We appreciate the article ‘Is creation care a gospel issue?’ by John Samuel and Richard Buggs in the January issue of en, and share their concern that the phraseology of the Cape Town Commitment might be mistakenly interpreted as ‘adding works to grace,’ and thereby ‘undermining’ the message of the gospel itself.
That is certainly no intention of ours, or indeed of the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment, which elsewhere in Part 1.8 defines the gospel of grace very strongly in terms ‘trusting in Christ alone … on the work of Christ and the promise of God.’
We are grateful that they recognise at the end of their article how important creation care is in the Bible and for the church (not all evangelical Christians are willing to go that far). We would also agree with their last sentence: ‘We need to be clear that creation care is a fruit of the gospel, but it is not a part of the gospel’. For the Lausanne statement does not say it is ‘part of the gospel’, but that it is ‘a gospel issue’ – which is different, and we’ll come to that. However, we would want to clarify immediately that, though creation care is not part of the gospel, creation itself most certainly and Biblically is. For the gospel is not about what we do for creation, but it does include what God Himself has done and will do for it.
That is to say, ‘the gospel of God’ (as Paul calls it several times), is the announcement of the good news that God has acted through His Son, Jesus of Nazareth, in His death on the cross to reconcile to Himself ‘all things in heaven and earth’ (the whole creation; Col. 1:15-20), and in His bodily resurrection to initiate the new creation, in which we who are in Christ by faith already participate, and for which the present groaning creation longs in anticipation for its liberation (Rom. 8:18-25). When we see that cosmic scope of what God has accomplished through Christ (specifically, as Paul affirms, through the blood of His cross), the content of the good news that constitutes the Biblical gospel is correspondingly vast. ‘Gospel issues’, then, must refer to things that such Biblical good news includes, implies, mandates, governs, shapes, or defines.
Not just personal salvation
Now, Samuel and Buggs say that ‘within evangelicalism the term “gospel issue” has long been understood to refer to something that is essential for personal salvation’ – and that is so. But we would argue that such popular usage restricts the fullness of how the New Testament itself presents ‘the gospel’. It would be better, we think, to use the term ‘salvation issues’ when talking about what is essential for personal salvation, or in distinguishing between ‘first order’ salvation issues from other more secondary matters on which we may differ. We have no quarrel at all with how serious and non-negotiable such salvation issues are in orthodox evangelical faith. People need to repent, believe in Christ and be saved from the wrath of God by His grace alone. Of course, nobody is saved by caring for creation! But the Biblical gospel as such, in all that it announces about God and Christ, must impact how we think, live and act in relation to creation. For creation is included in Christ’s own assertion that His authority is over all things in heaven and earth, and in Paul’s assertion that Christ has reconciled all creation to God through the cross – including us who believe, for this is ‘the hope held out in the gospel’ (Col. 1:23).
‘Obeying the gospel’
It is important also to see that ‘the gospel’ in the apostolic preaching is not only (though of course truly) something you understand in your head and assent to by faith (primarily a cognitive matter). If that were all, then ‘gospel issues’ would be only those things that have to do with personal faith, or the lack of faith, or anything that might threaten the essential message of salvation by grace through faith. Such threats are deadly serious, as Paul makes abundantly clear, and as Samuel and Buggs rightly insist. But, Paul speaks several times of obeying the gospel – even of Old Testament Israel (e.g. Rom. 10:16; 15:18; 16:19; 2 Thess. 1:8; and cf. 1 Pet. 4:17). Indeed, he begins and ends Romans by defining his apostolic mission as dedicated to bringing about ‘the obedience of faith’ among all nations (Rom. 1:5 and 16:26).
Our response to the gospel, as the announcement of what God has accomplished in Christ, is not only to believe it, but to act upon it and live in the light of it. The gospel calls for allegiance and obedience to Christ as Lord. The gospel is a life-transforming summons, power and gift. We must live now in the light of the whole Biblical story – the good-news story that begins with creation and ends with new creation, and summons us to live in this creation in active and consistent anticipation of the new creation. The gospel, as Paul wrote his letters to new believers, both calls for and generates lives and communities shaped by Christ’s example, cross, resurrection, and Lordship, rooted in God’s saving grace alone, empowered by His indwelling Spirit, lived by persevering faith and obedience, and cultivating all the fruit of the Spirit. That is gospel living, living ‘in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ’ (Phil. 1:27), living a life that is governed in all its dimensions by the truth of the gospel. And such gospel living undoubtedly includes creation within its scope since the gospel message does.
