Are you a preacher growing tired of having to find fresh ways to deny – or at least hide – the Gospel each week? Are you going through a tough period in your preaching when it seems that all the texts point to the Gospel and there’s no easy way out? This list is for you, and in it you’ll find nine fun ways to continue denying the Gospel that you can use with your own congregation.

Keep the Gospel quiet

1. 1: Just don’t preach the Gospel
   People are amazingly unobservant. Although a passage like Isaiah 28:14-16 seems like a trap to make you talk about Christ the precious cornerstone in whom “whoever believes will not be in haste”, you can get away with just ignoring the Apostles Peter and Paul – and instead preach about the historical context and how it is similar to our situation today.

   Nobody will realise you’ve totally missed the meaning of the text! This can be used almost anywhere the passage is long enough – you can even take a passage such as 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and preach exclusively about the resurrection appearances of Christ – nobody will notice you’ve skipped over the fact that all these are given to prove the Gospel statement in verse 3.

   For bonus points, recontextualise the resurrection appearances of Christ as poetic descriptions of our experience of Christ amongst us and in our hearts – this will help you next year when you decide it’s time to start denying the resurrection as well.

2. 2: Just preach the Gospel, then redefine
   

   ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ — Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass

   Sometimes the text forces you to preach the Gospel. Take, for example, the account of the nativity in which you just can’t avoid hearing of God sending Jesus as Saviour (Luke 2:11). What do I suggest you do? You could cough during the word Saviour and hope nobody notices – but if you’ve already been using that to deny parts of the creed, you probably want to use a different technique. A better option is to just redefine ‘Saviour’ to mean something else:

   First, make it historically remote – read “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” then talk about the special and difficult situation of the Jews in Jerusalem.

   Next, entirely change the text by recontextualising it (“today, we also find things hard, there are challenges in our world, there is so much broken-ness and pain, so many fractured communities”).

   Now, you get to apply the passage directly to this modern context, neatly missing out the fact of Salvation on the cross (“It is this power, the love of God who sent his Son, which is the core of the Christian faith today; the power to heal, the power to forgive, and to reconcile”).

   Ensure the point is missed with examples picking up on your contextualisation: “The power to heal broken families, the power to reconcile communities, the power to lift people out of the pain of difficult lives”. You’ve just made the objective birth of Christ in Jerusalem as Saviour into an abstract figure of being inspired by God’s love into being more loving – and you’ve just deined the Gospel.

3. 3: Gospel Overpowering Denial
   The basic form of this method is to defy all logic by applying the Gospel text of God’s grace as if you’d just read an instruction to save yourself by good works. The two things that people most people will remember from a sermon are the final application and the final illustration. This means that generally you can allow some Gospel to slip in to the exegesis part without anyone remembering it, provided you give them an illustration of works-righteousness and a big application on the same lines.

   For example, you might preach on Galatians 2:16, and you might even say that we are saved by faith, and not by works. I know it sounds dangerous, but bear with me. Follow the statement of salvation by faith with something like “My dear brothers and sisters, the scripture is clear (hold up the Bible), by the works of the law no one will be justified: therefore, if you want to be justified, if you want to walk closely with God, you need to make a greater effort yet. Just law keeping is not enough – it is not enough just to stop living in a way God dislikes, but you must sacrifice your whole life to God, keeping nothing back. Absolute surrender means just that – giving up everything for the sake of God’s love.”

   See what I did there? I’ve just mangled the scripture until everyone’s lost, and then supplied a new concept of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘surrender’ as if that is the way to resolve the mess I’ve made. Follow this up with an illustration of a “man of faith” who achieved the seemingly impossible through his absolute surrender and ceaseless labour in a charitable work and nobody will remember you said they were saved by faith.

4. 4: This is all about me
   When Christ is the centre of Scripture, the Scripture points to Christ and the Gospel. When you make yourself the centre of Scripture, you can take it in all kinds of new and Gospel-denying directions. To do this, only allow Jesus to be an example: all he did was an example to us, and did not actually do anything objective for us specifically.

   As an example, take Mark 10:32-34, in which we find the third ‘Passion Prediction’. Bring out the point that Jesus is teaching us the need to walk by faith, knowing for sure that we will meet resistance and opposition. Explain that we are to walk ahead of others, leading the way to a better life. Following Christ’s example, we are to walk by faith even when it seems suicidal, because even though we’re really down – God will raise us up again to better things. Tell them that it is only through trial and persecution that we enter into a more loving relationship with God and receive his blessing in our lives. Be the man who walks to Jerusalem even though it means sure resistance and consequences; be the man who refuses to drink alcohol at the staff party even though it means being mocked; be the man who… etc… Be the man who’s willing to suffer for Jesus; and so be the man God raises up to better things and to your best life now.”

