TWO GOSPELS - Rick McKinley’s Beautiful Mess November 7, 2006
“What do you mean ‘two gospels?’” you might be saying to yourself. You might be expecting me to go into some weird new (or actually not so new) heresy of there being more than one gospel.
What I am speaking of is an interesting observation, explained more fully by Rick McKinley in his recent book This Beautiful Mess (Multnomah Publishing, 2006). McKinley, pastor of Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, writes of the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus. McKinley explains it like this:
• The Gospel of Jesus–this is the announcement of the kingdom and his loving actions in his earthly ministry. Traditionally practiced in more liberal churches with a high emphasis on social justice, mercy ministry, political activism, social work and community service.
• The Gospel about Jesus–his work on the cross, his resurrection and how we can receive forgiveness through faith. Typified by most conservative churches with a high emphasis on proclamation of the gospel, personal conversion and obedient living.
McKinley proposes that a synthesis of these two gospels together are the actual true gospel: you cannot have one without the other and have it be the true gospel. Imbalance on either end leads to bitterness, despair and division—one needs only to look at the political battles waging as election day looms near. On one side you have liberals proudly proclaiming themselves as progressives, sensitive to the lower and middle class, against the war on terror and characterizing their opponents as “the religious right.” Against them are the conservatives, the flag-waving, Bush-loving, war-supporting, Bible-thumping rednecks who pit their “family values” against “the religious left.” What remains is not only a fractured country but a divided kingdom. What you are left with is no gospel at all.
The gospel that Christ himself lived and preached is a seamless combination of both “gospels.”
McKinley writes:
“If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ’s message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom.”
The reality of the kingdom, however, as described by Jesus is not one or the other. A full-orbed perspective on the kingdom, how it has been ushered in and how it should advance is the ongoing work of His people in “this beautiful mess” we call the kingdom of God. It’s about proclamation but it also about reconciliation. It’s about conversion but it also about showing mercy. As a means of helping the kingdom advance, the redeemed live in tension between the perfect world to come and the present world that is in need of redemption. Until that day of consummation arrives, the church plows ahead in kingdom living–serving, loving, ministering and living out the faith we have been given.
Rick McKinley’s new book is out, This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
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