The Hollow Echoes of a Therapeutic Gospel

There’s an uncomfortable trend in contemporary Christianity, and it’s hiding in plain sight. It shows up in sermons, small group discussions, social media posts, and self-care Sundays dressed in the language of encouragement and emotional wellness. It goes something like this: “Jesus came to help you with your problems. He understands your struggles, even your first-world ones. He’s not rolling His eyes at your anxiety about your inbox, your kid’s soccer schedule, or your monthly budget.”

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Now, don’t get me wrong—the Living Christ absolutely meets us in our anxieties, fears, and restless striving. I spent plenty of time during my years in pastoral ministry with folks who struggled with these things. But if we stop there, if we reduce Jesus to the role of divine therapist or social worker, we’ve missed the point. Worse, we’ve cheapened the brutal and beautiful reality of what Christ came to do.

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Sacrifice, Not Sentiment

Here’s the issue: framing salvation as therapy risks downplaying the full weight of sin, death, and separation from God. Christ Jesus didn’t come primarily to help us feel better about our lives. I can tell you that after many decades of living, there are aspects of my life that I will never feel better about! You can probably relate. Jesus didn’t endure betrayal, mockery, scourging, and crucifixion so we could have an easier time managing our existential dread or find peace in our first-world anxieties.

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No, Christ went to the cross because humanity is enslaved, in bondage—to sin, death, and evil. Our greatest problem isn’t our dissatisfaction with our careers, our relational hiccups, or our inability to unplug from social media. Our greatest problem is that we are sinners standing before a holy God.

At the same time, let’s not mistake this as a dismissal of our anxieties. The forgiveness of sins does address those struggles—not in the sense of offering coping strategies, but in the sense of delivering us from the root cause of our despair. The gospel doesn’t teach us to manage our burdens; it lifts them off our shoulders entirely!

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The Weight of Suffering

Another way this therapeutic gospel creeps in is through comparisons of suffering. It goes something like this: “Yes, I’m stressed out, but at least I’m not in a war zone. My problems aren’t that bad.” Or conversely: “Why would God care about my anxiety when people are starving in another country?”

The God we know from Scripture doesn’t play those comparison games. He doesn’t rank suffering on a scale of legitimacy. Why? Because the Cross reveals that all suffering—whether catastrophic loss, loneliness, or shadowy, silent dread—finds its resolution not in gaining perspective, but in redemption.

This means your struggles—no matter how trivial or overwhelming they might feel—are taken seriously by God. But God’s response to the human condition isn’t a self-help strategy or motivational pep talk; it’s Christ crucified bearing the weight of all suffering.

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The Voice of the Law

The gospel isn’t a pep talk, a checklist, or a roadmap to self-improvement. It’s not about fixing yourself, trying harder, or reaching some higher spiritual plane. No, the gospel is a voice—a living voice—cutting through all the noise, full of mercy, full of life, full of promise: Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ for you.

But before this gospel can be heard as good news, another voice must speak—the voice of the Law. The Law doesn’t come with suggestions or self-help advice. It comes with demands, with sharp edges, and with no excuses allowed. It exposes, unmasks our pretenses, and leaves us without a single fig leaf to hide behind. The Law doesn’t ask, “How are you feeling today?” It declares, “You have fallen short.” 

The voice of the Law isn’t an abstract theological concept—it’s woven into the gritty, unfiltered reality of everyday life. You recognize this voice and so do I. It speaks right there in the middle of real business of living, revealing truth in ways that no self-help book or motivational quote can paper over. You hear it when you snap at your kids after a long day and can’t take the words back. You hear it when you cut corners and hope no one notices. You hear it in those quiet, sleepless moments when it questions whether your life is really measuring up to the expectations—yours, others’, or God’s.

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Life has a way of pressing the voice of the Law right into our bones. It doesn’t ask how you’re feeling; it confronts you with how things really are. You know you’ve fallen short—not because someone told you, but because you’ve tasted the bitter aftertaste of your own failures. The voice of the Law isn’t just found in the pages of Scripture—it echoes in our regrets, our strained relationships, and the nagging sense that something is fundamentally broken within us.

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And when the Law has finished its work, when we are broken, silenced and laid bare—then the gospel speaks. And what a word it speaks! The gospel doesn’t nudge you forward with a pat on the back saying, “You’ve got this.” It doesn’t whisper, “Try a little harder next time.” Instead, it speaks with finality, with authority, with love: “It is finished.” Your sin—forgiven. Your death—undone. The grave—emptied.

Now, let’s be clear: You may need a therapist for the short-term misalignments of living. Life is heavy, and sometimes we need help carrying that weight. The Law even speaks here, revealing our limits, showing us our need for help in the day-to-day struggles of life. But for the big picture—when it comes to the ultimate reality of life, death, and eternity—you don’t need a coping mechanism. You need a Savior.

And that is precisely what God has provided in Jesus—for you.

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The Voice of the Gospel: The Final Verdict, Not a Strategy

When you are brought to the end of yourself, to the place where the Law has stripped away every excuse, every justification, every pretense—when you’ve been laid bare before the truth—you are finally ready to hear the final and best Word. The Law has done its work. The hammer has fallen. And now, the Word of Gospel speaks in all its glorious clarity: It is finished. You are forgiven. You are free.

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These are not soft words, nor are they sentimental. They are blood-soaked, Cross-engraved, and spoken with the full authority of heaven. The weight of the world’s sin, your sin, was borne on a rough-hewn cross outside Jerusalem twenty centuries ago. The nails were real. The death was real. The cry of abandonment—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—was real. But so was the victory. So was the resurrection. 

That victory, that death to sin, and that new life in the resurrection are yours. In baptism, you were united with Christ in His death and raised with Him into newness of life. There, in the water and the Word, you were made a new creation through Christ. His death became your death. His resurrection became your

resurrection.

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So stand there—right there—at the foot of the cross, and hear it as the Word washes over you, soaks into you, and settles every restless fear. You don’t need to contribute, fix, or finish a single thing. The work is done. The debt is paid. The burden is lifted.

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Christ has done it all—for you. Every sin, every failure, every regret—nailed to the cross and buried in an empty tomb. And now, in this Word, spoken once and still speaking today, you are free. Free to breathe. Free to live. Free to rest in a love that holds firm when everything else shakes loose.

This is not advice. This is not therapy. This is truth. Rock-solid, unchanging, and reliable in every storm, every loss, and every shadowed corner of life. “It is finished”, Jesus promised. And because your redemption is finished in Him, everything—everything—is made new. For you. Forever.