The Spoiled Gospel

In college, I ate a sandwich. Now that sounds a little too boring or self indulgent to begin a note on, that is until I add, the meat in the sandwich was spoiled. I did not realize it at first but three hours and one glass of milk later; I had my head in the toilet. I remember laying on the floor in my bathroom resolving never to eat pork again and begging the Lord to just take me on to glory. I tell you this story not just as a public service announcement on bad eating habits but also to say something about the gospel. The gospel can get spoiled and but the sickness brought on by a spoiled gospel is one that terminates in blindness; a blindness to one’s real condition before God. It is the blindness of false conversion, the first symptom of the terminal illness plaguing many professing Christians. So many today clam they are Christians but lack the healing salve of saving faith all because they partook of a spoiled Gospel, prepared by a spoiled church.

J.C. Ryle, (one of Dawson’s top ten dead dudes to read) wrote a track on how people spoil the gospel. In many ways, Ryle gives us a great outline to understand the various modes of idolatry we must resist. He uncovers our subverive methods of idol making that often spoil ths gospel. Mr Ryle shows us five ways we spoil the gospel. I will give you his points in turn with his description.

1. You may spoil the Gospel by substitution.

You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to faith,—Jesus Christ; and to substitute another object in His place,—the Church, the Ministry, the Confessional, Baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, and the mischief is done. Substitute anything for Christ, and the Gospel is totally spoiled! . . .

2. You may spoil the Gospel by addition.

You have only to add to Christ, the grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honour, and the mischief is done. Add anything to Christ, and the Gospel ceases to be a pure Gospel! . . .


3. You may spoil the Gospel by interposition.

You have only to push something between Christ and the eye of the soul, to draw away the sinner’s attention from the Saviour, and the mischief is done. Interpose anything between man and Christ, and man will neglect Christ for the thing interposed! . . .

4. You may spoil the Gospel by disproportion.

You have only to attach an exaggerated importance to the secondary things of Christianity, and a diminished importance to the first things, and the mischief is done. Once alter the proportion of the parts of truth, and truth soon becomes downright error! . . .

5. You may completely spoil the Gospel by confused and contradictory directions.

Complicated and obscure statements about faith, baptism, Church privileges, and the benefits of the Lord’s Supper, all jumbled together, and thrown down without order before hearers, make the Gospel no Gospel at all!

Confused and disorderly statements of Christianity are almost as bad as no statement at all!

J.C. Ryle

taken from “Knots Untied” first published 1877AD

J. C. Ryle was Evangelical Anglican bishop of Liverpool. He wrote well over two hundred evangelical tracts, of which more than two million were circulated, and many were translated into foreign languages. Throughout his ministry he remained one of the strongest defenders of the evangelical reformed faith within the Church of England.