Last week, I had a conversation with a Point University graduate (from our years as Atlanta Christian College) who went to Emmanuel School of Religion, now Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan. In the course of our conversation, we started talking about Myron Taylor. While this person was enrolled at ESR, Myron Taylor was actively engaged in the teaching life of the seminary. I’m not a graduate of ESR, but I was a friend of Myron Taylor and was greatly blessed by that friendship.
In a rather serendipitous moment, I recently ran across a copy of The Cathedral Messenger, the weekly newsletter of Westwood Hills Christian Church, from July 2, 1995. At the time, Dr. Myron J. Taylor was the minister of the church, and reading his comments in The Cathedral Messenger could be akin to a weekly seminar on ministry.
In this particular issue, Dr. Taylor wrote, “I always try to give priority to the gospel as it is set forth in Scripture as it is interpreted and proclaimed by the church. My job is not to preach the Bible, but preach the gospel. Just explaining a passage of scripture, or even worse, just commenting on it, can be terribly boring and irrelevant. Preaching is rooted in the biblical message and made meaningful to the lives of people.” This would not be a bad summary of the conversation my friend and I had.
When I talk about the Bible in my classes, I often say that it is written by God, written about Jesus, and written through the Spirit. In some ways, I think that is exactly what Dr. Taylor meant when he said he gave “priority to the gospel as it is set forth in Scripture.” It is the gospel that reminds us that that personal salvation and individualism are not our mission. Our mission isn’t merely to be the source of every moral platitude imaginable to mankind or to discover a kind of private approach to life that takes us out of the mix of what is happening in the world.
It is the gospel that won’t allow us to become so withdrawn from the world around us that we can never hope to change it and so legalistic that we become irrelevant. After all, one can be so “biblical” that no one will listen or so relevant that there is nothing to say. In both cases, the gospel hasn’t been proclaimed. And I can’t forget that Myron Taylor was preaching in a church building adjacent to UCLA – not exactly a bastion of biblical preaching!
It is the gospel that reminds us that the Jesus story is not just about dying and going to heaven, but about “life, and life more abundant.” (John 10:10) It is the gospel that has the power to transform us into kingdom people out in the world living kingdom lives in ways that create kingdom outposts all over the world. At least, that seems to be the result of the preaching of the Gospel, as recorded in Acts.
To think that Scripture is more important than Jesus – which is what inevitably happens when we are satisfied with “preaching the Bible” and not “the gospel” – is to become guilty of a kind of idolatry that means we replace God the Creator with something from creation.
Don’t misunderstand – the Bible is our primary resource when it comes to the gospel. But we can’t fail to let that resource point us to Jesus, the one who in His incarnate life embodied the gospel in ways that invite us to walk with Him in this abundant life as we anticipate the day of His reappearing.
If you ever heard Myron Taylor preach, you heard the gospel. Today, I am grateful that my life crossed paths with his. Good preaching points us to Jesus. His preaching did exactly that.
In the article mentioned above, Dr. Taylor also wrote, “We dare not be ingrown, irrelevant, trivial in a time like this. The world is loved by God and is the object of his action on behalf of our salvation. The gospel is for the world. It takes courage sometimes to declare the gospel to the age. It is much easier to discuss the past or speculate about the future. Our need is to hear the biblical gospel intelligently interpreted and persuasively proclaimed to our time – now.”
If he thought that is what the world needed on July 2, 1995, I’m guessing he would think that and then some about what we need these days.
Who has been the Myron Taylor in your life?
Wye Huxford 