None of us likes to offend people. Of all people, it may be Christians who like being offensive the least, since we are under command from the Lord to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us and to suffer wrong contentedly. Nevertheless, we also have been commanded to go into the world and preach the gospel. To do that faithfully, we must tell people the truth—the truth about their condition as fallen humanity and the truth about their need of salvation.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…. —Rom. 3:23
However, we are so intellectually and emotionally immature, so hypersensitive, and so deceived in our understanding of love that we shy away from telling people the truth. Especially sinners. We don’t even want to call them sinners! We invent new euphemisms instead: seekers and those distant from God are currently popular. The New Testament is less polite:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. —Eph. 2:1–3
There is a reason we preach the gospel. Yet it looks as though we have forgotten it. Perhaps because somewhere we decided to minister out of our feelings rather than speak from God’s Word. The Word tells us that there is a standard from which humanity has fallen and all of our best efforts cannot help us:
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. —James 2:10
When we break God’s law, we sin. We don’t like that word, so we try to call it other things—problems, challenges, even personal issues. But sin is sin, and it produces death:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Rom. 6:23
There is judgment coming to the sinner. God’s wrath will be poured out on the last day:
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. —Rom. 2:5
God’s wrath has been levied against fallen humanity. Unless sinners repent and turn to Jesus in faith, God’s wrath towards them is unavoidable:
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. —John 3:36
Sadly, in today’s church evangelism has been made about increasing church attendance—not convicting sinners of their sin and their need of Christ. When will we recover a proper understanding of our need to proclaim the gospel to the lost?
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. —Rev. 20:15
I shudder to think of the final destiny of sinners. But I also shudder when I think of the displeasure we might face if we persist in rejecting God’s Word and magnifying our thoughts and feelings over that Word. No matter how we might want to sanitize it, the gospel is an offense to fallen humanity. It contains uncomfortable truths. We must get over ourselves, trust God and preach the Truth.
