or
Have We Got the Gospel Backwards?

by
Jim Kerwin
Copyright © 2004 Jim Kerwin

Prologue: A Confession Sparks A Quest

Do we let Jesus in? Or does He let us in?

Way back in 1973, about the time the “Jesus Movement” peaked, I was a five-year-old Christian, co-pastoring a church. My favorite Bible teacher, the delightful and spiritually sagacious Englishman Percy Gutteridge, the man whom I consider to be my “grandfather in the Lord,” was staying with us and ministering in our church. Percy had proved to be someone to whom I could turn for wise, godly, Scriptural counsel. Yet I was embarrassed to seek him out during this visit because of the question with which I was wrestling. (My impression was that Pastor Gutteridge didn’t suffer fools gladly.) But finally I plucked up my courage and confessed to him during a private time together, “Percy, I’ve been a Christian for five years, a pastor for two years, but I don’t know what the Gospel is. I think I know what it isn’t, but I don’t know what it is.”

I avoided eye contact with him and waited for the rebuke I thought must be forthcoming. How could I be a pastor and still be asking this question? What excuse could a Christian leader have to not know such an important basic truth? Would he tell me to go back to The Four Spiritual Laws booklet? What would he think if I told him I strongly suspected those “laws” were inadequate and that some of their directions weren’t strictly Scriptural? I appreciated this little witnessing tool and had used it — I had even been led to Jesus by somebody sharing it with me — but the more I read and understood the New Testament, the more inadequate and unbalanced its message seemed. It dawned on me that some of the Scriptures used were taken out of context, indeed, that we were at certain points at odds with what Jesus preached. Worse, for all those who came to Christ by means of such a presentation of the Gospel, many more fell by the wayside. Was this really the Gospel Jesus preached?

After a minute had gone by, I finally looked his way, wondering why he hadn’t responded. His sometimes serious face was wrinkled with a cherubic smirk of good humor and his eyes twinkled, as only Percy’s could. Now I was nonplussed. Seeing my uncertainty, he smiled and said, “That’s good, brother. Most Christians don’t know what the Gospel is.”

In those days (to me, anyway), an encouraging word from Percy seemed like the next best thing to being approved by God Himself. I was both encouraged and intrigued. Though he did make one guiding comment, in his wisdom he didn’t try to outpace God by telling me everything; he merely planted a seed. I barely grasped the significance of what he said, which was this: “The Year of Jubilee—that's the Gospel, brother.”¹ Percy exhorted me to seek the Lord, study the scriptures carefully, and to be guided by what I found written in God’s Book. Since that day it has been my burden to challenge my brethren to seriously consider the question, What is the Gospel? My heart breaks over the many spiritual abortions, miscarriages, and premature births that fill our North American pews. So many seem to have been conceived by a parent with a genetic defect. That parent, I fear, is the modern gospel we evangelicals usually preach.

I address part of my burden in another article entitled That Uncomfortable Word–Convict­ion! In this article I want to address those parts of our gospel presentation that have been called “closing the deal” (as though it were a sales transaction) and providing “assurance of salvation.” Careful study of the Scriptures reveals that it is at these very points where we find ourselves fundamentally at odds with Jesus’ declaration of the gospel. I believe that none of my readers would willingly or knowingly contradict our Lord’s teaching and example. Nevertheless, is it possible that our “simplified” methods of presenting the gospel have become so familiar, so accepted, so comfortable that it doesn’t occur to us that we might not be rightly dividing the word of truth?

May the Lord use this study in some way to hasten the day when His whole Gospel, the glorious, God-honoring Gospel of the Kingdom of God, free of compromise and Madison Avenue slickness, is preached fully, fearlessly, and fruitfully. And may the Holy Spirit bear witness to that full and restored Gospel of Christ with signs and wonders following, leading up to our Lord’s return.

Letting In or Getting In?

There is a startling contrast between our modern gospel presentation and Jesus’ message. It can be glimpsed in the conflict between how we utilize Revelation 3:20 and John 1:12 in soul-winning, and what Jesus taught about entering the Kingdom of God in such passages as Luke 13:23-30. We tell people that Jesus is at the door of their heart waiting to be received. But Jesus told people that they must find the door into the Kingdom and strive to enter it. How can it be both ways?

Revelation 3:20 & John 1:12: Our Linchpin Verses of Closure and Assurance

Most of the popular, modern methods of evangelism employ the two verses above. In conjunction with each other they serve as the climax of the message presented to the sinner: “Receive Jesus. Ask Him into your heart.”

Revelation 3:20 in the Process

The general method of bringing a sinner to a “point of decision” follows a fairly common pattern. There are four steps familiar to almost everyone who has ever heard a modern gospel message or taken a witnessing seminar. The chart which follows summarizes these steps from the three most popular gospel-presentation booklets, published by Campus Crusade for Christ,² The Navigators,³ and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA),⁴ respectively.

Even the casual reader sees that they are nearly identical, and Billy Graham confirms their common source:

Note that in each booklet summarized in the chart above, Revelation 3:20, John 1:12, and the concept of asking Jesus into the heart, are a part of the concluding “step four.”⁶

John 1:12 and the Climax

On the basis of John 1:12, the sinner is assured that new birth is a matter of receiving Christ. Receiving Christ, he is told, means asking Jesus into the heart, appealing to the supposedly Scriptural picture of Jesus standing at the door of the heart of the sinner and waiting to get in.⁷ The inquirer is asked to repeat each phrase of a “sinner’s prayer” that the soul-winner prays, during which Christ is invited into the heart.

Revelation 3:20 and Assurance

Then, in the process of follow-up and giving “assurance of salvation,” Revelation 3:20 is often appealed to again, especially if the “new convert” is uncertain about what is supposed to have just happened. For example, in the final section on assurance, the BGEA’s Four Steps to Peace with God asks the reader, “Did you sincerely ask Jesus Christ to come into your life? Where is He right now?”⁸ The appropriate conclusion to the second question has to be drawn from the seeker’s understanding of Revelation 3:20.

The following dialogue between the Soul Winner (SW) and the New Convert (NC), is drawn from personal soul-winning experiences. The method of employing Revelation 3:20 in assuring someone of their salvation goes something like this:

A Disturbing Discovery

So on the basis of John 1:12 and Revelation 3:20 countless sinners have gone forward, prayed “the sinner’s prayer,” and signed decision cards. Often Revelation 3:20 is used in securing “assurance of salvation.” Thanks and praise be to God that some of this activity results in genuine, lasting conversions; but these limited results may have far more to do with God’s love and mercy, and may come despite, not because of, our methods. I say this because in looking more closely at these two Scriptures, we see a serious problem—Revelation 3:20 has nothing to do with evangelism, soul-winning, the new birth, or salvation and John 1:12 is not about “receiving Jesus into the heart”! I believe that one of the great ironies of our modern evangelical church—this church that puts great stock in “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15)—is that it (well-meaningly) “wrongly divides” these two verses on which so much of its evangelism depends. To show that rather than rightly dividing these verses, we are instead reading something into them that isn’t there, let’s consider Revelation 3:20 and John 1:12 in their respective contexts and then contrast what we claim their message to be with the gospel Jesus preached.

Context and Background of Revelation 3:20

Revelation 3:20 is found in the context of the message of the exalted Christ to His church in Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22), which concludes the greater context of His messages to the seven churches (chapters 2-3). The theme of the communication to Laodicea is Christ’s displeasure with the church because of their lukewarmness, complacency, and self-satisfaction. It is a strong word of rebuke and a call to repentance which is heightened by the urgency of a certain judgment to follow if the church doesn’t change.

So the Laodiceans are called to a zealous repentance (v. 19). Immediately after this follows the statement of Revelation 3:20. Consider these three aspects of the verse:

When we consider the context of Revelation 3:20, we see that it is not a “soul-winning” verse, nor does it contain words the Lord used towards the unsaved. There is no New Testament preaching or witnessing example where anyone is instructed to ask Jesus into their hearts in the process of becoming believers. Indeed, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles were all penned prior to the canon-closing Apocalypse, so no reference could have been made to this verse.

Taking into account that these words of exposure, judgment, and hope were spoken to backslidden believers, we would be well-advised to avoid using this verse in evangelism. Overlooking the need to rightly divide the Scriptures, some might still contend for the “convenience” of this “open the door to Jesus” analogy; but, as I will show shortly, using the verse this way presents exactly the opposite picture from the one Jesus wishes to portray to people seeking to enter the Kingdom of God. I will develop this thought further after considering John 1:12.

The Context and Meaning of John 1:12

Since we have seen that there is no Scriptural basis to instruct sinners to “ask Jesus into their hearts”, does this also mean that sinners shouldn’t receive Christ? No… and yes. No, they shouldn’t “receive Christ” if, by that phrase we seek to perpetuate an unfortunate and misleading metaphor of asking Christ into the heart. However, the answer may be affirmative, so long as we give people to understand what John means by receiving.

Consider the context of the verse in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. John establishes Christ’s deity, eternity, and creatorship in the first three verses. The Apostle then declares Him to be the Light, and introduces John the Baptist as the witness of that light (vv. 4-9). Finally he approaches the verse which we now consider:

The Logos, the God and Creator of the world, became incarnate (as John goes on to show in v. 14) and entered the world, yet the world wasn’t even aware of Him.

“His own” are Israel, His chosen people. One wonders if there is any significance to the fact that John doesn’t say that they didn’t know Him. Perhaps there is an implication that they knew and didn’t care. Regardless, what John does say is that God’s people didn’t receive Him; that is, they rejected His Messiahship and deity.

In this verse John has narrowed his focus. Christ came, yet the world didn’t know Him, and even His people didn’t receive Him and His claims. But, John says, there is a group who did receive Him. They believed that He was God, Creator, Messiah, and Savior and they accepted and submitted to the implications of what they believed. In return, the Logos gave them the privilege to become children of God.

Greek scholar Marvin R. Vincent, writing on v. 11, says that the sense of “received” is “accepting or acknowledging one to be what he professes to be….”¹³ Receiving Christ, then, in the context of John 1:12, deals with accepting His Messiahship, Lordship, and His claim to Deity. John, who also penned Revelation, says nothing about “receiving Jesus into the heart.”

Another Door, A Different Side

It is serious enough to inaccurately divide and apply Scripture passages; it’s far worse when, in so doing, we unwittingly contradict the clear teaching of Christ in a matter. In this case, we have been pointing sinners to a “door” that does not exist. We tell the sinner that he is on the inside and Christ is on the outside waiting to come in. What Jesus taught, however, is that there is a very different door. He is on the inside and the sinner is on the outside and must seek to get in.

Quite a contrast results when we juxtapose the image of Jesus knocking at the door with this illustration Jesus Himself presents:

This is similar to His teaching in another place:

What double-think allows us to overlook the contradiction between these two ways of thinking? Jesus told people that in order to be saved, they needed to strive to enter a door before they were locked out. We tell people that Jesus is locked out by the “door of our hearts” and needs us to let Him in.

Agonizing to Enter the Kingdom

The word strive in Luke 13:24 is of special interest because of its strength in the Greek. It stands starkly over against the picture of a near-passive act of “opening the door of one’s heart.” Agonizomai (ἀγονίζομαι), the word translated as striving, means the exerting of a concentrated strength, to contend as for the mastery.¹⁴ It implies an intense personal struggle.¹⁵ This word is used elsewhere in the New Testament of an athlete competing for a victory (1 Corinthians 9:25), of “fighting the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12), and of a Christian worker who labors fervently in prayer (Colossians 4:12).

The root word agonia (ἀγωνία) is used to describe Christ’s sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).¹⁶ This leads commentator William Barclay to remark, “The struggle to enter in is so intense that it may be described as an agony of soul and spirit.”¹⁷ Apparently, entering the Kingdom is not as easy as we have been advertising.

Why is this “agonizing” necessary? Jesus makes it clear in the Luke 13 passage that the danger of not entering in is very real. He says “many… will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:23). Again, of this entrance: “few are those who find it” (Matthew 7:14). This theme of the difficulty of being saved is present in other gospel passages. The most significant may be Luke 18:18-27,¹⁸ wherein a young man, earnestly seeking salvation is turned away by Jesus. The unexpected results of the encounter flabbergasted the apostles, as did Jesus’ response to their inquiry:

Areas of Striving and Agonizing

Of what does this agonizing (striving, fighting, fervent laboring) consist? What are the difficulties to be overcome?

It might be argued that all of these areas of striving amount to trying to earn salvation by works. Far from it. The best illustration I’ve ever encountered about this subject comes from the pen of John Fletcher, dubbed “John Wesley’s designated successor.” In his well-reasoned Checks to Antinomianism, Fletcher’s response to this same charge was put very well:

Striving to enter the Kingdom in accordance with the commandment of Jesus is not “salvation by works.”

Fruit of The Approaches Contrasted

When looking at these two gospel presentations which we have been considering, we ought to take into account, finally, the fruit which each bears. We may quickly consider the fruit of Jesus’ gospel, when it was preached in its purity, by looking at the Book of Acts. What we see there is a Church which flourishes in all conditions, possessed of Spirit-fired zeal to preach a world-changing gospel in every land.

The fruit of the “Revelation 3:20 gospel” is noteworthy, too, but, alas, for more sobering reasons. Undoubtedly it has brought forth some good, lasting fruit, but perhaps this may be attributed more to the love and mercy of God than to that gospel’s content. It is disquieting to hear, for example, that only six percent of those who come forward and “register decisions for Christ” at large evangelistic crusades are still following Christ after a year’s time.²²

There is something else which should be brought to our attention. Consider one very undesirable, albeit subtle, assumption of presenting the Gospel backwards: If Jesus is coming to me, waiting outside the door of my heart, waiting for me to receive Him, then I am the center of the transaction. Thus my initial transaction with God, whether it results in true regeneration or not, centers around self and sets the precedent for all my future interactions with God. How unlike the teaching of Jesus: “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34).

John MacArthur, in his excellent and challenging book The Gospel According to Jesus, cites another area of objectionable fruit:

It is sad enough that such people can make the claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ, but worse still is the blindness which prohibits real believers from voicing, or even considering, the possibility that not all who claim to be saved are. It may well be that some of the people most in danger of hell sit in our pews. They are unaware of their peril because of the repeated “assurances of ‘assurance'” they have received about their so-called salvation, in spite of the fact that there is no evidence in them of regeneration and new birth. They have been measured by a man-made standard, and not by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We Must Change the Gospel We Preach

In all that I have said to this point, it might be easy to ascribe to this writer a critical spirit towards those who are doing the work of evangelism. I pray that this is not true. The last thing I want to do is to tear down those all-too-few saints who are actively evangelizing. Despite the disheartening numbers of those who fall away after being exposed to the “Revelation 3:20 gospel,” we must admit that God has chosen to bring many into the Kingdom by this means. I myself was “led to Christ” by someone using a Four Spiritual Laws booklet. No, I am not seeking to discourage, but to empower the Church with the gospel and “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

Nevertheless, seeing our meager percentages, as well as the carnality and spiritual lethargy that permeate our churches, it is time to repent of our slick, inoffensive, re-worked gospel. We need to ask God for mercy and revelation as we open our New Testaments and seek to understand and preach the gospel of Christ.

There will be a price to pay for doing this. Those who preach a gospel that demands something more than mere assent and easy-believism will be criticized, particularly from the Christian community which identifies itself with the gospel according to Revelation 3:20. The temptation to remain wedded to the easy, “convenient” way will be very strong. However, if we persevere in preaching truth obediently, we may expect God’s blessing. Preaching what Jesus did about entering the Kingdom will open a door for the Holy Spirit to deal with sin in the Church. That in turn may lead to the genuine conversion of many of our “saved” members. With the church beginning to walk in true discipleship, living and proclaiming the true gospel, we may expect to see the true and lasting conversion of sinners. Because it is a gospel which He can own, I believe the Lord will confirm this word with signs and wonders following (Mark 16:20).

Conclusion

It seems a great irony to use Revelation 3:20 in our day for evangelism. On the shaky basis of our modern interpretation of this verse, we tell unbelievers that Jesus is knocking at the door of their hearts, waiting to come in, and that John 1:12 encourages them to “receive Jesus into their hearts.” We don't challenge them with Jesus’ words, telling them that they are the ones who need to strive to pass through the door, giving their all to do so. Thus we have the matter exactly backwards. We avoid declaring God’s holiness, decrying and exposing sin, and we avert the deep and often time-consuming work of the Holy Spirit in conviction of sin. We rip a verse from Jesus’ message to the Laodicean church out of context, but we, in a real sense, are Laodicea—wretched, miserable, poor, naked, and blind—so blind that we don’t know that Jesus is knocking on our door and demanding that we repent.

Perhaps our greatest need for repentance lies in the gospel we preach. Compared with the gospel of Christ and His apostles, our “good news” is a pale shadow of the Gospel preached in apostolic days. Let us proclaim the whole truth, that sinners need to strive to enter through the narrow door into the Kingdom of God. They need to fall at God's feet and do business with Him, until they come through to sin-forsaking repentance and world-renouncing victory, knowing by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that they have been regenerated, born from above.

Let's abandon this dilution of the Kingdom message and seek God, that we might know how to preach the whole gospel, that word which God loves to honor with signs and wonders following. That word, and that alone, will honor God, produce the results He desires, and see this last generation transformed.

