Revelation 2:5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place– unless you repent.
Without going into any sort of detail or rigorous exegesis regarding this passage, it has been understood that at the least this verse speaks of the removing of the Gospel from a church. This is a severe judgment on a person, a church, a city, and a nation. It is perhaps the greatest judgment that can happen to a person or a group of people however large. The Gospel of grace alone is the only Gospel there is and that alone is the power of God to save. When the Gospel has been withdrawn, that person or that group of people that it has been withdrawn from has no way of escaping eternal damnation and no way to know God.
This passage can also be seen in a different light as well. When the light of the Gospel has been removed from a church, what was a church is no longer a church. Without the Gospel of grace alone or the Gospel of the Jesus the Messiah, there is no church. When a religious institution claims to be a church and yet does not preach the Gospel of grace alone, the acts of that institution contradict the claim to be a church. Without the Gospel of Jesus Christ how can there be a church of Jesus Christ? That would be a church without Christ and a church without the Gospel. It simply cannot be.
What is crystal clear is that without the Gospel of grace alone there is no church. What becomes apparent, then, is that in the United States there are few churches in contrast to the many institutions with the word “church” on the door. When the Gospel of grace alone is compromised, the wrath of God is on display. Across this nation there are many churches in name and ministers in name who stand every morning to proclaim something but the real proclamation is that God has removed the Gospel and the standing of a church from that place. It does not matter (in this sense) whether one holds to the Westminster Confession or not of the 1689 London Baptist Confession or not, but what really matters is whether the Gospel is preached or not. One can have an intellectual understanding of these great Confessions and not preach the Gospel of grace alone. One can preach and teach many things regarding these Confessions and still not preach the Gospel of grace alone. Regardless of the Confession that a “church” has, it is not a church unless it preaches the Gospel of grace alone.
It is not just important that a church have a Confession or a good doctrinal statement, but it must in fact be serious about the Gospel. The Gospel is not just some little message to get people saved and they can grow from there, but it is the central message of Scripture of how God manifests His glory in and through Christ in this world. There can be no Gospel apart from Christ, but apart from the true Gospel there is no true message of Christ in the world. Going one more step, apart from the true message of Christ there will be far less truth about God in the world. God has revealed true things about Himself in nature, but He has revealed far more about Himself in Christ. One can say, even though He has revealed Himself in nature, that apart from Christ the true revelation of God has been hidden or concealed.
The Gospel of grace alone is utterly vital to the revelation of who God truly is and of the nature of a true church. Apart from preaching the true Gospel of grace alone, a “minister” is not a minister of God and a “church” is not a church of Christ. Legalism, then, is not just a way of distorting a few things about the Gospel, but it is a way of distorting the truth of God and of how He saves sinners to the glory of His grace alone. Legalism, though said to be a problem with Roman Catholicism and other groups, is far more pervasive than that. It is anything brought into the Gospel of grace alone that makes it less than grace alone. It is anything brought into the Gospel of grace alone that a human being can do or choose in his or her own strength.
If the above paragraph is true, then those groups which teach that repentance and/or faith is necessary for a human will to do before it receives grace, then those groups are teaching a false gospel. Anything that a human has the power or ability to do that is of a free-will (hence, free of grace) that moves God to save that soul, that is a false gospel and makes groups that teach it a something other than a church. It would make God’s grace contingent on human ability rather than human ability contingent upon the grace of God. That is a false gospel.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment