Can we just stop people in the church from using terms like “gospel-focused” or “gospel-centered” for the next couple of years? It seems this has been the terminology du jour much in the same way that there used to be “Christ-centered” or “Bible-based” as these good-sounding but ill-defined adjectives that various strains of evangelicals have applied to themselves, their churches, or whatever for no real reasons other than the terms sound good and give people good feelings.
I am sure that in all cases the use of these terms started out as well-meaning and sincere but once they went mainstream they were applied so broadly that they soon lost whatever value they may have had. The word “gospel” as an adjective is headed in the same direction.
The first text that sprung to mind from this suggestion was 1 Corinthians 1:12:
What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”
Most commentators I have checked believe that the last sect was in fact a sect. For example, Reformed Baptist John Gill says this:
and I of Christ; which some take to be the words of the apostle, declaring who he was of, and for, and belonged unto; intimating that they, as he, should call no man father, or master, on earth, or be called by any other name than that of Christ. Others consider them as the words of the Corinthians, a small part of them who were very mean and contemptible, and therefore mentioned last, who chose to be known and called by no other name than that of Christians; but I rather think that these design a faction and party, to be condemned as the others. These were for Christ, in opposition to Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, and any other ministers of the word. They were for Christ without his ministers; they were wiser than their teachers; they were above being under any ministrations and ordinances; as the others attributed too much to the ministers of the Gospel, these detracted too much from them, and denied them to be of any use and service. Some persons may be, in such sense, for Christ, as to be blame worthy; as when they use his name to deceive men, or divide his interest.
Adam Clarke said this:
But it is very easy to conceive that, in a Church so divided, a party might be found, who, dividing Christ from his ministers, might be led to say, “We will have nothing to do with your parties, nor with your party spirit; we are the disciples of Christ, and will have nothing to do with Paulians, Apollonians, or Kephians, as contradistinguished from Christ.” The reading ??????? for ??????? is not acknowledged by any MS. or version.
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I wonder how often this schismatic option has recurred in history without our noticing it: somehow, a sect turns the essentials into their “distinctives”, thereby implying that no one else in the church has the essentials.