Epilogue: Margaret’s Story

In the Prologue of this article I related my “What is the Gospel?” encounter with Percy Gutteridge. Please “fast forward” with me about ten years in my life’s story. By God’s grace I had grown in my understanding of the Gospel, but I was still pursuing the subject. During the week in question I was wrestling with the ramifications of what I was learning. I had spent a considerable amount of time in John’s first epistle, noting especially the verses that detail the characteristics of those who are born of God.²⁴

There was a young woman who occasionally came to the church I pastored. I will call her Margaret, though that is not her real name. She had been “saved” for eight years, yet her moral and spiritual life was a veritable roller coaster of inconsistency. She fell into sexual sin for considerable periods; then she’d be back in fellowship somewhere for a while.

One summer day, Margaret came to our home for counseling. Her cry was that she had failed God again. We walked to a nearby park, and we sat on a bench that gave us a view of a lovely fountain. Her roller coaster had hit another low and she wanted to “find her way back to God” after having failed Him for “the millionth time.”

As she poured out her heart, the nudging voice of the Spirit was quite clear in my heart: “You know you’ve got to tell her.” Yes, I knew I had to tell her the truth, but I was apprehensive. When Margaret was “doing well” she usually attended a large, successful megachurch where she had first “asked Jesus into her heart” and where she had gone numerous times for counseling. My fear was not so much Margaret’s reaction to my announcement, but of how it would play once it got back to her megachurch.

When my turn came to respond, I shared with her what I had been learning in First John. I described what the inspired writer declared to be the characteristics of someone who is born of God. Then I asked, “Margaret, do any of those characteristics show in your life?” She responded, “No, Pastor Jim, not a one.” Determined to be obedient to the Lord and let the consequences fall as they would, I overcame my fear, and shared in a gentle, uncondemn­ing, yet uncompromising way, “Well, Margaret, that’s your problem. On the authority of God’s Word, I can tell you that you’re not born again, and you never have been. Well-meaning people have given you an ‘assurance’ of a salvation and a new birth you never had. Unwittingly, you’ve been trying to live the Christian life without the new birth ever since.”

I waited for her shock, an ensuing fury of denial, and a denunciation. Instead I was the one who was shocked, for she responded with a massive sigh and said, “Pastor Jim, I’m so glad you shared that. Because if this is the ‘abundant life,’ I want to die. It means that God has taken His best shot at me, and I’m even beyond His ability to do anything.”

She went on to share how many times she had doubted her salvation, and how various pastors at her church had always assured her that when she had “come forward and prayed the sinner’s prayer” that “Jesus had come into her heart” and that He would never lie and go back on what He promised in Revelation 3:20. I pointed out to her that Revelation 3:20 had nothing to do with salvation, and I opened to her the work of the Spirit in Romans 8:16-17, explaining that it was His job to assure her of her salvation. When she had the real thing, no one would have to convince her—she would know in her own heart and spirit.

A day later, reflecting on the encounter, Margaret’s sigh loomed large in my mind. That sigh expressed the lifting of a heavy, depressing burden that had been long-borne. And I wondered at the amazing irony of it all: for Margaret, it was “good news” that she wasn’t born again!

The story would be much tidier if I could report that Margaret immediately sought God with all her heart and entered the Kingdom because she at last received the genuine New Birth. Actually there was no visible difference in her lifestyle for a time. But at last she did have a deep, permanent heart-encounter with God, and her life bore the fruit of someone who is truly God’s child until the day of her death. She married a fine Christian man, and they went on in the things of the Spirit. In fact, several years after our encounter Margaret rang me up long-distance to thank me for being honest with her and helping to set her free.

I’m happy for Margaret, but ever since that day by the fountain, I have wondered: how many millions of Margarets are out there? These supposedly “born-again Christians” need someone to share the truth with them about their spiritual condition. It will take brave men and women to proclaim Christ’s Gospel in the face of the Church’s status quo. Happily, because of that proclamation, some may respond like Margaret.

Other Margarets, I’m afraid, will resist. Some will do so fearing to “deny God” by turning from what they have imbibed as “truth;” after all, they were told by someone in spiritual authority that, having “walked the aisle” and mouthed a “sinner’s prayer,” they have been born again, even though they lack the witness of the Spirit or His fruit.²⁵ Nevertheless, let's be faithful to do our part in proclaiming God's full truth in the power and leading of His Spirit, and then allow the Holy Spirit to do His work.

Some scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Some scripture quotations taken from Holy Bible, New International Version® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Bibliography and Background Reading

Endnotes: