Having listened to a great deal of N.T. Wright and various other NPP proponents and opponents, I am thankful for the correction of what the true gospel is... the proclamation of Jesus as Lord and Messiah and all the various consequences of that, including individual salvation. But what happens when a secondary consequence becomes the gospel itself? Is it a false gospel? My tentative answer is yes.

If the gospel is primarily that proclamation of the reality that Jesus of Nazareth is both Lord and Christ, then a false gospel would necessarily have to assert the negative, Jesus is not Lord and Christ. It is true that a secondary consequence of the true gospel is that individuls can be saved (I would even want to qualify this, but I'm willing to let it stand as is). Now, how is it this individual salvation preached?

It is preached with the underlying premise that the individual is sovereign, and therefore chooses Christ (a.k.a., accepts Christ into his/her heart) to be their saviour. This would seem to be asserting de facto that the individual is Lord (though not necessarily Christ), thus a false gospel. This simple shift in the gospel message would also seem to account for many of the schizophrenic beliefs that many believers have today.

Assurance. If I am the one choosing God, then what ultimate assurance do I have? How can I have assurance when my choices are not immutable. What will keep me from "un-choosing" him later? Many would say that God will keep me. That's true. Many know the right answer, but remember their whole salvation experience was predicated on them choosing him. There experience doesn't mesh with the truth. Hence the schizophrenia and the need for assurance of the doctrine of assurance.

Existentialism. If I choose him, then who ultimately defines truth? Well, once again, any good Christian knows the right answer. But the de facto situation is that I become the determiner of truth. My existence and experience become the bedrock for not only interpreting Scripture (trying to answer the question "What does Scripture mean to me?" as opposed to "What does this mean period?") to interpreting history and the sacraments. Baptism doesn't have a whole lot of meaning, we just do it because it seems to be the tradition, but we really have no idea what it means.

Law/Gospel. Under the true gospel this poses no problem. The true King makes the rules, plain and simple. When I am preached as sovereign and the works that I would impose conflict with his, in order to completely bypass this problem, lets just pit law against gospel and call law bad. Then the only law becomes law is evil. And who's saying this? Me, the king.

Gnosticism. With the breakdown of law, which deals with deeds done in the flesh and having said that law is evil, then my flesh must be evil. Why care about it so much? Lets just focus on life-after-death, instead of life-after-life-after-death (Wright's phrase) and the total destruction of the world based on the premillennialist view. It's not worth saving anyway.

This also all leads to the need for the believer to replace the pastor with the Christian psychologist. We need someone to help us with all the problems that arise and drive us crazy from accepting a false gospel.