# “The gospel cannot be a product” by David F. Wells

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2008/08/01/the-gospel-cannot-be-a-product-by-david-f-wells/
- Published: 2008-08-01T06:46:59-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“The marketing model, if followed, empties the truth out of the gospel. First, the
needs consumers have are needs _they_ identify for themselves. The needs sinners
have are needs _God _identifies for us, and the way we see our needs is rather different
from the way he sees them. We suppress the truth about God, holding it down in ‘
unrighteousness’ (Rom. 1:18). We are not subject to his moral law and in our fallenness
are incapable of being obedient to it (Rom. 8:7), so how likely is it, outside the
intervention of God through the Holy Spirit, that we will identify our needs as 
those arising from our rebellion against God?

No, the product we will seek naturally will not be the gospel. It will be a therapy
of some kind, a technique for life, perhaps a way of connecting more deeply with
our own spiritual selves on our own terms, terms that require no repentance and 
no redemption. It will not be the gospel. The gospel cannot be a product that the
church sells because there are no consumers for it. When we find consumers, we will
find that what they are interested in buying, on their own terms, is not the gospel.”

–David F. Wells, _The Courage to Be Protestant_ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 
52-3.

More quotes from [David Wells](https://tollelege.net/category/david-wells/) · More
on [The Church](https://tollelege.net/category/the-church/)