Written by Dr. Kiefer Likens, Th.D.
If modern American evangelicalism had a favorite love language, it’d be therapy.
Not truth. Not repentance. Not the holiness of God. But feelings. Affirmation. Personal wholeness. Jesus as your emotional support life coach.
We’ve traded in the cross for a couch. The gospel for group therapy. The God who thunders from Sinai for a smiling deity who just wants you to love yourself.
Here’s the problem: none of that is the gospel. It’s a knockoff. A soft, plushy counterfeit that sells because it comforts. But comfort isn’t the goal of the gospel—Christ is.
The therapeutic gospel teaches that your biggest problem is internal unhappiness. That sin is just trauma. That salvation is finding your inner peace. That Jesus came to patch your self-esteem and help you love yourself more.
It goes like this:
Sounds nice. Totally unbiblical.
The therapeutic gospel removes the offense of the cross. It drains the blood from atonement and replaces it with affirmations. It replaces God-centered truth with self-centered comfort.
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” (2 Timothy 4:3)
We are there.
Blame Freud, Oprah, and a century of psychology baptized into church culture. But deeper than that, blame our desire to escape the real problem: sin.
Sin is offensive. It indicts us. It says the problem is not just around us, but inside us. And it demands repentance—not coping strategies.
So churches pivoted. Sermons became Ted Talks with verses. Songs became spiritualized pop anthems. Small groups became group therapy.
And the cross? That’s just the backdrop. The real focus is you and your journey.
The therapeutic gospel may ease your conscience, but it cannot justify you before a holy God. It may help you process emotions, but it can’t raise you from the dead.
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3)
Not Christ died to improve your self-image. Not Christ died to help you live your best life. Christ died for your sins.
The therapeutic gospel can’t save because it refuses to diagnose. It offers healing without surgery, peace without repentance, life without death.
It’s not Christianity. It’s sentimentalism with a Jesus sticker slapped on.
The real gospel doesn’t tell you to look within. It tells you to look to the cross.
You are not okay. You are dead in sin (Eph. 2:1). You are under wrath (Rom. 1:18). You are an enemy of God (Rom. 5:10). And yet, in Christ:
And what does He demand? Repentance and faith. Not a hug. Not self-affirmation. Not better vibes. Repent and believe.
Because if we get the gospel wrong, we get everything wrong.
A therapeutic gospel leads to a therapeutic church:
And souls remain lost—comfortably.
The real church doesn’t exist to soothe sinners. It exists to call them to the Savior.
We are not life coaches. We are heralds of a crucified King.
“We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor. 1:23–24)
That’s the gospel.
No smoke machines required. No therapy jargon necessary. Just blood, cross, and empty tomb.
Let’s kill the myth upfront:
Jesus didn’t come to give you advice. He didn’t die to help you become a slightly better version of yourself. He didn’t rise again so you could “live your truth.”
He’s not your guru. He’s not your accountability partner. He’s not your vibe manager.
He’s your King.
And kings don’t give suggestions. They give commands.
Walk into a thousand churches this Sunday, and you’ll hear something like this:
They slap a few verses on it, maybe even toss in a parable, but it’s not the gospel—it’s self-help with a Christian logo. A therapeutic echo chamber wrapped in spiritual jargon.
This gospel says: You’re doing okay, you just need a little divine boost.
But Scripture says:
“You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…” (Eph. 2:1)
Dead people don’t need coaching. They need resurrection.
Let’s say it louder for the folks in the back:
Your problem isn’t that you haven’t reached your potential.
It’s that you’re enslaved to sin, blinded by the devil, and under the wrath of Almighty God (Rom. 3:23; 2 Cor. 4:4; John 3:36).
Jesus didn’t come to fine-tune your moral behavior. He came to take the wrath of God in your place (Isaiah 53:5–6).
If all you needed was encouragement, God could’ve sent another prophet. But He didn’t. He sent His Son to die—because your problem wasn’t ignorance, it was guilt.
This isn’t about life optimization. It’s about eternal salvation.
You don’t pin Golgotha next to your goals for 2025. The cross doesn’t fit your morning journaling prompts. It doesn’t play nice with your vision of a balanced, successful, self-fulfilled you.
The cross shatters your self-salvation projects. It offends your ego. It destroys your confidence in the flesh.
