You are the 5th Gospel – A Message from the University Provost

Excerpt from a recent chapel presentation

“There are actually five gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, but most never read the first four.” –Gipsy Smith

The world needs the good news, and I’m talking to 5th gospel people today. Trevecca students and employees, you are the good news. Have you ever stopped to think about this for a moment? Our example may be the most significant example people have of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many will not read the scriptures.

You are the 5th gospel. I want to unpack this with you today, because this captures my imagination in profound ways. We live in a world where we have unlimited access to hundreds and even thousands of people looking at us 24/7. We actually refer to them as followers and these faces show up on our social media platforms.

There is just one thing that I am going to have to ask you to do as brand carriers of the 5th gospel movement. Christ actually spells it out really well for us. He stated these words to the disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Christ uses such powerful words in this moment. This is a command, not a suggestion. He says, you “must” love one another. He says very clearly that everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another. Everyone will know you’re the 5th gospel if you love one another.

And if this command isn’t hard enough, we have to consider what else Christ said about love. In the Gospel of Mark, Christ is approached by a teacher that asked about the most important commandment and the answer was this, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. The second is this, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It starts to get a little difficult when we have to love our neighbor. And if that’s not bad enough, Christ took it a step further in the book of Matthew when He said, “But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you...”

We’ve made it okay to hate one another. We’ve made it okay to embrace division. We’ve normalized social media behaviors in real time, real life, with real people. This is the world’s standard.

Have you ever thought about Christ’s example of loving your enemy? As he hung on the cross, after being brutally beaten, and being mocked and insulted in the waning moments of His life, do you know what He did? He cried out to God on behalf of the people that persecuted Him — “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 5th gospel people, that’s love.

Do we know this kind of love? Is this kind of love still possible today? Has our faith become so shallow that we have become selective in who we will love as Christians? We can wear shirts, build websites and sing songs, and do all of the things that appear to be Christian, but if we are not modeling the love of Christ, we have completely missed the mark. It’s something we wear on the surface, but it’s not who we’ve become by the work of the Holy Spirit. The heart of being the 5th gospel is love.

We think we have the power to love our neighbor. This is not yours to do alone. This is not of your power. I invite you to confess your limitations in this moment. Surrender it today. Invite the God of creation, the savior of the world, to help you to love your neighbor, to love your enemy. This is a divine love — not one that we are meant to do on our own.

We think we are the main character, when Jesus is actually the main character. Jesus has to become the main character of your life. It cannot be that you are the main character and Christ has to fit into the movie of your life. It has to be that we die to ourselves in a way that we become part of His story within humanity.

I speak this to you because I’m serious about the 5th gospel movement. We can have a lot of fun by doing the material things, but that’s not how the world will know you are 5th gospel people. That’s just surface stuff. They will know you are the 5th gospel by how you love one another.

Trevecca, there are actually five gospels, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some will never read the first four.” You are the 5th gospel. Go and be the good news of God’s amazing love.