Preach the Real Gospel

By Chris Philbeck

“He doesn’t preach Jesus, he preaches you.” That’s how a friend recently characterized the preacher at a church she had been visiting. As I listened to her a little longer, it became clear she was describing what is often called the “self-help” gospel that focuses more on self-improvement, personal fulfillment, and happiness than redemption and transformation. It’s a gospel that can be easy for preachers to embrace from a pragmatic standpoint because of the belief that it will attract people to church and get them to come back. After all, who wouldn’t be interested in, “Three Steps to a Better Marriage” or “How to Overcome (you fill in the blank).”  

The Pitfalls of the Self-Help Gospel 

Now let me say from the beginning, I’m all for sermons that offer help for specific issues and needs in life from a biblical perspective. You can’t read the Gospels and not see that Jesus was, in many ways, teaching people how they could live a better life. But Jesus did that by bringing a fresh message, not a spiritualized version of human wisdom. A great example would be the multiple times in The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) where Jesus said, “You have heard that our ancestors were told . . . . But I say . . . ” Jesus was talking about a better life characterized by genuine righteousness as opposed to the burden of following rules.   

But the self-help gospel is dangerous, primarily, because it’s full of misguided and harmful theology. Here are some examples. 

• The self-help gospel often ignores the reality of sin.  
• The self-help gospel can make you believe you create your own destiny. 
• The self-help gospel can emphasize the idea of following your heart. 
• The self-help gospel can make you believe no one else’s thoughts or opinions matter but yours. 

In contrast to that,  

• The real gospel tells us that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23).  
• The real gospel tells us that we need a Savior (Romans 5:8). 
• The real gospel reinforces the truth that our hearts are deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). 
• The real gospel teaches us the need to submit to a sovereign God (Isaiah 55:9). 

Simply put, the real gospel transforms lives by revealing that self-help alone won’t lead to fellowship with God.   

I spent over four decades leading three churches. My first church was a church plant, my second church was a turn-around church, and my third church was a megachurch. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to preach in a way that would reach more people. And during all those years, there was no shortage of new and different methods of preaching. I remember going to a large church growth conference several years ago, where the breakout session I attended was focused on preaching. The presenter, a well-known preacher and author, began the session by saying, “Content is no longer the key when it comes to effective preaching.” He went on to talk about how the entire church service needed to be “programmed” to create an experience. 

While I understand the value of “worship programming,” it’s not a substitute for the content of the gospel no matter how badly you want to attract people and see them return. I’ve always been struck by this quote from Donald Miller: “The most difficult lie I ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.” The self-help gospel, as I wrote earlier, can feed into that lie by making someone feel like they can create their own destiny. But while the self-help gospel can create that kind of “feeling,” we need to remember that feelings aren’t the same as faith. And only faith in a Savior who died on a cross to satisfy God’s need for justice regarding sin can bring the life we were created for.  

The Power of the True Gospel 

I retired from full-time ministry at the end of June 2024. It’s been an interesting experience to simply attend church for the past 14 months. But it’s also been a blessing because during that time my wife and I have attended two different churches where the gospel has been preached. Not a self-help gospel, but the real gospel that has the power to change everything in your life. And every week the gospel speaks to the needs of my life either as a reminder or a challenge. I’m reminded of that as I write this column because I’m looking at a notebook I use for sermon notes. Here are some of the things I have written down from multiple sermons. They are simple, deep, profound, challenging, convicting, and so much more:  

• I will always need Jesus.  
• Jesus has the power to not only expose but also expel the bad things in your life. 
• You can’t truly encounter Jesus and stay the same. 
• Jesus cares about hurting, sick, broken, and lost people. 
• Nothing is too big for God, and nothing we’ve done is too bad for God. 
• God doesn’t want to just treat our wounds; He wants to heal our souls. 
• Because Jesus was treated as an outcast on the cross, we can be accepted by God. 
• Jesus always looks beyond our obvious need to see our ultimate need. 
• Come to Jesus with hope and let him challenge you and change you. 
• You can’t be made new and hold on to the old priorities of your life.  
• The grace of God may be free, but it’s not cheap.  
• Forgiveness for the believer is not about what’s been done to me, it’s about what’s been done for me.    

Each of these statements, and so many more I don’t have room to add, flow from the gospel. So, we need to be discerning when it comes to what we preach. And no matter how badly we might want to draw a crowd, we need to remember that discernment isn’t knowing the difference between right and wrong; it’s knowing the difference between right and almost right. Almost right will never be enough when it comes to someone’s eternal destiny.