The FalseLove Gospel Continues to Deceive Millions and Further Corrupt American Christianity
By Pastor Matt Trewhella
American Christianity has lost its way. If you think otherwise, it is only because you are carried away with the delusion that pawns itself off as “Christian” here in America. A short reading of Scripture and church history reveal just how severe the wandering has become in our day.
Consider the falselove gospel. Those who embrace it remove half of the gospel message. The falselove gospel only speaks about “believe” and “love.” They want to keep the message positive. No talk about God’s law, sin, guilt before God, or repentance.
One Christian group even spent $150,000.00 to try and come up with a word they could replace “repent” with for their “repent and believe” media campaign. “Repent” carried negative connotations, and they wanted to keep it positive. After six months (and $150,000.00), they came to the conclusion that there was no word you could replace “repent” with that seemed positive, so they just went with the word “believe” for their campaign.
Listen, when you remove half of the gospel message, you have a false gospel. A false gospel results in false converts who then create false churches. When this falselove gospel made its debut in America about 25 years ago, it was condemned by churchmen everywhere, and rightly so. But now, 25 years later, it is American Christianity. It is the prevalent, most popular form of Christianity in America.
The law of God happens to be an essential part of our declaration of God’s good news. A man needs to see that he is a sinner before he will see his need for the Savior. Galatians 3:24 says that “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ.” Why? Because as Paul says in Roman 7:7, “I would not have known sin except through the law.” The law shows us we are sinners in need of Jesus.
Charles Spurgeon stated, “Lower the law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt; this is a very serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [its most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ.”
Francis Schaeffer stated, “If I had one hour with every man, I would spend the first 45 minutes talking to them about God’s law, and the last 15 minutes talking about His great salvation.”
A man must see he is a sinner before he’ll see his need for the Savior, and the law makes him see. As the Scripture says “so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful” (Rom. 7:13).
But the falselove gospel folk cannot abide the plain teaching of Scripture, they have always been hellbent on creating a more consumerfriendly gospel. They like being liked and they notice people like them more when they remove God’s law, sin, guilt before God, and repentance from their gospel message.
Now the falselove gospel folk feel they have improved their gospel even more. Now – you don’t even have to preach at all! You just do random acts of kindness (and hope people get it). As one falselove gospel proponent recently proclaimed, “We are not truthbearers. Our only job is to love people. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to bring people truth.”
That’s right, they’ve decided even half the gospel is too much gospel – we just need to do nice things for people. They even use a slogan – “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words.” If necessary use words? The Scriptures teach that His Gospel is proclaimed through words! I Corinthians 1:21 makes it clear that words are essential to see men saved. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”
The falselove gospel people have actually joined with the world in declaring God’s means of saving man – the gospel preached – to be foolishness. I Corinthians 1:18 says “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” They have decided “since the world doesn’t like it and thinks it’s foolish – we won’t do it!”
Do you know how dire this is? Words – the words of the Gospel – are essential to seeing men saved. Paul says of the Jews in I Thessalonians 2:16, “forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved.” Paul views their being forbidden to speak as a bad thing precisely because words are essential for men to “be saved.” Men are called to God by the preaching of the Gospel (II Thess. 2:14).
The sad reality is the falselove gospel is exactly that – false love. Love to them means doing nice things for people. They gauge how loving they are by how well they are liked. True biblical love however, demonstrates love for God in that we obediently carry out His last command – “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Biblical love also demonstrates love to our fellow man because we declare to them God’s truth – what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear. The falselove gospel only makes them into twofold children of hell. Men who have embraced a religion, but know nothing of the risen Christ.
A pdf version of this article can be found here.
“God Gives Men Words”, a sermon addressing this topic, can be found here.
Matt Trewhella is the pastor of Mercy Seat Church (MercySeat.net), and the founder of Missionaries to the Preborn (MissionariesToThePreborn.com) He and his wife, Clara, reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and have eleven children.
