The Gospel is Not The Great Commandment

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
(Matthew 22:37)

One of the greatest mistakes being made in evangelicalism today is the belief that the Great Commandment is the essence of the Gospel itself. Countless preachers today teach their audiences that they must love God and love others, and consider this to be the core focus of the Christian faith. Just searching for the words, church "mission statement" "great commandment" on Google reveals tons of churches who use this as their charge for what they should be doing in the world. But this is not the Gospel.

Simply put, the Gospel is that Jesus Christ, the God-Man, came down to earth to die for mankind as the perfect sacrifice for sin, died and shed His blood on the cross, taking the wrath of God on His shoulders, was raised from the grave three days later, and ascended into Heaven in front of 500 eyewitnesses. And if one repents of his sin and trusts Christ as savior in response to this act of God, receiving forgiveness, then that person will be saved from sin and from Hell, and enjoy eternity with God in Heaven. (Paul summarized the Gospel in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, for reference.)

But when preachers say that the Gospel is the Great Commandment, what they have done is re-instituted the Law and hold people to an unreachable standard, giving them false faith. No one can love God on their own in the way Jesus described things as Matthew recorded them. And no one can love their neighbor so perfectly either. So when a preacher uses the Great Commandment as their explanation of the Gospel, they make a gospel of works, not the true Gospel.

When a man is saved through hearing the true Gospel and repents and puts his trust in Christ, he then loves God and loves neighbors as a result of the saving faith that he has. This is not the qualification for the forgiveness of his sins; it demonstrates how his inner being has been changed by the Lord and how he responds to the forgiveness of his sins. (And, remember that this love will still not yet be perfect.)

When a man hears a gospel that says that he must love God and his neighbor, he will spend the rest of his life believing that he is doing well enough in his efforts to do charity and kindness. He will never understand the magnitude of his sins, why a savior was necessary, or why he will stand before the Great White Throne only to be cast into Hell after he dies.