HOW “BIG” IS THE GOSPEL?
In the selection from John’s first epistle that serves as our sermon text today, John says, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Some would use this passage to say that in the church it is only necessary to agree to that one phrase, as though everything else in the Bible is an optional extra. This concept is called “Gospel Reductionism.”
As we see John build on this statement however, we see that this is the cornerstone of the Christian faith upon which everything is built. Paul reflects the same truth, for example, Ephesians 2:19–22 (NIV84) “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
To accept the fact that “Jesus Christ has come into the flesh” is to accept all the related truth as well, that He is God in the flesh, that He came to atone for the sins of the world as both God and Man, that He continues to come to the world through word and sacrament, and so on.
What’s more, this capstone/cornerstone of our faith is not just an academic exercise, but lives in the love and grace that Christians have for one another. The gospel cannot be shrunk to accommodate the varying ideas of sinful men, but is part of the one truth that is given to us by the Spirit of Truth in the Holy Scriptures.
