The term gospel, while it means good news, is in this connection used only of that specific way of salvation which God publishes in His Word by which a meritless sinner may be perfectly and eternally saved on no other terms than that he believe on Christ as his Savior. The preacher is appointed the demanding task of an accurate presentation of that Gospel. On the basis of the fact that God has made his greatest effort (the gift of His Son) that sinners might be saved, it is reasonable to conclude that any inaccuracy in preaching, which misrepresents the truth and thus misleads the unsaved will be subject to divine censure. This is precisely the unrevoked warning given in Galatians 1:8,9.  

This anathema, which is wholly justified, should cause every preacher to tremble with fear. Over against the notion that any person with zeal- whether they have knowledge or not- can preach the gospel, is the fact that many of the greatest orthodox scholars of the world have given their lives to the task of a right understanding of that which enters fundamentally into the Gospel. Some common errors in gospel preaching are listed here: 

2. By careless language, giving the unsaved the impression that God is love and rich in mercy and that He forgives sin directly as an act of kindness, generosity, or leniency. God does forgive, but it is only on the righteous ground that the required penalty for sin is born by the Savior. It is for this reason that the sinner must come to God by Jesus Christ and that salvation is conditioned on faith in Christ. There is no need for Christ to die if God is free to make light of the sinner's sin by a mere attitude of graciousness apart from satisfaction because of outraged holiness. 

3. By demanding repentance as a separate act in addition to believing on Christ. This destructive error will not be committed by those who have given reasonable study to all that is involved. In the first place, repentance, according to the Bible, is a change of mind, which may, or may not, be accompanied with heart anguish. In the second place, the repentance required- and it is required- for the salvation of a soul is included in believing. The sinner cannot turn to Christ in confidence from any other dependence without a change of mind which is repentance (cf. I Thess. 1:9,10). No measurement will ever be made in this world of the harm to souls that has been wrought by their having been told that they must first repent and then believe. The preacher will do well to ponder three facts: (a) The Gospel by John, which is written that men may believe and be saved (John 20:31), never employs the word repentance; (b) that the Epistle to the Romans, written to provide the complete analysis of salvation by grace, does not use the word repentance, except 2:4, in relation to lost men; and (c) upwards of 115 times the salvation of a soul is made to depend upon believing, and 35 times on its synonym faith apart from any other requirement whatsoever. The one who insists that repentance is a separate act must face the question thus created as to whether the words of Christ and Paul, which restrict salvation to believing, are misleading because of their inadequacy (cf. John 3:16; Acts 16:31). Since repentance is a part of believing, the term might be used as a synonym of believing, or it may be mentioned separately- as it is in a very few passages; but always as a subdivision of the one all important theme of believing. 

4. By the grace-shattering error of insisting that a public confession of Christ is required in addition to saving faith. But one passage in involved in this discussion: 

A thoughtless use of this passage implies that the confession referred to is a confession to men; not remembering that a very considerable percentage of those who are saved accept Christ at a time and place where no public confession is possible. The confession is that of the soul electing Christ as Savior and is to God alone. As Abraham said Amen to the promise of God and was by faith counted righteous, so, in like manner, from his own heart and as the expression of his own confidence, the sinner acknowledges to God that Christ is his Savior. A sinner, having accepted Christ, may confess him as a testimony; but that is far removed from the notion that to be saved one must both believe and confess Christ before men. If this double requirement were really God's will, he could not have left out the idea of confession from any one of the 150 passages which condition salvation by faith alone. 

6. By requiring that one accept Christ and agree to a certain manner of life. The practice of confusing the Gospel with the manner of life a person should live after he is saved, is calculated not only to distract the attention of the unsaved from the Gospel, but to defeat the very power and effect of it. I cannot be too strongly urged that God is not calling on the unsaved to adopt a manner of life, but He is offering to them His gift, which is eternal life. Nor should the truth be overlooked that the unsaved have no spiritual capacity by which they can face the problems of a Christian's daily life. Those problems belong to a Spirit-guided mind and demand for their solution the presence of those new desires, which come with regeneration. 

7. By demanding that one believe and ask for salvation. Since God is propitious (I John 2:2), it is wholly out of order to ask Him to save, as though he must be persuaded to do what He, at infinite cost, has prepared to do. The incident of the publican in the temple is too often assumed to be the norm for the sinner who would be saved under grace. The setting is before the death of Christ and reflects the relationships that existed in the Jewish era. Though the English version makes the publican to say "God be merciful to me a sinner," he really said, God be propitiated to me a sinner. At no time, either in the Old Testament or the New, may one reach God on the ground of mere mercy as such apart from needful sacrifice. The publican asked for propitiation, which was a justifiable request before the cross, but wholly unjustified now. To ask for mercy as such is to assume that God may deal with sin apart from adequate sacrifice. To ask for propitiation is to discard what Christ has done and to ask that something more effective be provided. Men are not saved by getting God to do something; they are saved when they dare to believe that God has done something. ¢