Educators today are decrying the need for remedial education. The problem seems to be that students are being passed on to the next level of education with inadequate skills in such basic subjects as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Many colleges and universities have found it necessary to offer remedial courses which teach students what they should have previously learned in secondary school. Such courses as "Math 101" and "English 101" are designed for the correction of faulty abilities in these educational disciplines. These courses are often non-credit courses for they are designed solely to remedy an educational deficiency.

It appears to me that much of the popular religious instruction in the church today has settled for teaching a course that might be called "Evangelicalism 101." It is a remedial gospel that deals predominantly with remedying a deficiency, correcting a sin-problem.

   This remedial gospel often begins in Genesis chapter three and concludes at the remedial redemptive action of Christ on the cross. This "fix-it" gospel of popular religion does not teach the real course of Christian life. On the authority of our mentor, the apostle Paul, we might affirm that this is "no gospel" at all (Galatians 1:7); it is a non-credit course.

   The gospel requires the full-course which commences in Genesis chapter one with a recognition of God's intent for mankind, and the completed restoration of that divine intent by the life, death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecostal outpouring of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a fully credited course wherein the life and righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed and imparted to Christian believers. Christians need to understand the "abundant life" Jesus promised (John 10:10), and experience how that life is lived out in the practical situations of life.