When You Present the Gospel, How Much of It Is about Heaven?

When Jesus or the disciples offered the gospel to an outsider, did they focus on the issue of ultimate destination, heaven or hell? The emergent church and other evangelicals are criticizing the traditional church for having too narrow a view of salvation. How do you present the gospel to outsiders? Is going to heaven and escaping hell the main biblical "point" of salvation? I decided to re-read the book of Acts with careful attention to the way Jesus’ disciples presented the gospel. What I found surprised me.

When Jesus or the disciples offered the gospel to an outsider, did they focus on the issue of ultimate destination, heaven or hell? The emergent church and other evangelicals are criticizing the traditional church for having too narrow a view of salvation. How do you present the gospel to outsiders? Is going to heaven and escaping hell the main biblical "point" of salvation? I decided to re-read the book of Acts with careful attention to the way Jesus’ disciples presented the gospel. What I found surprised me.

I found in Acts an echo of Jesus’ call to salvation in the gospels: a call to repentance and forgiveness of sins. But more than that–a life characterized by blessing and the refreshment of our souls with living water, drawn from the presence of Christ himself. Peter’s sermon in Acts 3:19-20 is a good example : "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago."

While the epistles unpack the idea of substitutionary atonement, the "how" of our entry into the Kingdom of God, the message of the gospels focuses on the "what for" of repentance: God’s gracious forgiveness and reconciliation to the "presence of the Lord." A departed Jesus that the disciples can no longer see, but whose presence remains with them and us always, even to the end of the age. A presence that refreshes us now and will ultimately restore all the things foretold by the prophets—new heavens, new earth. Heaven and restoration is part of the promise but the emphasis is on forgiveness and reconciliation to the immediate presence of the LORD.

This is not the way my church framed the gospel growing up, but I have come to love the richness and multi-dimensionality of this message. Emergents and other evangelicals believe that the traditional approach diminishes the gospel by interpreting the offer of "eternal life" as a "ticket to heaven" and escape from hell, rather than an invitation to enter an eternal kind of life with God and find refreshment in his presence.

In his book Deep Church: a third way between traditional and emergent Jim Belcher challenges his readers: Does our gospel presentation begin and end with the message of the cross or does it include the message of the resurrection and an invitation to enter an eternal kind of life in God’s kingdom?

To enter the kingdom is to enter the life of God—his power at work to forgive our sins and put to death our sinful desires/choices and his presence—Emmanuel God with us. Belcher cautions his readers that to place emphasis on his Kingdom rule without his atonement and penal substitution tends toward legalism. But he challenges us to link the atonement (the how of salvation) to the kingdom of God (the what for of salvation).

In the same way the snake was lifted up in the wilderness so that all who were bitten and dying might look and live, John 3 makes it clear that anyone may be saved if they have enough faith to look to the Savior. But if we are snake-bit and dying, what are we looking to the Savior for? A "ticket to heaven"? An eternal kind of life that begins now by restoring us to the presence of the Living God? How we frame the gospel for others may determine how they see and live the gospel–as a fire insurance policy safely stored and forgotten? Or as a new eternal way of life?

The gospel is not a "destination theology" but so much more!

How do you present the gospel in ways that invite people into more than a "ticket to heaven"?