“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
Jesus doesn’t say, “Find your passion.” He says, “Die.”
If your gospel sounds like:
…then you’re not preaching Christ crucified. You’re selling life hacks. You’re peddling the wisdom of the world with a halo.
But Paul didn’t go to Corinth with a TED Talk. He went with blood on his hands and a message of a dying, resurrected King:
“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2)
Not Jesus customized. Not Jesus rebranded. Jesus crucified.
Jesus didn’t show up offering motivation. He showed up announcing a kingdom. And kingdoms don’t come with motivational speeches. They come with power, authority, allegiance, and war.
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
Notice He didn’t say, “Feel better about yourself.” He said, repent.
Repentance isn’t therapeutic—it’s treason against your old self. It’s renouncing your allegiance to sin, self, and Satan. And it’s not optional.
You don’t get to customize the King’s message. You bow the knee—or you don’t.
If your Jesus doesn’t make you uncomfortable, He’s probably an idol.
The real Jesus:
And that’s the Jesus who saves.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me… And whoever does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matt. 10:37–38)
That’s not therapy. That’s lordship.
He’s not your brand consultant. He’s not your business partner. He’s not your co-pilot.
He is Lord. He is King. He is the Lamb who was slain—and the Lion who returns in glory.
And one day every knee will bow. Will yours bow now—willingly, in worship—or later, under judgment?
That’s the question the real Jesus asks. And your life—your eternity—depends on the answer.
Let’s start with the sacred cow of modern culture and roast it over the flames of Scripture: you are not basically good.
I don’t care what your motivational coffee mug says. I don’t care how many times a Christian therapist told you to “be kind to yourself” because “you’re doing your best.”
You’re not. You’re dead.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…” (Ephesians 2:1–2)
Dead. Not sick. Not struggling. Not “mostly okay with a few flaws.”
Spiritually DOA.
Let’s unpack what that means—and why getting this right is non-negotiable for understanding salvation.
The Reformed tradition has a term for this: Total Depravity.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’re as bad as you possibly could be. It means sin has infected every part of you:
It means that, apart from Christ, you don’t even want God. You’re not neutral toward Him. You’re hostile.
“The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” (Romans 8:7)
You can’t seek God. You won’t choose Him. Your heart is a rebel factory, not a seeker sanctuary.
“No one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:11)
And no, that verse doesn’t have an asterisk that says unless there’s a fog machine and a compelling altar call.
If there’s a state religion in America, it’s not Christianity. It’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD).
It goes like this:
It’s the theology of youth groups, YouTube devotionals, and soft evangelicalism. It’s a gospel of being nice and feeling good. And it’s straight-up poison.
“All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” (Isaiah 64:6)
Your goodness doesn’t count. Not before a holy God. Because He isn’t grading on a curve. He’s holy, holy, holy—and you aren’t.
Sure you do. So do I. And compared to other sinners, they’re great. But compared to the standard of God’s righteousness, they’re hopelessly defiled.
Let’s put it this way: Imagine your most righteous day—your most selfless, loving, prayerful, humble, servant-hearted day. Now picture bringing that before the throne of God and saying, “Here you go. This is why You should let me into heaven.”
You’d be consumed in an instant.
“Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God?” (1 Samuel 6:20)
The answer? No one. Unless that person is hidden in Christ.
Because we’re told from birth that we’re special. That we’re good deep down. That all we need is the right environment and some positive reinforcement.
But Scripture says you need regeneration—not renovation.
You need a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). You need to be born again (John 3:3). You need to be made alive (Colossians 2:13).
And that kind of transformation isn’t something you work up. It’s something God does to you.
The bad news is way worse than you think. But that makes the good news infinitely better.
Because Jesus didn’t come to throw life preservers to struggling swimmers. He came to resurrect corpses.
He doesn’t help the self-improvable. He saves the hopeless.
And when He saves, He saves completely:
You are a passive recipient of divine mercy. And that mercy transforms you into someone who repents, believes, and walks in newness of life.
“By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…” (Eph. 2:8)
Stop trusting your goodness. Stop saying “I’m doing my best.” Stop thinking your clean record or kind heart or noble intentions make you acceptable before God.
They don’t.
Only Christ does.
If you’ve never come to terms with your total inability—if you still think salvation is a cooperative effort—then you don’t understand grace.
