Trevin Wax recently posted an great article to his blog, Kingdom People. His post, “When We Say ‘Gospel,’ Do We Really Mean ‘The Spirit?’”, seems to me to be right. If he’s not right, he is at least gesturing in the right direction.

Evangelicals often speak about the gospel. That’s not a bad thing. But it can lead to an imbalance, as Trevin points out. The gospel is regularly credited with things that the Scriptures credit to the Holy Spirit.

Let me quote a few passages from the article to give you an idea of what Trevin is arguing. He writes:

“Evangelicals love to speak in theological shorthand. We employ phrases and terms that become popular, become a badge of identification, and over time get emptied of their meaning….

The more I hear this kind of talk, the more I’m convinced that we are using the word “gospel” where we really mean the Holy Spirit. We often talk about the gospel doing stuff when actually it’s the Spirit who is working. So we say, “The gospel fuels our obedience,” but what we really mean is the Spirit captures our affections with the gospel in order to fuel our obedience.

Now, knowing the Spirit, He probably doesn’t mind all that much that we’re devoting so much attention to Christ. That’s who He’s about, after all. But I do think we can overlook the Spirit in such a way that believers miss out on the Spirit’s work in their daily lives….

But let’s make sure we don’t get carried away with our lingo to the point that we give short shrift to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

If we only think of power as flowing from the gospel (which is a message), we might unintentionally communicate that we are changed by knowledge of a message and not by personal acquaintance with the Messenger….

Here’s my concern: If we lose the personal connection to the Holy Spirit, we miss the intimacy God wants with His people as well as the power God intended us to have.

So, by all means, let’s be all about the gospel. But let’s make sure that whenever we talk about the gospel, we have the God of the gospel in mind. He is the unchanging substance behind our changing terminology.”

I encourage you to read the whole article. I’ve been thinking some about what he wrote.

I think that the emphasis on the gospel rather than the Spirit comes from at least three sources:

1.) The Reformation – Since the Reformation stressed the importance of rightly understanding the gospel as a corrective to the abuses and false teachings prevalent at that time, the focus on the Gospel arose. Gospel-centered preaching is preaching that stands in the tradition of the Reformers. A gospel-centered church is a church that tries to follow the tradition of the Reformation. But since the Reformation tradition was (so it is claimed) faithful to the teachings of the Bible, then having gospel-centered preaching and being a gospel-centered church comes to mean that you have Biblical preaching and you are a Biblical church. So peppering your language with gospel as an adjective is a way to claim that your church and its efforts are properly centered on the Bible.

2.) Separation from Charismatics and Pentecostals – I think another source for talking about the gospel rather than the Spirit is, like the first source, about identity. But it’s a little difference. Let me explain. Many churches, even if they are not cessationists (cessationists think that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit are no longer given, but ceased to be given at some point in the past), do not want to be identified with the excesses and bad theology of parts of the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements. If “Spirit” were used in the same way that “gospel” is currently used, then they would give the impression that they were charismatic or Pentecostal. But they don’t want to give that impression. So they avoid too much “Spirit” talk and say “gospel” where they should say “Spirit.”

3.) Language as Corrective – We often use language to correct bad views, to emphasis something that’s been underemphasized, or to avoid emphasizing something that has been overemphasized. Using “gospel” to describe everything is meant to keep the emphasis on the gospel at the core of everything a church or Christian does.

For those of you familiar with ministry trends, think about the way “missional” has been used. Everyone started using that word as much as possible (was it too much?). The purpose was to correct the overemphasis on attracting people to our churches rather than the churches being sent out into the world. Now it is nearly heretical to call a ministry “attractional.” Many ministers would shift uncomfortably in their chairs if I called a small group program “attractional.” But to call the same program “missional’ was enough to make some ministers think it had been given to Moses on Mt. Sinai – it was suddenly holy.

The problem with corrective language, though, is that it can lead to the very overemphasis that it was originally used to avoid. And I think that Trevin is right about the use of “gospel.” It did and can serve as a useful corrective to churches that misunderstand the gospel or do not keep it central in their operations. But we have to be aware of the imbalance that language can cause – and it appears that it has caused an imbalance in how we talk about the Spirit.