A Product of the Gospel

Christopher J. H. Wright:

There is a potentially serious misunderstanding in this Lausanne Covenant sentence: "World evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world." Read without referring to what the covenant says about the church's need to examine itself, this sounds like the church is nothing more than the bearer of the message, like a postman delivering a letter. It doesn't really matter if the postman who delivered my letter this morning was committing adultery last night. So long as I get the letter, the moral behavior of the carrier is irrelevant.

But the church is not just the mechanism delivering the gospel. It is also the product of the gospel, and is to be the living, visible proof of the ethically transforming power of the gospel. So the failures and abuses in the worldwide evangelical community are, in the literal New Testament sense of the word, a massive scandal—a stumbling block to the gospel being seen, heard, and accepted. For that, the only answer is repentance and reformation.