The Fourfold Gospel

It is A. B. Simpson's classic statement of what he called the fourfold gospel: Christ our Saviour, Christ our Sanctifier, Christ our Healer, and Christ our Coming Lord. In brief chapters Simpson presents a whole Christ for the whole person, calling believers beyond forgiveness into sanctification, divine healing, and the hope of Christ's return.

Albert Benjamin Simpson was a Canadian-born preacher of the later nineteenth century, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and a leading voice of the deeper-life and healing movements. The fourfold gospel became the signature summary of his teaching, and this book is its concise expression.

They are four aspects of what Christ is to the believer: Saviour, who forgives and justifies; Sanctifier, who cleanses and indwells for holy living; Healer, who touches the body as well as the soul; and Coming King, whose return is the church's hope. Simpson sees them not as separate doctrines but as one full Christ meeting the whole need of the whole person.

That holiness is not merely the believer's struggle but Christ's own life imparted — that Jesus not only forgives sin but comes to dwell within and to be our sanctification. Simpson presses believers beyond resting in forgiveness into a deeper union in which Christ himself becomes the source of a holy life, received by faith rather than achieved by effort.

That divine healing is part of the gospel provision — that Christ, who bore our sicknesses, still heals the body in answer to faith. This was a distinctive and, in his day, controversial emphasis; Simpson taught it soberly, tying healing to Christ's atoning work and to faith in his promises, as one fold of the full gospel rather than a novelty.

The fourth fold — Christ our Coming Lord — sets the whole in the light of hope. Simpson taught the personal return of Christ as the church's blessed hope and a spur to holiness and mission. The expectation of the Coming King crowns the other three, giving the Christian life its forward-looking urgency and joy.

For any believer wanting to grasp the fullness of what Christ offers — not only pardon but sanctification, healing, and hope. Simpson wrote to lift Christians beyond a partial gospel into the whole provision of Christ, and the book has long served as a compact introduction to the deeper-life teaching he championed.

At the beginning, taking the four folds in Simpson's order: Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer, Coming Lord. Because each builds on the last into a single portrait of Christ, the book rewards being read straight through, so that the reader sees the one whole Christ Simpson means to present.