Gospel-Centered Preaching: An Interview with Ty Gibson

In anticipation of the Gospel-Centered Preaching Conference, October 27–28, 2025, Best Practices for Adventist Worship interviewed Ty Gibson, a featured speaker at the event, on the heart of gospel-centered preaching.

Best Practices for Adventist Worship (BP): How would you define Gospel-centered preaching?

Ty Gibson (TG): Gospel-centered preaching magnifies who God is and what God has done for all of us in Christ apart from any earning, merit, or achievements on our part. The gospel is good news, not good advice, which is to say, it describes what has already happened historically in the person of Christ for all mankind, rather than prescribing actions that must be done by human beings to move God to a more favorable position than He already occupies toward us.

Then comes the effect of the gospel, which is not the gospel itself.

When the person and work of Christ is magnified, the gaze is turned outward, away from oneself to a vision of God‘s love so beautiful that it arouses adoration, appreciation, and, yes, actions that seek harmony with such love. The genius and power of the gospel is absent when the preacher leaps over the good news of what God has unconditionally accomplished for us all, to insist upon obedience to the law, victory over sin, or any other prescribed behavior. Such efforts to modify the behavior in a vacuum of voluntary love can only have the effect of producing either external pretense or internal despair.

BP: What obstacles often prevent us from emphasizing the Gospel in our sermons?

TG: Either (1) insecurity or (2) exploitation.

(1) We may avoid preaching the gospel out of a sense of fear that if God‘s favor is thought to be too free, people might feel too free and not comply with the false parameters of control we have created to keep people obligated to confirm our insecurities. The legalistic mind wants everyone else to feel obligated to the demands it feels obligated to meet in order to earn God‘s favor, because if everyone is not complying, then my sense that my deeds have purchasing power with God is shattered. Preaching the pure and free gospel of Christ feels dangerous to the legalistic mind because it can’t imagine any other motive for serving God other than earning God‘s favor.

(2) Shame is a psychological phenomenon in the human soul that can easily be manipulated and monetized. Bad actors, consciously or subconsciously, preach to arouse a sense of shame and obligation in their hearers so they can prescribe some form of payment, either financial or behavioral, in exchange for offloading one’s shame and securing a sense of acceptance with God. All bad religion has this one thing in common: it is transactional in some form. The gospel, by contrast, is all gift, a unilateral lavishing of God‘s favor prior to and apart from doing anything to deserve it.

BP: What practical step would you recommend pastors take in preparing sermons to ensure we prioritize proclaiming the Gospel?

TG: Gospel preaching by definition is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Obligate yourself to preach the narrative of Scripture, which describes the past historical actions of Christ. If you preach the actual narrative of Scripture, you will automatically be preaching the gospel.

The whole of Scripture can be summarized like this:

Promise made.

Promised kept.

The Old Testament is God through the prophets pledging his love to the human race through the covenant promise first made with Adam and Eve, then with Abraham and Israel.

The New Testament is God in Christ keeping that promise to the point of absolute self-sacrifice.

The Old Testament is God saying to humanity, I love you, and I will never stop.

The New Testament is God showing up in the flesh and saying, now I’m here to demonstrate my love for you.

To preach the gospel is to preach that story, Genesis to Revelation.