Too Free for the Religious, Too Holy for the Rebellious

The Gospel eventually offends everyone. It's too radical for the rule-keepers and too righteous for the progressives. Here's why being misunderstood might mean you're preaching the real thing.

There's a test I've started applying to see whether someone is actually preaching the Gospel: do they get in trouble from both sides? Not just from one camp. But, both.

If the uptight church crowd thinks you've gone too far: that you're too joyful, too free, too unconcerned with the rules they've stacked up like a ladder to heaven, that's one mark. But if the progressive crowd thinks you're harsh and unloving every time you refuse to call sin something other than what God calls it, that's the other mark.

When both sides are uncomfortable, you're probably somewhere near the truth. It's what tends to happen when you preach the actual Gospel.

The Gospel Is Not Moral Performance

The legalist instinct, and let's be honest, we all have it, wants to turn the Gospel into a scorecard. Pray more, sin less, show up, and look the part. It's the idea that God's favor is something you earn, maintain, or at least don't blow by being too casual about your Christianity.

But the Gospel absolutely obliterates that system.

Paul doesn't soften it in Galatians. He calls the law-gospel confusion "a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all" (Galatians 1:6-7). He tells the Galatians that if they're going back to rule-keeping to secure their standing before God, Christ has become of no value to them (Galatians 5:2). That's strong language, and it should make us check ourselves.

The Reformers recovered this, and it nearly got them killed: Sola Fide: faith alone. Not faith plus effort. Not grace that gets you started and obedience that keeps you going.

Faith alone, in Christ alone, because of grace alone.

This is what makes uptight Christians so freaking nervous. The Gospel, when it's properly preached, produces people who are free, genuinely free. I don't mean lawless, I'll get to that in a minute.

The Gospel is freedom from the exhausting performance of trying to look holy and righteous in front of everyone. It frees you from wondering whether you've done something to "become unsaved" or pissed God off beyond repair.

It means being free to laugh; free to rest; and free to be honest about your failures because your standing before God doesn't depend on hiding them.

Yes, that kind of freedom looks suspicious and is incredibly troubling to church people who love to keep a scorecard.

The Gospel Is Not Moral Compromise

Here's where the Gospel offends the other side.

The progressive and liberal impulse, and this one lives in everyone, especially when the cost of faithfulness gets high. We want to sand down the edges of Scripture wherever they scratch against the culture.

The culture warrior crowd has this idea that love means acceptance, and acceptance means never calling anything sin that someone doesn't want to change.

But the Gospel never does that!

Jesus, who ate with sinners and was called a friend of tax collectors and prostitutes (Matthew 11:19), is the same Jesus who told the woman caught in adultery, "Go, and sin no more" (John 8:11). He didn't stone her. He didn't shame her. But he also didn't pretend the sin wasn't real or that it didn't matter.

The cross is the clearest possible statement that sin is serious. God didn't send his Son to die because sin was a minor inconvenience that could be glossed over with a little more compassion. He sent his Son because sin deserved death, and someone had to die.

The fact that Jesus died in our place is not a reason to take sin lightly; it's the most powerful reason to take it seriously.

The Gospel DOES NOT excuse sin. It freaking crushes it. But it crushes it through forgiveness and the work of the Spirit, not through the moralizing pressure of religious performance.

That's why Paul can ask, with genuine shock, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" and answer it, "By no means!" (Romans 6:1-2).

Grace that transforms is not a license to keep doing whatever you want. But, and this is equally important, it's also not a license for other Christians to become your spiritual police.

Too Free for the Religious. Too Holy for the Rebellious.

This is the paradox that makes the Gospel so difficult to put under human control.

It's too free for the religious. The Gospel tells rule-keepers that their rules can't save them, that their best obedience is still filthy rags before God (Isaiah 64:6), and that the thief on the cross who had done nothing, LITREALLY NOTHING, to earn grace, went to paradise that same day (Luke 23:43). That is incredibly offensive to anyone who has spent decades trying to be a good and holy person.

And it's too holy for the rebellious. The Gospel tells people who've made peace with their sin that God is not, in fact, apathetic to how they live. God's grace is not a cosmic shrug.

Jesus "gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works" (Titus 2:14). That's not a pretty little footnote. It's the main purpose.

The Gospel doesn't split the difference between these two errors. It doesn't meet legalism and lawlessness halfway. It goes to the root of both and rips them out.

What This Means for How You Live

Here's where all this "Gospel stuff" gets practical.

If you're actually living in the freedom of the Gospel: the real, Christ-is-enough, my-righteousness-is-not-my-own kind of freedom, some people in your church are going to raise an eyebrow.

Why? Because you don't look worried enough. You seem too at peace. You talk about grace in a way that makes the performance-oriented legalists nervous.

Let them be nervous, and don't you dare try to accommodate them. Remember, you're not trying to convince anyone of your salvation by how spiritual you appear.

But if you're actually living in the holiness the Gospel produces: the real, Spirit-worked, sin-is-serious-and-Christ-died-for-it kind of holiness, some people outside your church (and maybe inside it) are going to call you unloving.

Why? Because you're not celebrating what they're celebrating. You're not pretending the Bible says something it doesn't. You're not calling evil good to avoid an awkward conversation.

Let them be uncomfortable, and don't compromise for them. You're not trying to earn anyone's approval by how progressive or "culturally relevant" you appear.

The question the Gospel puts in front of you, puts in front of all of us, is not "which side are you going to offend?" It's simpler than that: Are you willing to be misunderstood if it means being faithful to Jesus?

The Gospel has always made that demand. It was the same demand in first-century Jerusalem, sixteenth-century Geneva, and it makes it now, in whatever ordinary life you're living.

The good news is this: the One who demands your faithfulness already secured it. Your standing before God doesn't depend on how well you navigate the criticism. It depends on Christ, who was crushed so you wouldn't have to be, and who rose so you could live free and holy, all at once.

Beloved, that's the Gospel. It's always been confusing to everyone except the one who needs it most.

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." ~Galatians 5:1