Several people across social media have recently linked to this sermon clip by Alistair Begg claiming it is "the best 3 minutes of preaching you will ever hear":
I beg to differ. (No pun intended)
The main thrust of this clip is the preacher's concern that anybody might mistakenly takes "works" to have anything to do with the "ground of our salvation".
Yes, we must guard against thinking obedience to Christ plays any role in salvation, for heaven's sake!
Begg asks "the old question", "If you were to die tonight and you were getting entry into heaven, what would you say?"
It might be an "old" question, but it is also a terribly misguided question, for at least two reasons:
First, nobody is getting entry into heaven when they die - not until we've all been given resurrection bodies and faced the Great Throne on The Day of Judgment.
Second, this sort of pop theology scenario of answering the angel's question at the pearly gates only reinforces what Matthew Bates would call the "truncated gospel" - i.e. "that the ultimate goal for humanity is spiritual bliss in heaven" rather than a more robust and biblical understanding of the gospel as "embodied participation in the new heavens and the new earth" under the governance of Jesus, our King. (Salvation by Allegiance Alone, p.29)
Remember that the first time the word "gospel" appears in the New Testament is in Matthew 4:23, which says that Jesus "went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people."
Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom for three years. What was He saying about His own death during that time?
In the clip, Begg goes on specifically to equate "Jesus on the cross" with "the gospel".
But that, brothers and sisters, is a severely truncated gospel. It is serving up one slice of a much larger pie.
No wonder why people are hungry for more.
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