How “He Gets Us” Doesn’t Get Jesus and the Gospel

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GUEST: Tom Buck, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church (Lindale, TX)

Back in 2022, we were interested to learn that a non-profit foundation, funded to the tune of $100M by mostly anonymous donors, had put together a marketing campaign called “He Gets Us” to, in their own words, “rediscover the life and teachings of Jesus, the world’s most radical love activist?”

Hmm, the life and teaching of Jesus has never needed to be rediscovered, as it’s right there in the Bible for all to read. And Jesus as the “world’s most radical love activist” is not how Jesus described Himself. He called Himself the “Son of God” and the giver of eternal life.

With these hints of the campaign’s view of Jesus, it wasn’t surprising that their “Brand Jesus” marketing ads appearing on television (including the Super Bowl), social media, Times Square billboards, and well, almost everywhere, portrayed Jesus as a social justice hero who gets us because He had a “teen mother” and was a “refugee” and was “cancelled” as three of the ads portray.

But hey, “An ad for Jesus is being viewed by millions during the Super Bowl and how could that be anything but good? God can use anything!” so the refrain goes.

The problem is, and it’s a problem of the greatest significance, that the real Jesus Christ of Scripture is being misrepresented in the He Gets Us campaign, along with His main message: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

The Biblical gospel of God’s holiness, man’s sinfulness, Jesus’ substitution and resurrection, and Christ’s command to “repent and believe the gospel” is either not clearly presented or is obfuscated by the heavy emphasis on Jesus as a role model who gets our problems and predicaments.

The false Christ and gospel being presented by He Gets Us is all the more pernicious now that the organization is funded to the tune of $1B. Yes, you heard that correctly, one billion dollars to portray a skewed version of Jesus.

Tom Buck, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Lindale, TX and Director of Expository Workshops for G3 Ministries, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to discuss why Christians need to be aware of this wrong presentation of Jesus and the gospel and proclaim the truth about who Christ is and how sinners can be reconciled to God through Him.

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