Modern Gospel Quotes & Sayings

Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel — John Gresham Machen

Our lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence. — Richard J. Foster

While modern evangelical Christianity has undeniable historical roots, its explosion over the past thirty years is a triumph of the Gospel According to Wal-Mart. — Charles P. Pierce

What was true of an ancient community of Christian believers struggling with a powerful and appealing philosophy is also true for Christians in a postmodern context. Arguments that deconstruct the regimes of truth at work in the late modern culture of global capitalism are indispensable. So also is a deeper understanding of the counterideological force of the biblical tradition. But such arguments are no guarantee that the biblical metanarrative will not be co-opted for ideological purposes of violent exclusion, nor do arguments prove the truth of the gospel. Only the nonideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible. — Brian J. Walsh

The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair; rather it is only a problem of how we many communicate the Gospel so that it is understood. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We can't throw endless tantrums and expect people to want what we have to offer spiritually. We can't handle spiritual matters as if everyone, including us, is stupid and hope they will take the bait. We can't attempt to bully people into the Gospel and think it's going to fly. These have been the methods used for many years in our modern times and they are simply not working. — Dr. Lee Ann B. Marino

Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won't know the difference between moralism and what you're offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there's a difference - that what they really rejected wasn't real Christianity at all - will they even begin to consider Christianity.2 — Tullian Tchividjian

What is the pattern of worship that best conveys the richness of divine grace, faithfully interprets the gospel in our modern world and helpfully consolidates the body of Christ? — Geoffrey W Bromiley

Too often we put the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist-capitalism and retain only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through. — Brian D. McLaren

Acknowledging the interpreted status of the gospel should translate into a certain humility in our public theology. It should not, however, translate into skepticism about the truth of the Christian confession. If the interpretive status of the gospel rattles our confidence in its truth, this indicates that we remain haunted by the modern desire for objective certainty. But our confidence rests not on objectivity but rather on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn't exactly objective). [pg. 51] — James K.A. Smith

-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being ... — Aldous Huxley

Modern scientific findings harmonize with revelation through the ages. No conflict exists between the gospel and any truth ... All true principles are a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no principle that we need to fear. — Spencer W. Kimball

This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis. — Pope John Paul II

This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is ... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men ... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other. — Stephen Neill

Anyone who comes to grips with the issues raised in The Marrow of Modern Divinity will almost certainly grow by leaps and bounds in understanding three things: the grace of God, the Christian life, and the very nature of the gospel itself. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

It is quite likely that the modern contrivances for making Sunday-schools amusing have given them a distate for the more solemn services of the sanctuary. If so, the amusement is a sin. The schools should feed the church. Children ought to be led by one into the other, exposed to the preaching of the gospel, taught the ways of God's house, and brought up under its influence, with all its hallowed and elevating influences. — Samuel I. Prime

Some parents live more like reclusive monks than like first-century Christians who were famous for their love for and service within their cities, cities that in many cases were more overtly wicked than cities found in modern-day America. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

We need to understand enough of modern thought to identify the ways it blocks us from living out the Gospel the way God intends, both in terms of intellectual roadblocks and in terms of economic and structural changes that make it harder to live by Scriptural principles. — Nancy Pearcey

In the modern world, however, love has another enemy more dangerous than religion, and that is the gospel of work and economic success. It is generally held, especially in America, that a man should not allow love to interfere with his career, and that if he does, he is silly. But in this as in all human matters a balance is necessary. — Bertrand Russell

This Jesus of Nazereth without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caeser, Muhammad and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on matters human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoke before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. — JOHN SCHAFF

I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer. — Brian D. McLaren

All the modern christian churches have no more authority to preach, baptize, or administer any other ordinance of the gospel than the idolatrous Hindoos have. — Orson Pratt

Modern Christians who find Matthew's preoccupation with [Judaism] tedious and even distasteful, should realise that they live in a very different world from that of early Christians, for whom the 'Jewishness' of Jesus and his church was not just a matter of historical interest but an existential concern crying out for answers, answers which Matthew's gospel offered to provide. — R.T. France

Finally, a principal reason for the lack of attention to "unclean spirits" and Jesus' "acts of power" in the Gospel stories is surely the modern "scientific" frame of mind that developed in the wake of the Enlightenment reduction of reality to what was natural and comprehensible by reason. — Richard A. Horsley

