Why I am not Gospel Centered

Preaching the whole counsel of God's word requires moving past the basics of the faith

Heb 5:11-6:1-3 ESV]
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.
13 For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
3 And this we will do if God permits.

What is Gospel Centered Preaching

Yesterday, I said something in the sermon that I have never said before. I said that we are not a "gospel-centered" church. I want to take a moment to clarify that because it will affect the way we think about ministry going forward. The term "gospel-centered" is one that was popularized in many evangelical churches through the Gospel Coalition. The Gospel Coalition was a group of pastors and teachers that banded together on the basis of their common view of the gospel in the early 2000s. Led by figures such as Tim Keller, Mark Dever, and John Piper, the Gospel Coalition grew in popularity before losing its influence in the 2020s when Piper retired, Keller died, and Dever ran into trouble for his liberal political views.

One of the forms of preaching that they popularized was called "gospel-centered preaching," and these pastors were incredibly effective and fruitful communicators. They advocated for having Jesus Christ at the center of all that you do—preaching, giving, relationships, church—and letting the application flow from that. This is really good. I wholeheartedly agree with that model and think that it is soundly biblical. Romans 1-11 comes first and answers the question: "What is the gospel?" Then Romans 12-15 flows from those truths to answer: "How then shall we live?" This pattern is actually everywhere in the New Testament—first, what is the truth, and then how do we live based on that truth.

What it became

However, the reason why I do not call myself gospel-centered is because gospel-centered preaching started to morph into something different among the followers of those pastors. People wanted to preach like Tim Keller, but they weren’t as good as Tim Keller! And what many pastors ended up doing was preaching messages where the main point was always the atoning work of Christ. Every old testament story was an illustration of Christ, and every call to obedience was couched in caveats about the atoning work of Christ.

Just this year, I was texting a friend of mine who was going to preach out of 1 Kings 13. In the passage, a young prophet fails to obey God’s word, turns aside, and eats in a place that he was commanded not to. As a result, he is killed by a lion on his way home. The lion then sits next to the body, along with the donkey that the young prophet was riding, and all who pass by see what happened and are afraid. He asked me what I make of the lion standing next to the prophet, and I told him that I thought the lion stood there next to the donkey without eating the prophet to demonstrate to everyone who passed by that God did this. It is unnatural for the lion not to eat the man, or for the donkey not to be terrified of the lion. What is happening here is supernatural and obviously done by the hand of God so that people would fear and obey God. He thought that was true enough, but that the main point of this passage was that Jesus rode on a donkey as our true prophet who was killed as the Lion of Judah. This is gospel-centered preaching. Jesus and his atonement are the high water mark of the message.

Now, did my friend sin by preaching this way? Of course not. But I do have a sharp disagreement with him on what God was trying to communicate with the passage. I do not believe that God was trying to communicate His Son’s atoning death here. It is not wrong to use this as an illustration of Christ’s death, but when we make it the main point, I worry that we are actually robbing the text of its natural meaning. And if we consistently carve out the natural meaning of the word, with its concrete application, we will never do what the author of Hebrews wants us to do: actually move on from the foundations of faith, to things that are further up and further in. Instead, we will say: "Let me be the teacher, and you just keep suckling that bottle of milk while I enjoy this steak over here."

Fears of Legalism

The reason why gospel-centered preaching became so popular is that the big fear of the church at the time was legalism. Many in the Gospel Coalition were Reformed Christians, and Reformed Christians love the Reformation. What was recovered in the Reformation? Many things, but one of them was the glorious doctrine of justification by faith alone. Martin Luther standing against the Roman Catholic Church and declaring "Here I stand" is perhaps the most famous and iconic moment for many Reformed Christians in church history. We want to emulate our heroes. This is good and natural. And so, we want to stand on the gospel of grace with Martin Luther!

The only problem is that we are not fighting the Catholic Church in the same way that Luther was. Most of the people we are preaching to do not wrestle with legalism. They don’t believe that they are going to spend thousands of years in purgatory—even if they are in Christ—because they skipped mass on a Sunday morning. They don’t believe that failing to confess all their sin to a priest will result in added time of suffering after death. In fact, most evangelical Christians have no fear of God at all! This is most acutely seen in our music. Look up the most popular songs of 2025 in Protestant churches, and you will find songs that are mostly aimed at making us feel good about the grace of God toward us. This is a wonderful thing, and we ought to sing about it. I’m not saying we should get rid of songs about God’s love or grace by any means. In fact, they should be the majority of our songs, in my opinion! I am merely pointing out that legalism is not the thing that we are battling today, as Luther battled it then. We are inundated, soaked, and showered with messages on the free love and grace of God to sinners.

And what is ironic, is that the hermeneutic employed by gospel centered preachers is actually the same hermeneutic that led to the legalistic tendencies of the Roman church. Seeing Christ in everything is very similar to interpreting scripture allegorically. And while this is a valid way of interpreting some scripture as Paul tells us in Galatians (gal 4:24) it is also a great way to smuggle our own meaning into the text! When Jesus says that you will not get out until you have paid the last penny in the sermon on the mount, this actually is allegorical for purgatory. When the angel says “hail mary full of grace!” This is actually allegorical for her immaculate conception. I could go on, but you can look it up for yourself. Many false doctrines were smuggled into the church through the improper use of allegory. Part of the reformation was recovering salvation by faith, but another part, that we would do well to pay attention to, was a return to understanding the bible rightly, and on its own terms.

How Then Shall We Preach?

If this is true, then what should we do? I think that we should have the same mindset as the author of Hebrews had. We start every Christian by laying that most important and sure foundation of the basics of the gospel. But we do not stay there. We make progress. We try to teach people what Christ commands of them in the workplace, in their families, in politics, in their habits, and in everything He has commanded us. Actually, I think that Keller, Piper, and Dever were pretty good at this! They had many sermons that were practical and helpful, but their followers, in my experience, missed this.

So, I love the gospel, and the gospel is our foundation. But I want to go on building the house. And this means that sometimes the main point of the sermon will not be the atonement. It will be the need for Christian education. Sometimes the main point of the sermon will not be the atonement; it will be how Matthew 24 helps us understand the end times. Sometimes the main point of the sermon will be the finished work of Christ, and we will praise God for that! But not every time. And so, in that sense, I am not gospel-centered. I want to press on, further in and further up, to looking more like Christ in every area of life. And I want a church of mature believers where many of us are able to be teachers of the word, enjoying steak together rather than only drinking warm milk from a bottle our whole lives.