But if you’ve been crushed by your sin, emptied of self-confidence, and have flung yourself on the mercy of Christ, then take heart:
That’s the surest sign that God made you alive.
And dead men don’t raise themselves.
Let’s just go ahead and torch the self-esteem movement with a flamethrower full of Scripture: you are not a misunderstood snowflake. You’re a wretch.
Not an insecure achiever. Not a spiritually curious skeptic. Not a broken-but-beautiful child of the universe.
A wretch. Like the song says.
“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
John Newton didn’t say, “Saved a slightly misguided, emotionally fragile overthinker.” He said wretch—because he knew what grace was. And he knew what he was.
So should we.
The gospel doesn’t start with healing. It starts with homicide.
Your old self has to die. Your pride, your self-help strategies, your sense of goodness—all of it has to go under the cross and get crucified.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
That’s the paradox of the gospel: you don’t find yourself—you die to yourself. And in that death, Christ gives you life.
Real healing doesn’t come from embracing who you are. It comes from being completely undone by who Christ is.
You can get trauma therapy, life coaching, and inner child integration until you’re blue in the face. And sure, it might help you understand your patterns, process your past, and cry more efficiently.
But it won’t deal with sin. And if it doesn’t deal with sin, it doesn’t heal.
You don’t need a better coping mechanism—you need a new heart.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)
And here’s the brutal truth: that doesn’t come through yoga and journaling. It comes through repentance.
When God saves a person, He doesn’t just slap a “healed” sticker on your forehead and send you to small group.
He breaks you. He exposes every idol. He humiliates your pride. He lets your carefully curated self-image crumble to dust.
And then—then—He builds something new.
That’s healing.
It’s not clean. It’s not comfortable. It’s not Insta-worthy. But it is holy.
Salvation doesn’t just fix you. It replaces you.
God doesn’t slap grace on your broken self. He buries it—and resurrects you in Christ.
And the result isn’t self-love. It’s worship.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
You were in darkness. Now you’re in light. You were a wretch. Now you’re a worshipper.
Not because you went to counseling. Not because you read a book. Not because you tried harder.
But because the Lamb of God took your guilt and gave you His righteousness.
That’s the only kind of healing that matters.
If the church becomes a therapy center, the cross becomes irrelevant. And when the cross becomes irrelevant, salvation becomes impossible.
We are not here to soothe egos. We’re here to preach Christ. And when we do, God takes wretches and makes them worshippers.
“The Father is seeking such people to worship him.” (John 4:23)
So give Him what He’s seeking. Lay down your self-repair projects. Stop trying to fix what God intends to crucify.
Bow. Repent. Believe. Worship.
Picture this.
You walk into a triage tent on the edge of a battlefield. There’s blood on the floor. Medics are moving with urgency. Soldiers are groaning in pain, bandaged and broken, some screaming, some silent. There’s grit, sweat, cries for help—and the occasional desperate prayer muttered between clenched teeth. Welcome to the front lines.
Now imagine walking into that same tent with a clipboard and cucumber water, saying, “Hey, everybody, let’s dim the lights and center ourselves. There’s a wellness workshop starting in five minutes.”
You’d get laughed out—or punched in the throat.
Because wounded warriors don’t need ambiance. They need intervention.
And that’s exactly what the Church is meant to be: not a retreat center for the self-satisfied, but a blood-stained war hospital for the spiritually maimed. The Church is where the dying are raised, the broken are bound, and the wretches are made whole by the gospel of Christ—not by mood lighting and coffee bars.
The modern church wants to be therapeutic, aesthetic, and non-threatening. It wants to be the kind of place where no one feels too convicted, too wounded, too shaken. It wants to hand you a latte and a vague spiritual boost.
But that’s not the Church Christ bled for. That’s not the Church the apostles planted. That’s not the Church that got fed to lions, crucified upside down, and burned alive in Nero’s garden.
The Church is not a wellness center.
It’s a war zone. And it’s filled with casualties of the Fall.
People walk into the Church every week hemorrhaging from sin, dragging the weight of shame, addiction, bitterness, and unbelief behind them. And instead of giving them triage, we hand them a tote bag.
“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?” (Jeremiah 8:22)
There is a balm. There is a Great Physician. But He’s not going to apply the cure if we keep pretending people just need essential oils and affirmations.
