GOSPEL, CONTENT

“To preach a social gospel without the redemptive background of the individual salvation from sin of the individual sinner is like launching a glider instead of a high-powered plane. A glider may soar for awhile on the fickle currents of the wind, and climb high on some sudden up-draft, but it is the four whirl-wind motors that will carry a bomber to the stratosphere and jet-propulsion and rockets that will take a plane beyond the speed of sound” (Donald Grey Barnhouse, Man’s Ruin [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1952], pp. 161–162).596

God’s work of salvation, according to a hard-line liberal, is summed up in the following quote:

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross” (H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America [New York: Harper & Row, 1959], p. 193).597

The minister of the gospel must not be afraid of conflict with the wisdom of the world. Gregory the Great said, “God first gathered the unlearned, afterwards philosophers, nor has He taught fishermen by orators, but has subdued orators by fishermen.”598