The Whole Gospel for the Whole Person

All of who we are is covered by the Christian message:

The Christian gospel covers all of life and is able to address all our needs, questions and concerns as human beings. It touches every aspect of life, and there is no part of this world which the Christian gospel does not speak to. We have a wholistic gospel that touches the whole of life.

Many Christians have spoken to this truth. For example, back in 1974 the Lausanne Covenant appeared. Chiefly drafted by John Stott, it was affirmed by the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. In it we find this statement: “Evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”

Here I want to appeal to one other famous Christian from the UK: Martyn Lloyd-Jones. On consecutive Sunday mornings in 1954 at Westminster Chapel in London, he delivered twenty-one sermons on the matter of spiritual depression. A decade later they were released in book form with the title Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures (MarshallPickering, 1965, 1988).

I want to quote from Chapter IV, “Mind, Heart and Will.” He argues that much of our depression as believers can be traced to lacking a whole gospel for the whole person. He uses as his text for this chapter Romans 6:17: “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.” Early on he says this about the passage:

Now this verse is a positive description of the Christian but we can use it in a negative way. The absence of conformity to the description that we have in the verse is one of the common causes of all spiritual depression. Here we have an absolute description of the Christian….

 

You notice that the point he is concerned to emphasize is the wholeness of the Christian life, the balance of the Christian life. It is a life in which one has ‘obeyed’ there is the will—’from the heart’—there is the emotion, the sensibility—’that form of doctrine’ which came to the mind and to the understanding. So that, in describing the Christian the thing he is emphasizing is that there is a wholeness about his life. The whole man is involved, the mind, the heart, and the will, and a common cause of spiritual depression is the failure to realize that the Christian life is a whole life, a balanced life. Lack of balance is one of the most fruitful causes of trouble and discord and disquietude in the life of the Christian man.

 

Once more I have to indicate that the cause of this lack of balance can be laid, I fear too often, to the charge of the preacher or the evangelist. Lop-sided Christians are generally produced by preachers or evangelists whose doctrine lacks balance, or rotundity, or wholeness. (pp. 52-53)

He goes on to say this:

Let me try to divide up the subject briefly. The first is that spiritual depression or unhappiness in the Christian life is very often due to our failure to realize the greatness of the gospel. The apostle talks about ‘the form of doctrine delivered you’, he refers to the ‘standard of teaching’. Now people are often unhappy in the Christian life because they have thought of Christianity and the whole message of the gospel in inadequate terms. Some think that it is merely a message of forgiveness. You ask them to tell you what Christianity is, and they reply, ‘If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven’, and they stop at that. That is all. They are unhappy about certain things in their past and they hear that God in Christ will forgive them. They take their forgiveness, and there they stop—that is all their Christianity. There are others who conceive of it as morality only. Their view of themselves is that they do not need forgiveness, but they desire an exalted way of life. They want to do good in this world, and Christianity to them is an ethical, moral programme. Such people are bound to be unhappy. Certain problems will inevitably arise in their lives that are strictly outside morality—someone’s death, some personal relationship. Morality and ethics will not help at that point, and what they regard as the gospel is useless to them in that situation. They are unhappy when the blow comes because they have never had an adequate view of the gospel. It has been but a partial view; they have simply seen one aspect. (pp. 54-55)

Lloyd-Jones then states:

The gospel is not something partial or piecemeal: it takes in the whole of life, the whole of history, the whole world. It tells us about the creation and the final judgment and everything in between. It is a complete, whole view of life, and many are unhappy in the Christian life because they have never realized that this way of life caters for the whole of man’s life and covers every eventuality in his experience. There is no aspect of life but that the gospel has something to say about it. The whole of life must come under its influence because it is all-inclusive; the gospel is meant to control and govern every­thing in our lives. If we do not realize that, we are certain sooner or later to find ourselves in an unhappy condition. So many, because they indulge in these harmful and unscriptural dichotomies and only apply their Christianity to certain aspects of their lives, are bound to be in trouble. It is quite inevitable. That is the first thing we see here. We must realize the greatness of the gospel, its vast eternal span. We must dwell more on the riches, and in the riches, of these great doctrinal absolutes. We must not always stay in the gospels. We start there but we must go on; and then as we see it all worked out and put into its great context we shall realize what a mighty thing the gospel is, and how the whole of our life is meant to be governed by it.

