Does the Gospel Need Defending?

You don't have to look far these days to find a plethora of books, podcasts, and seminars on defending the faith. The world's a tough place, and if we ever hope to hold our own in conversations about Jesus, we'd better be armed to the teeth. Right?

But too often we find ourselves doing more defending than advancing. "Things are harder today than they used to be," we say. "We've got the internet, advancements in science, and people trusting human reasoning over God. It's just a lot different."

While there's no question things have changed, is it really all that different?

Jesus’ day was a hotbed of religious antagonism (Judaism), political hostility (Rome), and competing philosophical ideologies (Greek). So did the Apostle Paul spend his time defending the gospel against the cultural landscape? No: he simply proclaimed it: God, sin, love, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation (I Corinthians 2:1-5). And lives were changed.

The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries brought modern science, mathematics, physics, and chemistry to the forefront. The Age of Reason in the latter 17th and 18th centuries questioned the credibility of any thinking not based on justifiable reason.

Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1794-1807) debunked God, the credibility of each of the Old Testament books, and the four Gospels. The Jeffersonian Bible (Thomas Jefferson) systematically removed any mention of the supernatural in the Gospels, including the resurrection.

It was against this backdrop that two dynamic followers of Jesus appeared: George Whitefield and John Wesley. And what was their message? God, sin, love, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation. John Whitefield’s favorite sermon text came from Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3: You must be born again. They didn’t defend the gospel against the culture, but simply proclaimed it. And there was a revival.

Then came Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, using a scientific theory to challenge any need for God. Humanism, asserting the nonexistence of God, got better organized in the early 20th century and made significant advances in education. By mid-century, this overflowed into a time of radical unrest in America, challenging cultural norms and values.

But then something happened. It started small in California and soon rippled across the country and the world. Today we know it as the Jesus Revolution, and its message was clear: God, sin, love, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation. People were discovering that the good news of Jesus provided a better way.

While every generation has its own form of rebellion, it's just another variety of the same old thing: sin. While every generation parrots cultural thinking in declaring its independence, it has little to do with intellectual reasoning and a lot to do with being large and in charge.

Regardless of the generation, the solution is always the same: "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." (Romans 1:16).

If we answer every cultural challenge but fail to communicate the Good News of Jesus, we've missed the only power that can change a life.

So in our defense of the gospel, let's not forget to advance it.