David Platt’s Radically Incoherent Gospel of the Gospel and Disciples and Stuff

A friend of mine shared a David Platt video on Facebook this morning. I concentrated his seven-minute video for you. Because I like you.

I admit, he didn’t actually ever say he wasn’t going to tell us what the gospel is. He just never did.

I think I know why David Platt annoys me. There’s a verse in Proverbs about zeal without knowledge, and, to his credit, there are few people as zealous as David Platt, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how he convinced anyone to give him a Ph.D. Maybe Southern Baptists just give Ph.D.’s to charismatic people who pledge to use the phrase “the gospel” at least twenty times per sermon, because the “gospel” in this clip is no gospel at all – in fact, it’s worse than no gospel; it’s nothing. The emperor, as the tale goes, has no gospel.

I don’t know; maybe he thinks the gospel is that line about Jesus living the life we could not live and dying the death we should have died. Platt correctly identifies the sinner’s prayer as not being found in scripture, but the line he cites is not found in scripture either, and though it’s plastered all over the internet, I couldn’t track down its origin.

Platt condemns everyone who is not a disciple of Christ to eternal damnation by proxy (God’s going to do it, not him) and then refuses to tell anyone how to be a disciple! Is it something you believe, or a vague “obedience” to rules that he doesn’t tell you? Is it just believing that little ditty from earlier? How does one become a disciple?

Platt isn’t going to tell you.*

And that’s why he annoys me.

If you’d like him to annoy you, here’s the video clip.

* I hope they talk about this in seminary, because I don’t know how I would tell someone how to become a Christian / disciple, but it’s not David Platt’s way, which is no way at all, and it’s not the evangelical way of “pray this prayer” that he condemns, either, though it might be. Seminary is going to be fun. Did I mention I’m going to seminary?