 

That brings us to the second point, which is that in the same way as we often fail to realize the greatness and the wholeness of the message, we also fail to realize that the whole man must likewise be involved in it and by it—’Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.’ Man is a wonderful creature; he is mind, he is heart, and he is will. Those are the three main constituents of man. God has given him a mind, he has given him a heart, and he has given him a will whereby he can act. Now one of the greatest glories of the gospel is this, that it takes up the whole man. Indeed, I go so far as to assert that there is nothing else that does that; it is only this complete gospel, this complete view of life and death and eternity, that is big enough to include the whole man. It is because we fail to realize this that many of our troubles arise. We are partial in our response to this great gospel. (pp. 55-56)

Consider the believer who is all head but no heart:

Let me suggest some details in order to substantiate my point. There are some people in whose case the head only seems to be in use—the intellect, the understanding. They tell us that they are tremendously interested in the gospel as a point of view, as a Christian philosophy. These are the people who are always talking about the Christian outlook or, to use present-day jargon, Christian insights. It is something purely philosophical, something entirely intellectual. I think you will agree that there are large numbers of people in that position at the present time. Christianity is to them a matter of tremendous interest, and they believe and proclaim that if only this Christian point of view could be applied in politics, in industry, and in every other circle all our troubles would be solved. It is entirely the intellectual attitude and point of view.

 

There are others, not so many today perhaps as there used to be, whose sole interest in the gospel is their interest in theology and doctrine and metaphysics and in great problems, arguments, and discussions. I speak of past days; days that are gone. I do not want to defend them, but they were infinitely preferable to the present position. There were people then whose only interest in the gospel was their interest in theological problems, and they argued about them and discussed them. Their minds were very much engaged; this was their intellectual hobby and interest. But the tragedy was that it stopped at that interest, and their hearts had never been touched. Not only was there an absence of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in their lives but there was often an absence of the ordinary milk of human kindness. Those men would argue and almost fight about particular doctrines, but they were often hard men to approach. You would never go to them if you were in trouble; you felt that they would neither understand nor sympathize. Still worse, the truth they were so interested in was not at all applied in their lives; it was something confined to their studies. It did not touch their conduct or behaviour at all but was confined entirely to the mind. Obviously they were bound, sooner or later, to get into difficulty and to become unhappy. Have you ever seen a man like that facing the end of his life? Have you seen him when he can no longer read, or when he is on his death-bed? I have seen one or two, and I do not want to see another. It is a terrible thing when a man reaches the point when he knows that he must die, and the gospel that he has argued about and reasoned about and even ‘defended’ does not seem to help him because it has never gripped him. It was just an intellectual hobby. (p. 57)

However, other believers can be all heart but no head:

But there are others in whose case the gospel seems to affect the heart only. This is more common today. These are the people who feel that they have had an emotional release; they have passed through an emotional crisis. I do not want to disparage this, but there is a real danger in having a purely emotional experience only. These are people who may have some problem in their lives. They may have committed some particular sin. They have tried to forget it, but they cannot get away from it. At last they hear a message that seems to give them deliverance from that one thing, and they accept it, and all is well. But they stop at that. They wanted this particular release, and they have had it. That can be obtained from an incomplete presentation of the gospel, and it leads to a partial and incomplete experience. Such people, because they desire that primarily, have had an emotional experience and nothing else. (pp. 57-58)

He also looks at those only emphasising the will, and then ties these three main aspects of the human being together:

Let me sum up this point by putting it like this. These are the people who decide to take up Christianity instead of being taken up by Christianity. They have never known this feeling of constraint, this feeling of, ‘I can do no other, so help me God’, that they must, that everything else has to be excluded, that the truth has so come to them that they must accept it. That is what Paul is saying in this chapter….

 

Let me emphasize this. Sometimes, as I have been showing, you will find people who have only one part of their personality engaged only—head only, heart only, will only. We will agree that they must be wrong. Yes, but let us be clear about this, it is equally wrong to have any two only. It is equally wrong to have the head and the heart only without the will, or the head and the will without the heart, or the heart and the will without the head. That is the thing I think the Apostle is impressing upon us. The Christian position is threefold; it is the three together, and the three at the same time, and the three always. A great gospel like this takes up the whole man, and if the whole man is not taken up think again as to where you stand. ‘You have obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine delivered unto you.’ What a gospel! What a glorious message! It can satisfy man’s mind completely, it can move his heart entirely, and it can lead to wholehearted obedience in the realm of the will. That is the gospel. Christ has died that we might be complete men, not merely that parts of us may be saved; not that we might be lop-sided Christians, but that there may be a balanced finality about us. (pp. 59-60)

Such great words from ‘The Doctor’.

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