Let us not fear the opposition of men; every great movement in the Church from Paul down to modern times has been criticized on the ground that it promoted scensoriousness and intolerance and disputing. Of course the gospel of Christ, in a world of sin and doubt will cause disputing; and if does not cause disputing and arrouse bitter opposition, that is a fairly sure sign that it is not being faithfully proclaimed. — John Gresham Machen

You don't understand that one can be an atheist, one can not know whether God exists or why, and at the same time know that man does not live in nature but in history, and that in present-day understanding it was founded by Christ, that its foundation is the Gospel. And what is history? It is the setting in motion of centuries of work at the gradual unriddling of death and its eventual overcoming. Hence the discovery of mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, hence the writing of symphonies. It is impossible to move on in that direction without a certain uplift. These discoveries call for spiritual equipment. The grounds for it are contained in the Gospel. They are these. First, love of one's neighbor, that highest form of living energy, overflowing man's heart and demanding to be let out and spent, and then the main component parts of modern man, without which he is unthinkable
namely, the idea of the free person and the idea of life as sacrifice. — Boris Pasternak

The modern preacher who devotes his energies to church administration, to counseling, and to preaching sermons to people, most of whom have already obeyed the Gospel, has no close parallel in the church of the first century. — Jack P. Lewis

This is gospel-humility, blessed self-forgetfulness. Not thinking less of myself as in modern cultures, or less of myself as in traditional cultures. Simply thinking of myself less. — Timothy Keller

We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum. God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. — A.W. Tozer

Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society that is inevitably transforming because it is constantly engaged. Grand Christian movements will rise and fall. Grand campaigns will be mounted and grand coalitions assembled. But all together such coordinated efforts will never match the influence of untold numbers of followers of Christ living out their callings faithfully across the vastness and complexity of modern society. — Os Guinness

Much of modern preaching is anaemic, with the life-blood of God's nature absent from the message. Evangelists centre their message upon the man. Man has sinned and missed a great blessing. If man wants to retrieve his immense loss he must act thus and so. But the Gospel of Christ is very different. It begins with God and His glory. It tells men that they have offended a holy God, who will by no means pass by sin. It reminds sinners that the only hope of salvation is to be found in the grace and power of this same God. Christ's Gospel sends men to beg pardon of the Holy One. — Walter Chantry

Luke would have had no idea what we in the modern world even mean when we say the word "history." The notion of history as a critical analysis of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern age; it would have been an altogether foreign concept to the gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths. — Reza Aslan

Anybody who loves country music loves gospel. Even they are competing with the same type of problem that I'm competing with. We older artists are competing with the new style of country, with their new modern style of gospel, with the young people. — George Jones

No truth is more pervasive in Scripture and Christian tradition than this one - that real freedom is found in obedience and servanthood. And yet no truth is more incongruent with modern culture. Here we stand before a stark either-or: the gospel message of true freedom versus the culture's ideal of self-creation, autonomy, and living my way. — Roger E. Olson

Because modern Protestants have not only forgotten what Rome was, what she is, and what she will for ever be; the most irreconcilable and powerful enemy of the Gospel of Christ; but they consider her almost as a branch of the church whose corner stone is Christ. — Charles Chiniquy

The modern-day gospel says, 'God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.' Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, 'You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do. — David Platt

The truth is that modern atheists have constructed their position very carefully so that they can never be asked why they hold it. Like the annoying Christian who declares he's had a "special" religious experience that has wholly persuaded him of the Gospel's absolute truth, the New Atheist declares that his entire life and education is an "anti" religious experience, which proves, without further discussion, that there is no God. Any evidence the believer suggests that there might be a God is dismissed by the New Atheists as not being evidence at all. — Peter Hitchens

Jesus didn't just give hugs; He also gave a hammer. Paul didn't just pass on holy kisses; he also tirelessly dealt out swift and holy kicks to the rear end of the ancient church. The Bible has the manly stuff intact, and that is why it is such a great mystery how it got lost in the modern church. — Eric Ludy

The struggle of the spirit against the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not wish to have any part in it. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no meed for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer four our sins and redeem us from guilt. — Thomas C. Oden