The gospel gap

Gaps are annoying. They interrupt things. They impede our progress. Gaps get in the way.

A gospel gap is particularly annoying. Because a gospel gap interrupts what really matters – it gets in the way of spiritual progress.

But who says there is such a thing? Isn’t the gospel of Jesus Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1.24)? How could there possibly be a gap? But what if the gap is at our end? What if the gap concerns the way we receive the gospel and apply it?

Not sure how to proceed?

Think of it like this: ask us to speak gospel truth to a person overwhelmed with guilt and it feels like the spiritual equivalent of an open goal. But ask us to speak gospel truth to a person overwhelmed with shyness or bulimia or insomnia and we are much less sure how to proceed.

Or consider this: we know the gospel deals with our past guilt; we know it promises us heaven; but what does it do for us today? Does it speak to our besetting sins? The stuff we keep on doing – persistent irritability, sulkiness, fear of man, a preoccupation with food. Can the gospel really change those things?

How to put off and put on

Of course we know the ‘rules’. We are to be patient (not irritable), cheerful (not sulky), bold (not fearful). But how do those sort of changes come about? How does the gospel help us put off and put on? Is it all down to our effort or is it all down to God?

For nearly 50 years the biblical counselling movement has been seeking to close the gap. To help us apply the riches of the gospel to the realities of life. So we have something more helpful to say than ‘stop it!’

Learning from the Puritans

The Puritans were good at this. They wrote long books exploring all the rich ways the gospel applies to our different personalities and our varied experiences of life. Somewhere along the way we lost that. Actually we may have lost even more than that. In his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard Lovelace writes about another gap – the sanctification gap. He reckons evangelicals didn’t simply lose sight of how to be sanctified, but even of the very need of it in the first place.

A great place to start

A gospel that speaks into the nitty gritty of life is a powerful starting point for our evangelism. If I can explain (or better still demonstrate in my own life) how the gospel speaks to the stuff we all struggle with, I have a great starting point with my non-Christian friends. They live in the same world I do. With the same demanding work schedules, uncommunicative teenagers, persistent habits and all the rest.

If I have something that speaks intelligently to those kind of issues, they are bound to be interested. Of course, showing how the gospel might help my friend deal with his difficult line manager isn’t the final goal of my evangelistic efforts – there are much bigger things to say! But it’s a great place to start.

But to do that I have to fill the gospel gap. I have to learn, both in my own life and in my ministry to others, how the gospel speaks to the detail of life. Instead of relying on life coaches or relaxation techniques or time management strategies, I need to know how the gospel changes me. Ed Welch’s book When People are Big and God is Small would be a great place to start. We all find ways to fear what others think of us, so we will all have lessons to learn there. That will do a little bit of gap-filling.