Preaching is not a motivational TED Talk. Shepherding is not spiritual babysitting. Counseling is not code for enabling.
A pastor is a front-line medic in the middle of a bloodbath. His hands should be calloused from prayer, stained with tears, and blistered from wielding the sword of the Spirit.
He doesn’t exist to host your spa day. He exists to declare the Word of Life to the dying.
“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:2)
When Paul wrote that, he wasn’t picturing a fog machine and a three-point message on improving your mood. He was picturing a blood-soaked battlefield where eternity hangs in the balance.
You can go to therapy, practice mindfulness, recite affirmations, and still go to hell with excellent posture and emotional regulation.
But walk into a faithful, blood-bought church, and you’ll encounter something far more dangerous and beautiful:
“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)
That’s healing. Not a good cry. Not a dopamine spike.
Real, soul-deep healing.
The church is where drunks become elders. Where addicts become deacons. Where the sexually broken become celibate and joyful. Where murderers write Scripture (looking at you, Paul).
Why? Because the blood of Christ doesn’t just clean up your symptoms. It cures the disease.
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13–14)
You don’t get transferred by willpower. You get transferred by grace. And grace doesn’t pamper. It transforms.
Some of you are barely hanging on. You’ve been dragging yourself to church hoping someone notices. Praying someone cares. Wondering if anyone sees the wounds under your Sunday smile.
Hear me:
Christ sees. And He put you in His Church for a reason.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)
This isn’t a self-care seminar. It’s a holy blood transfusion. It’s the people of God, armed with the Word of God, binding up the broken and marching together into battle.
This is the Church. Not perfect. But sanctified. Not safe. But secure.
A hospital full of scars and songs. Wounds and worship. Groans and glory.
And if that sounds beautiful to you—it’s because it is.
Enough with the cozy gospel.
Enough with feel-good sermons that couldn’t convict a goldfish. Enough with pastors who sound more like Oprah than Paul. Enough with the gospel of self-love, emotional hype, and therapeutic nonsense that tells sinners to look inward for hope.
Look inward?
Are you kidding me?
That’s where the rot is. That’s where the shame festers. That’s where the pride hides.
You don’t need a self-esteem boost—you need a cross.
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
This generation doesn’t need another comfy couch and a sermon about “your next season.” It needs pulpits that thunder with blood-bought truth. It needs churches that stop coddling the flesh and start crucifying it. It needs shepherds who don’t flirt with culture, but confront it in love and fire and power.
It needs you, Christian, to stop playing spiritual patty-cake and start living like the gospel is actually true—because it is.
Christ is not your cheerleader. He’s not your vibe. He’s not your life coach.
He’s the slain Lamb of God, the Risen King, the Judge of the living and the dead.
And He didn’t die to give you better feelings—He died to make you holy.
You don’t accessorize with the gospel. You don’t decorate your self-help with a Jesus sticker. You don’t tag Christ onto your five-year plan and call it sanctification.
You die.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
That’s the Christian life: crucifixion before resurrection. Repentance before restoration. Truth before tears.
Pastors, if you’re afraid to call your people to repentance, then resign.
Because we’re not here to flatter goats. We’re here to feed sheep. And sheep need strong food, not cotton candy.
The church is not your brand. The gospel is not your product. Christ is not your mascot.
He is the Savior of sinners. The Destroyer of death. The Victor over the grave.
And He demands everything.
To the broken, the bitter, the backslidden—there is still time.
Lay down your fake holiness. Burn the idol of emotional hype. Walk away from the altar of self.
Fall at the foot of the cross and see the One who bled for your sin.
He didn’t come for the clean. He came for the condemned.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
Rest doesn’t come from spa days and soul-searching. It comes from Christ.
So repent. And live.
Not on your terms. Not in your timing. Not with your conditions.
Now.
Because the gospel isn’t therapy. It’s war.
And your only hope is Jesus.
Dr. Kiefer Likens, Th.D. is a Reformed pastor, author, and creative director based in Texas. He leads Redemption Ranch, a church committed to Scripture-centered worship, and holds a doctorate in Biblical Exposition. Kiefer is the author of For Christ and Covenant and Measured by Grace, blending deep theology with pastoral insight. He also runs a creative agency, specializing in design, branding, and web development.
