I was very blessed to watch John MacArthur’s Bible teaching seminar the content of that seminar is being made into a brand new book and the great news is – until January 15th, 2017, the book is available for free at this link (by request, for USA residents):

R J Grunewald: http://www.rjgrune.com/blog/distortions-of-the-gospel

The greatest threat to the Christian Church is not the culture we live in. Despised the ever-present culture-wars, it is not the greatest potential of damage to the Church. Christianity has faced cultures far more hostile to the Christian faith and have experienced exponential growth.

The greatest threat to the Christian Church is not those on the outside of the Church, it’s those on the inside.

On the inside of the Church, wolves creep in and twist, misuse, and abandon God’s Word. The insiders use the right words, but use them the wrong ways. They make people feel motivated, but they mix and mingle words in a way that doesn’t point people to the work of Jesus. They muddy the waters of law and grace and leave people confused at best, condemned at worst.

Because this threat comes often from within the Church, it can be incredibly difficult to detect. Teachers with Bible’s in their hands, good intentions, and a large following will inspire and motivate, all the while failing to give people what they need the most.

I want to highlight three of what I’d suggest are the most prevalent and foundational distortions of the Gospel. They aren’t the only distortions, but they are incredibly dangerous and have many other distortions that build upon them.

Distortions of the Gospel

Legalism

Legalism elevates the rules and ignores the Gospel. It’s an abandonment of God’s Two Words for a self-righteous preference for One Word (Law). It focuses on behavior and obedience and minimizes the possibility of failure to obey. Often for the legalist, grace is a past event but not a present reality. Grace got them in, but it’s their effort that keeps them in and progresses them along the way. For the legalist, assurance is always found in good behavior. Instead of an objective act – like the cross – they look to their own devotion, obedience, and commitment.

Legalism creates a dishonest church.

Because legalism requires that we behave in order to belong, we learn to create a facade of holiness. If obedience is how we are accepted by God or your church family, we figure out how to keep the mess hidden.

Consider these words from psychologist Henry Cloud:

“It is interesting to compare a legalistic church with a good AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] group. In the church, it is culturally unacceptable to have problems; that is called being sinful. In the AA group, it is culturally unacceptable to be perfect; that is called denial. In one setting people look better but get worse, and in the other, they look worse but get better.”

Does the Church have a problem with denial?

Grace frees you to put down your masks. Jesus frees you to be the mess that you are. He frees you to stop pretending you’re good enough and trust him to be the one that is good enough.

Lawlessness

Lawlessness is the opposite end of the pendulum. Where legalism elevates the law and dismisses grace, lawlessness elevates grace and dismisses the law. The problem with this distortion of course is what we lose when we lose the law.

The primary function of the Law is to expose us. It reveals that we’re far worse than we thought. Sin is the problem. But if you lose the law, you’re also eliminating an awareness of this problem. And if you are not exposed to your sin, what is the need for a Savior?

The danger with lawlessness is that the lawless will wax poetic about grace, love, and acceptance but never get beyond a hypothetical concept of sin and grace. And that’s a problem. If we only hypothetically know of sin, we only experience a hypothetical forgiveness. If we aren’t willing to call sin a sin, we want look for a real, flesh and blood forgiveness.

Glawspel

Unlike the previous two, this distortion maintains both Law and Gospel, but mixes, mingles, and confuses the two.

Glawspel is when people are giving the commands of God, revealing our sin and calling it grace. This distortion is dangerous because it leads to confusion and despair. We despair as grace is always out of reach and full of burdens.

For example, you could hear a preacher say, “Grace demands that give up whatever is getting in the way of following Jesus.” Or, “Grace requires that you let go of your idols and hold on to Jesus.”

These could sound good if you weren’t listening closely. But think about it, they are impossible statements. And they do nothing but pull us away from the work of grace. Jesus makes demands, he has requirements and rules. He might even tell us to get rid of our idols, but it’s still the Law.

The Law and the Gospel don’t do the same thing; let’s keep our categories straight.

Grace doesn’t make demands, it only gives. And grace always gives to people who can’t meet the demands.