   How wonderful! In just a few seconds, you’ve managed to teach the congregation they need to work to earn God’s grace, you’ve written the objective death of Christ out of the Passion Prediction, and you’ve demoted our Lord and our God to an extra-holy life coach.

5. 5: Deny the text
   Sometimes it’s just too much work actually dealing with the Biblical text. In such circumstances, just deny the text is really the inspired Word of God and ignore it. Find a liberal scholar who’s questioned the authorship of whatever book you are reading from – there are plenty of these. Try to find one from a reputable-sounding institution such as Princeton Theological Seminary or Oxford University, and then quote him at length. It doesn’t matter that nobody bought into his hypothesis, your congregation don’t have a library at hand!

   Now, having explained that ‘Galatians’ is probably a fake letter written in the third century by a cult leader with a grudge against the Jewish religion, you can talk about it as ‘one response of man to the movings of God’ and so move to give your own ‘response of man to the moving of God’ and exegete yourself instead. Stories about what you learned out fishing, how you started a church with a rubber band, or the day you heroically saved a whole village from starvation with a lump of cheese are great replacements.

6. 6: Faith actually means faith plus works
   Sadly, some congregations today have a good number of educated professionals, and it’s not easy to pull the wool over their eyes. There are parts of the Bible which seem to preach the Gospel, and all it takes is one of their friends to try ‘evangelising’ them with those verses for them to start doubting everything you’ve taught. You need to immunise them against such threats, and to do that you need to explain that faith doesn’t just mean faith, but means works as well – that way, every time they see the word ‘faith’, they will internally rewrites it ‘faith plus works’.

   This can be done through misinterpreting James 2:14-26 and claiming that James is writing about justification by and before God – instead of being justified in one’s claim to faith. If you do a ‘careful’ work of comparison between James and Paul, you can teach people to read Paul through the lens of James – replacing Paul’s declaration of monergistic justification with James’ discussion of being justified in your claims. For bonus points, quote great reformers saying things like “the only interpretive key to the scripture is scripture itself” and then use this to justify your somewhat dodgy hermeneutic.

7. 7: Mock the Gospel
   Particularly useful if you are unfortunate enough to have to share a pulpit plastic reading stand with someone else who preaches the Gospel, this method is based on mocking the childish and naive faith of those who think they are saved just by believing something. Use a reductio ad absurdum, safe in the knowledge that the Gospel is ‘foolishness to Greeks’ (1 Corinithians 1:23).

   A great way to do this is to take any passage of law, then launch into something like:

   “Be wary, brothers and sisters, of false teachers. There are other churches where you don’t hear the Bible preached to you as you hear it here. In particular, be wary of mass-market corrupt evangelicalism with it’s easy-way-out salvation. Do you know, there are those who actually think that God cares more about whether they hold to their pet list of beliefs than whether you live a good life, whether you keep the commandments, whether you love God and your neighbour.

   Anyone who’s spent any real time going through the whole of the Bible will know for certain that God cares most of all about how you live. Just look at this passage before us: does it say ‘Believe in the Canons of Dort’ or does it say ‘You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark’ (Deuteronomy 19:14)? Beware those who scratch itching ears, pretending there’s an easy way out. It’s hard to do what I do, to declare to you what the Bible really says – but I do it because I love you and want you to make it to heaven. Please, I plead with you, persevere in living sinless lives, diligently do penance if you fail and fall into sin, keep yourself pure and holy in every way – and try your hardest to get into heaven.”

8. 8: Assume the Gospel
   This trick is so over-used you need to be careful. The basic idea is to talk about ‘the Gospel’ as much as you can, but never to explain what it is. You can sound really Gospel driven, Gospel centred, keen to bring the Gospel to people, etc. without having to actually explain what the Gospel is. When it comes to application time, talk about ways in which we respond to the Gospel – life changes, and the like – but never bother to explain why ‘the Gospel’ merits such a response. Correctly executed, you can keep assuming the Gospel for decades, always sounding Christian but never actually being Christian. You may even find that after a few years there will be so few left who still remember what the Gospel is that you can go ahead and say that the Gospel is our response to God in changed lives — this has often been executed with great success.
9. 9: I’m sorry you’ve fallen asleep
   Now, if all else fails, drone on about something boring – perhaps talk about the meaning of each word in the Greek, and the differences between English translations – until nobody is listening. Note to non-preachers: the fact that your preacher is sending you to sleep is not proof that he is denying the Gospel, on its own!