The church faces a similar danger when it waters down the gospel to make it more culturally acceptable. To attract people and avoid offense, many churches focus on self-help, empowerment, and positivity rather than the full message of Christ.
By Dr. Tim Orr
Imagine a doctor who has the cure for a deadly disease but keeps diluting the medicine so that it tastes better. Eventually, the medicine becomes so weak that it no longer heals the sick. The patients may enjoy the taste but remain just as ill as before—if not worse.
The church faces a similar danger when it waters down the gospel to make it more culturally acceptable. To attract people and avoid offense, many churches focus on self-help, empowerment, and positivity rather than the full message of Christ. While these themes are not inherently wrong, they become dangerous when they replace the core of the gospel—sin, judgment, repentance, and salvation through Christ.
A man once said that Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good but to make dead people live. This statement captures the very essence of the gospel. The problem with humanity is not just moral failure but spiritual death. The Apostle Paul makes this clear:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1, NIV).
The gospel is not about behavior modification; it is about resurrection. The late J.I. Packer warns that modern Christianity is often reduced to a “small-scale therapeutic religion,” where God is seen as a divine therapist rather than the sovereign King who raises the dead (Packer, 1973). Instead of confronting people with their sins and need for salvation, many churches preach a message that offers life enhancement rather than eternal life.
C.S. Lewis similarly criticized this tendency. In Mere Christianity, he writes:
"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing to say to people who do not know they need any forgiveness" (Lewis, 1952, p. 37).
The gospel loses its urgency without the full weight of sin and redemption. If sin is just a minor flaw to be fixed rather than a death sentence from which we must be rescued, then the cross is reduced to an inspiring story rather than a pivotal moment in human history.
Many churches today hesitate to preach repentance, fearing it will alienate people. Instead, they emphasize messages of self-improvement, inner healing, and personal success. David Wells critiques this trend in No Place for Truth, arguing that evangelicalism has become more about meeting felt needs than proclaiming the holiness of God:
“Evangelicalism has trivialized God, replacing Him with a deity who is useful but not sovereign. This therapeutic gospel reassures but does not transform” (Wells, 1993, p. 114).
This is why many people can sit in church for years and never truly understand the gospel. They are told that Jesus loves them, but they are not told that His love required Him to die in their place. They hear that God wants to bless them but are not told that following Christ means taking up their cross.
The tragedy of a diluted gospel is that it creates false converts—people who believe they are Christians because they attend church, pray, and seek God’s blessings but have never truly repented and surrendered to Christ. Jesus Himself warned of this:
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21, NIV).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace, he explains, is “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Costly grace, on the other hand, demands everything:
“It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life” (Bonhoeffer, 1995, p. 45).
This message shaped the early church. The gospel was not presented as a tool for personal happiness but as a radical call to die to self and live for Christ. The early Christians did not attract followers by offering motivational talks; they preached Christ crucified, a message Paul himself admitted was offensive (1 Corinthians 1:23).
In contrast, much of today’s preaching seeks to remove the gospel's offense. Even controversial biblical truths—such as the reality of hell, the exclusivity of Christ, and the need for repentance—are either ignored or softened to fit contemporary sensibilities. But when we remove the gospel's offensive parts, we remove its power.
In Christ and Culture, Richard Niebuhr describes how Christianity has often adapted to cultural trends rather than confronting them. He critiques a form of Christianity that proclaims, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross” (Niebuhr, 1951, p. 193).
This is precisely what we see in many churches today. Cultural Christianity has redefined the gospel to be about self-fulfillment rather than self-denial. Instead of calling people to repentance, some churches affirm lifestyles and choices that contradict Scripture, all in the name of inclusivity. Instead of warning about the coming judgment, they preach that God accepts everyone just as they are, without transformation.
Yet history shows that the church flourishes when it stands against culture, not when it conforms. The early church did not grow by adapting to Rome’s pagan values; it grew because it boldly proclaimed Christ's uniqueness in a hostile world.
So, how can the church return to the full gospel?
Just as a doctor must never dilute life-saving medicine, the church must never dilute the life-saving message of the gospel. A gospel that omits sin, judgment, and the call to repentance is no gospel at all—it is a placebo, a false comfort that leaves souls unhealed.
The world does not need a feel-good message; it needs the truth that brings eternal life. We must return to the full gospel, proclaiming Christ crucified and resurrected as the only hope for humanity. Only then will the church fulfill its mission and see true transformation in the lives of those it seeks to reach.
Bonhoeffer, D. (1995). The Cost of Discipleship. Touchstone.
Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. HarperOne.
Niebuhr, R. (1951). Christ and Culture. Harper & Row.
Packer, J. I. (1973). Knowing God. InterVarsity Press.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Biblica.
Wells, D. (1993). No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Eerdmans.
Tim Orr is a scholar of Islam, Evangelical minister, conference speaker, and interfaith consultant with over 30 years of experience in cross-cultural ministry. He holds six degrees, including a master’s in Islamic studies from the Islamic College in London. Tim taught Religious Studies for 15 years at Indiana University Columbus and is now a Congregations and Polarization Project research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis. He has spoken at universities, including Oxford University, Imperial College London, the University of Tehran, Islamic College London, and mosques throughout the U.K. His research focuses on American Evangelicalism, Islamic antisemitism, and Islamic feminism, and he has published widely, including articles in Islamic peer-reviewed journals and three books.