This is why Paul writes:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” – Galatians 1:6-7
A distortion of the Gospel is no Gospel at all. Don’t settle for a mediocre Gospel that burdens and doesn’t ever deliver. Jesus gives what no other ‘gospel’ gives: grace and peace.

The following excerpt is taken from R.C. Sproul’s commentary on Romans, published by Crossway.

The gospel is the possession of Jesus, but, even more, Jesus is the heart of the content of the gospel.

We use it so glibly in the church today. Preachers say they preach the gospel, but if we listen to them preach Sunday after Sunday, we hear very little gospel in what they are preaching. The term gospel has become a nickname for preaching anything rather than something with definitive content. The word for “gospel” is the word euangelion. It has that prefix eu-, which comes into English in a variety of words. We talk about euphonics or euphonious music, which refers to something that sounds good. We talk about a eulogy, which is a good word pronounced about someone at his funeral service. The prefix eu- refers to something good or pleasant. The word angelos or angelion is the word for “message.” Angels are messengers, and an angelos is one who delivers a message.

This word euangelion, which means “good message” or “good news,” has a rich background in the Old Testament. There, the basic meaning of the term gospel was simply an announcement of a good message. If a doctor came to examine a sick person and afterward declared that the problem was nothing serious, that was gospel or good news. In ancient days when soldiers went out to battle, people waited breathlessly for a report from the battlefield about the outcome. Once the outcome was known, marathon runners dashed back to give the report. That is why Isaiah wrote, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (Isa. 52:7). The watchman in the watchtower would look as far as the eye could see into the distance. Finally, he would see the dust moving as the runner sped back to the city to give the report of the battle. The watchmen were trained to tell by the way the runner’s legs were churning whether the news was good or bad. If the runner was doing the survival shuffle, it indicated a grim report, but if his legs were flying and the dust was kicking up, that meant good news. That is the concept of gospel in its most rudimentary sense.

When we come to the New Testament, we find three distinct ways in which the term gospel is used. First, we have four books in the New Testament that we call Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These books are biographical portraits of Jesus. Gospel in this sense describes a particular form of literature. During the earthly ministry of Jesus, the term gospel was linked not particularly with the person of Jesus but with the kingdom of God. John the Baptist is introduced as one who comes preaching the gospel, and his message is “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:2).

Jesus did the same in his parables, proclaiming, “the kingdom of God is like . . .” On the lips of Jesus, the gospel was about the dramatic moment in history when, through the long-awaited Messiah, the kingdom of God had broken through in time and space. The good news was the good news of the kingdom. By the time the epistles were written, particularly the Pauline epistles, the term gospel had taken on a new shade of understanding. It had become the gospel of Jesus Christ. Gospel had a clear content to it. At the heart of this gospel was the announcement of who Jesus was and what he had accomplished in his lifetime.

If we give our testimony to our neighbors, saying, “I became a Christian last year. I gave my heart to Jesus,” we are bearing witness about Jesus, but we are not telling them the gospel, because the gospel is not about us. The gospel is about Jesus—what he did, his life of perfect obedience, his atoning death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven, and his outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. We call those crucial elements the objective aspects of the New Testament gospel of Christ.

In addition to the person and work of Jesus, there is also in the New Testament use of the term gospel the question of how the benefits accomplished by the objective work of Jesus are subjectively appropriated to the believer. First, there is the question of who Jesus was and what he did. Second is the question of how that benefits you and me. That is why Paul conjoins the objective account of the person and work of Jesus (particularly to the Galatians) with the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which is essential to the gospel. In preaching the gospel we preach about Jesus, and we preach about how we are brought into a saving relationship with him.

The gospel is under attack in the church today. I cannot stress enough how important it is to get the gospel right and to understand both the objective aspect of the person and work of Jesus and the subjective dimension of how we benefit from that by faith alone.

Recently, a Protestant seminary professor, supposedly evangelical, was quoted to me as having said that the doctrine of imputation—by which our sins are transferred to Christ on the cross and his righteousness is transferred to us by faith—is of human invention and has nothing to do with the gospel. I wanted to weep when I heard that. It just underscored how delicate the preservation of the gospel is in our day and how careful the church has to be in every age to guard that precious good news that comes to us from God.