The Gospel is the proclamation of that gift – what St Paul calls “the gospel of your salvation” (NRSV, Ephesians 1:13, our emphasis).  But that is not the Gospel that we find proclaimed today in some influential quarters of the Christian Church.  The attitude of some is that redemption and salvation are an irrelevance in the modern world.  But redemption and salvation have to do with life and death, and what could be more relevant that that?

However, the world today has no sense of sin and therefore no perceived need for redemption.  There are those in the Church who see that they are out of step with the world and respond by falling into step with it.  They substitute the world’s secular agenda for the proclamation of the Gospel, offering only what the world sees as relevant to life as it is lived today, and saying nothing about sin and redemption which the world regards as an unwelcome intrusion.