while in the carnal body. That was the Greek philosophy of the day. But Paul did not waver from the message. By the inspiration and power of the Holy Spirit he evangelized the men at Mars Hill.
Let's take a break for a minute and look at this “crusade” of Paul's. Do you see any of the vocabulary that is used today in Paul's message? Did Paul get up and say to the men of Athens, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”? Or did he, after proclaiming his message, give the “invitation” that we see used today? Did he ask them, “Men of Athens, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if upon hearing this message today, you realize that you need to get right with God, just lift up your hand. I see that hand. Thank you, thank you....” And then after, did he counsel them for a few minutes and ask them the 3 exploratory questions and to repeat a prayer, “Do you want to go to heaven? Do you know your a sinner? Would you like to ask Jesus to come into your heart? Pray this prayer with me.” No, you do not see any of the language used today used here in this passage or anywhere else in the New Testament for that matter. You do not see Jesus using it in Mark 1:15, nor do you see Peter using it in Acts 2:38. What do you see coinciding with these two verses I just mentioned with Paul's Gospel message that you do not see in most churches today? Repent and believe the Gospel. Repent and be baptized. Repent because God has set a day when He will judge all the world in righteousness. That is the Gospel invitation, the Gospel call, the Gospel command.
Back to Paul's Gospel. He knew that as soon as he opened his mouth that he would be ridiculed and looked upon as foolish or blasphemous. But look at what he says in the second part of Romans 1:16, “...for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Look at what happens in the last part of Acts 17. He was ridiculed upon professing that Christ had been resurrected from the dead and went out from them. BUT, some men joined him and believed!! Why, because God supernaturally changed their hearts and minds. He knew that the message of the Cross is foolish to those who are perishing (1st Corinthians 1:18) and that unless God intervened and supernaturally regenerated carnal man's heart, no matter how well he articulated his message or how culturally relevant it was or was not, that there was no way they could be saved.
Paul knew this from personal experience. Do you remember the story of the Damascus Road? Let's look at this. What were Paul's thoughts about the Christian faith while traveling that road? What business was he going to attend to? His thoughts were this: Christ was a heretic and a blasphemer, worthy of dying the death he died for claiming to be the Son of the Living God and the Messiah of Israel. He thought the Christians deserved to die as well for partaking in this blasphemy and exalting the name of this man Jesus. And most of all, Paul believed he was absolutely right in his stance in all of this. But what happened. Christ supernaturally invaded Paul's life and changed his mind (and as a side note, Christ never once apologized for intruding on Paul's free-will). He now believed that Jesus is the Christ and the only begotten Son of God and the Messiah as prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, he believed that the Christians were the true children of God, and he believed that he was wrong in thinking that they deserved to die, and more than that, he was willing to die for them and for Christ!!! For goodness sake, he poured the entire rest of his life out for God and His church, who at one time he believed were blasphemers and deserved death. God supernaturally changed his mind. Why do I keep saying “change of mind”? Because that is what repentance is. It is a change of mind. You may think that the definition does not sound too deep. We tend to believe that the mind is only meant for those with Ph.Ds, only to be truly weilded and mastered by men of the likes of a Stephen Hawking. But the mind is the central registry of your emotions, your thoughts, your philosophy. You completely change a man's mind, you completely change the man.
That is the power of the Gospel. It is radically exclusive, unbelievable, intolerant of all other religions, thoughts, and ideas of God and man, and unacceptable to carnal man. And when we, the local church body, the pastor, the preacher, the missionary try to “repackage” it so that it is more inclusive, more believable, more tolerant of other religions, thoughts, and ideas of God and man, and try to make it more acceptable to culture and carnal man, we completely take away the power of the Gospel. We have turned it into nothing more than a philosophical ascent to where if someone can say “Yes” in three or four places we deem them saved. We are now David building a cart for the ark rather than using the poles to carry it, and how many Uzzah's have gone straight to hell because of it? This is why we have to use all these man made tools and Wall Street formed church growth techniques to draw people in, because we are a church without power. And we are a church without power not because we don't have enough media, not because we don't have enough money, not because aren't sending out enough missionaries; but it is because we have joined the Vatican in our methodology. We have taken away faith in the atoning and precious blood of Christ Jesus and replaced it with the sincerity of a prayer. As one of my favorite preachers says about this mess, “Behold the power of God”. And in this way we have conceded defeat with terms of peace; rather than being a “chosen generation, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and a peculiar people”, we are building empires rather than churches that look more like Babylon than they do Jerusalem.
How then is this corrected? How can we salvage this mess that we, as evangelicals, have created? We must do away with this pseudo-gospel and preach the real thing. We must open up our Bibles and study God. We must become reacquainted with the attributes of God and the nature of man and the need for atonement through Jesus Christ. We must ask the question, “What is the Gospel?”.
COMING SOON: "WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? PART 1: THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD"