TO THE PREACHERS OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

by William R. Newell

This is the doctrine that Jesus Christ came to reform society (whatever "society" is!); that He came to abate the evils of selfishness, give a larger "vision" to mankind; and, through His example and precepts, bring about such a change in human affairs, social, political, economic and domestic, as would realize all man's deep longings for a peaceful, happy existence upon earth, ushering in what these teachers are pleased to call, "the Kingdom of God."

    1. Now, in the first place, Jesus Christ came to save sinners, not "society."  He said, "The Son of Man hath authority on earth to forgive sins." Now, sins are individual transgressions against a personal God; there is no such thing in Scripture as these social-gospellers dream of, - a condition of "society" to be "changed" or "ameliorated."  All that really exists is the guilt of a vast number of really guilty sinners. "Society" does not exist before God at all; and it is a vast delusion of the devil that sins are dealt with en masse.

    2. Sinners, having been pardoned, find themselves in a blessed fellowship, a really heavenly thing, constituted by the Holy Spirit, who indwells each of them.  But to confuse this fellowship with that these social-gospellers call "society," is to forget that "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

    3. It flatters men's vanity, of course, and shelters them from conviction, to be dealt with as "society," and not as guilty souls needing personal pardon through the shed blood of Christ.  Therefore this gospel (which is not a gospel, but a lie, a delusion of Satan), draws together vast concourses of unconverted men and women, "church-members" and "non-church-members."  Its preachers are plausible and popular, for if "society" is going to be saved in a mass, individual repentance need not be mentioned.  The Jesus of these men...is not the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world by an atoning sacrifice, not the One despised, forsaken, smitten of God, of the fifty-third of Isaiah! He is not at all the substitutionary Sacrifice drinking the cup of wrath for man's guilt!  But He is "the Christ of the Indian Road" - or the Amerian road, the Canadian road, the English road, as you please; walking by the wayside, teaching the multitudes, as in the Four Gospels, BEFORE HE WAS REJECTED AND DIED.  He is not the RISEN CHRIST, with all power in heaven and earth given unto Him...

    I affirm that the present day popular preachers DO NOT KNOW what human guilt before God is! DO NOT KNOW that Christ really bore wrath under God's hand for the sin of the world!  DO NOT KNOW that He was forsaken of God, as the whole race otherwise must have been!  I affirm that they are preaching as if an unrejected, uncrucified Christ were still being offered to the world!  They preach the "character" of Jesus, saying "nice things" of Him, and telling people to "follow His example": while the truly awful fact that Christ "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," that He was "wounded for our transgressions," that He was "forsaken of His God"; that "God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up," and that "for our trespasses," is never told to the poor, wretched people!  Nor are the warned of that literal lake of fire and brimstone into which "everyone one not found written in the book of life" will be cast, and that forever.

    One look into the lost eternity to which these last-days "preachers" are leading those who follow them, renders even the briefest consideration of these men who dare to call themselves "preachers of the gospel," beyond all enduring. (see Jer. 23:9, 16-22).

from Romans Verse By Verse, pp. 46-48