DETAILS...DETAILS...

 

 

Someone emailed me recently with the preposterous comment: "your gospel just has too much detail..." This person was saying that there are too many things my Gospel contains for a person to know and believe and to have absolutely right before they can consider themselves saved. Over the years I have heard many pathetic comments against the Gospel we believe, some saying we preach too much in it and others saying we don't preach enough! The bottom line, the principal rule in identifying what the Gospel is and what it is not, is to find out what Grace had to do to save God's chosen people. This is explained in great detail in my booklet: The Doctrines of the Gospel of the Grace of God at www.godsonlygospel.com If salvation is by grace and the Gospel is the Good News about salvation by grace, then it stands to reason that all that was required in the salvation of God's chosen, by grace, must be part of that Good news, or Gospel, of God. No part of saving grace could possibly be missing from, or unnecessary to, God's Gospel, which is all about what God has done by grace to save His people from their sins. In light of this, it literally staggers the mind as to just which doctrines the above quoted gentleman was thinking of when he said that my Gospel contains too much detail? Could election, that great act of God choosing a people from before the foundation of the world BY GRACE, be something which is not necessary to know or believe before a person can rightly say they are saved? Has such a person the right to say that they know and believe in a salvation wholly by grace even though they deny election as an essential Gospel doctrine, thus leaving the door wide open for people to believe that they were chosen according to their works? How could they? How could election not be an essential Gospel doctrine, for to not believe election, that God has freely chosen those who were not a people to be His very own people by His grace and not their works, leaves a person to believe that it is man who chooses God or that God has chosen them according to their works! Likewise, the doctrine which teaches the total depravity, and utter inability, of a man to come to God due to man's sinful, fallen state, is a doctrine which the Gospel cannot do without, for this doctrine is the very launching pad for the grace of God that saves. If you have a gospel which does not make it abundantly clear that salvation is utterly impossible for a man to attain by his own doings, you do not have the Gospel of grace. Could the atoning work of Jesus Christ be an unnecessary detail that the Gospel of salvation by grace does not need? How ludicrous a thought is this when, without Christ's work upon the cross, none could ever have had their sins wiped away. Does one have to believe He died exclusively for God's elect? Of course, for to not believe this, one is left to believe that He died for every person ever born, which would change the very essence of what He did in His atoning work. Does one have to know about Christ's righteousness being imputed to His people to make them just before God? Is this an essential Gospel doctrine? Of course, for to not believe that we are justified solely by Christ's Righteousness, is to believe at the very least that our own righteousness plays some part in our being accepted by God. Details, details, too many details, is what my Gospel is accused of. But tell me, without details how can one distinguish God's Gospel from the false gospels which abound? There are various gospels out there which contain some truth, but cannot be called the Truth of God. It is the doctrines of grace which are missing from some gospels that readily identifies them as false gospels and not a true representation of what God has done by His grace to save His people. Doctrinal detail identifies the true from the false. We must examine details, for in them we are able to discover whether a gospel is God's own Gospel or another, whether it is God's Gospel of grace or one which talks of grace but also conditions salvation on what we do. God has detailed in His Gospel just what it took for Him to save His people by His grace. Hence, God's Gospel is called the Good News of salvation (purely and wholly) by grace!! All of His people believe THAT Gospel and no other, for they are all saved by grace through the faith given to believe ONLY that grace Gospel. And those details about what it took for God to save His people from their sins are the very doctrines of grace, the doctrines of the Gospel of God's grace, by which His Gospel is identified and distinguished from all others that all of His children believe in with His grace-given faith unto salvation.