This touches on another point that Samuel and Buggs raise: namely that if we call creation care a ‘gospel issue’, then we (or Lausanne) might as well include everything as gospel issues, since Christians face an infinite variety of issues in everyday life to which we must respond practically and ethically. For Samuel and Buggs, that is problematic, for on their definition those obviously can’t all be ‘gospel issues’ – i.e. counted among the essential doctrines and requirements for personal salvation. For us, however, this is not so much a problem as a glorious challenge, once we see that gospel truth not only guarantees our personal salvation by grace through faith but also governs the whole of our lives as believers (and indeed the whole of human history and the destiny of creation). Of course, everything is not and cannot be a salvation issue. But yes, everything in life is a gospel issue for a Christian, inasmuch as all our lives, choices, actions, relationships and commitments are either shaped by and consistent with the gospel, or unworthily contradicting and obscuring it. That is why Paul carefully explains the gospel to his readers in such a way as to make it inescapably clear that the life they now live (as individuals and as communities) is to be a living embodiment and demonstration of the truth and power of the gospel. We could say, indeed, that according to Paul, how a Christian slave behaved in his workplace was ‘a gospel issue’, since the quality of his life could ‘adorn’ the teaching about God our Saviour – i.e. make the gospel plausible and believable by non-Christian masters (Titus 2:9-10). Peter makes a similar gospel-motivated case for the behaviour of Christian wives of unbelieving husbands (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Given that the Biblical gospel includes creation itself, then how we act in relation to creation, for good or ill, is a gospel issue inasmuch as we are acting either in accordance with, or in contradiction of, that dimension of the gospel’s glorious truth.
The gospel of the kingdom of God
Finally, if one sees the gospel as primarily the solution to human needs, one will define ‘gospel issues’ only in terms of those things that relate to our greatest need, namely the eternal consequences of our sin and rebellion against God and our need for mercy, pardon and forgiveness – a very serious issue indeed where people’s eternal destinies are at stake.
However, while such concern is entirely valid, we may overlook the fact that the New Testament (including Jesus Himself) presents the gospel as the good news, not only or first about us and our destiny (though of course including that), but about the reign of God (it is ‘the gospel of God’) – and then, of course, the demands of what it means to live under God’s reign. That is the predominant content of the ‘good news’ in the synoptic Gospels. And for the apostles, in a world that called Caesar Lord, the gospel declares ‘there is another king’ – Messiah King Jesus, for ‘Jesus (alone) is Lord’. That subversive and costly claim transformed every dimension of life, past, present and future. The gospel proclaims the kingdom of God in the cosmic Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth, as Jesus himself did on the Mount of Ascension and as Peter echoed on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:36). Luke ends his second volume with Paul in the capital city of the Roman empire ‘explaining about the kingdom of God,’ and for two years ‘he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord (kyrios) Jesus Christ’ (Acts 28:23 and 31 – the last verse of the book). That was evidently a core element of Paul’s gospel (cf. Acts 19:8).
A non-negotiable aspect of responding to the gospel is choosing to submit to Jesus as Lord. The gospel insists that Jesus is Lord not just of my personal discipleship, but of my whole earthly environment (Matt. 28:18). So, if Jesus is truly Lord of all creation, then how I live out my discipleship to Jesus must also include creation in my response to the gospel. It is, as the Cape Town Commitments says, ‘a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ’ (that qualifying final phrase is both intentional and crucial; it should not be omitted in quotation). I cannot claim Christ as my Lord and Saviour while at the same time ignoring what the Biblical gospel unambiguously proclaims, that Christ is creation’s Lord and Redeemer. Creation care is, for that reason and in that carefully defined sense, a gospel issue.
