We evangelical Christians In North American have been living in the light of the Reformation. We have emphasized the love and grace of God in the face of sin and disobedience. We have assumed that people believe in a loving creator God, lawgiver and judge. Because of our sin we have a sense of guilt and a fear of dying. We have an uneasy dread of a possible Judgment Day and of eternal suffering in hell. The good news is that God gave his Son (John 3:16; Romans 5:8) for an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:5,6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Since God is reconciled and his wrath fully satisfied (2 Corinthians 5:19), he offers us salvation, forgiveness and fellowship with him, as a free gift received by faith in Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-10). Praise God! Our guilt is removed and there is no longer need to fear punishment. God accepts as we are.
Our desire is that people come to the point where they pray what is known as the Sinner’s Prayer: “Lord, I confess that I am a sinner and have done what is wrong in your eyes. Please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross and paid the price of my sin. I accept him right now as my Lord and Savior. Please help me to live in a way that pleases you. Thank you for your wonderful salvation. Amen.”
Based on this prayer we assure the person that they are saved and will go to heaven. We ask, “Where is Jesus?” If the person answers, “In heaven,” we reply, “Yes, that’s true, but he now lives in your heart.” Further, we assure them that they are now a brother or sister in the faith.
Then we urge the person to read the Bible and pray every day and to become a regular attendee at worship in a Bible-believing church. People are often taken aback because they didn’t agree to this when they prayed. They didn’t agree to become a disciple and a follower of Jesus. They desired love, acceptance and forgiveness. And we have not impressed them with the need to obey God’s will because we are deathly afraid of offering salvation based upon our works of the law. We’ve learned Paul’s teaching in Galatians that we are saved apart from the works of the Law, so much so, that we have relegated the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22,23; Romans 12:1,2) to an afterthought.
Once I met a young man on the street whose breath was reeking of alcohol. I judged that he could be dealing with doubt and a sense of weakness and guilt, so I ask him, “Do you have the certainty that when you die, you will go to heaven?” His answer, “Oh, sure. Everyone goes to heaven.” So, right away, I felt compelled to tell the bad news that not everyone is accepted if they continue to hang on to their life of sin. It so happened that this was how we ended our conversation. He was determined to continue his pattern of life, and also to justify himself by thinking, “What right does this old man have to tell me what to do? He represents an old-fashioned way of life still preserved by a white, elite segment of society. It has no relevance to me.”
I asked myself, “Are we giving assurance of salvation based upon someone repeating the sinner’s prayer? Is this the message that the church has been giving to our generation? Is this what television preachers are giving? Is this how we believers communicate the good news to people around us? I don’t think we mean this, but it seems that this is what the world is hearing.
A friend asked me, “How do you present the gospel in a world that has lost a sense of guilt, but is very alive to shame?” I believe what he was getting at was the fact that we live in a society where each person believes they have the right to determine what is right for them. The inevitable result is conflict with those who believe differently and live by other rules. In a world of social media young people are shamed for not joining in “the moment,” for not being in the “in-group.”
The church is not immune to this. We live one way out in the open, but in a hidden world inside we are ashamed of what we think and how we act. The internet has opened up a world of violence and pornography, a private world that we have allowed to take over our thoughts and imagination. And then we act it out with tragic results.
Women have risen up to unmask the sexual impropriety of powerful men, who are now shamed in public. In the wake of this movement, educators are now asking, “How do we teach ‘consensual sex’ to high school teenagers?” Long ago the world has rejected the will of God as taught in the Bible that sexual relations outside of the covenant of marriage is sin; and that adultery includes lust (Matthew 5:28). In a pluralistic society this language is excluded from the public square and from being taught in public schools. We hear society pushing us away, “This is what you believe. It’s OK for you and your church, but don’t push that on me. We live in a free country and I have the right to believe the way I want.”
Reflecting on these things, I began to realize that we have not been giving repentance, the importance that the Bible gives it. Jesus began his ministry with these words, “The kingdom of God has come near.” Judgment is close at hand. “Repent, and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). On the Day of Pentecost Peter charged his audience of killing the one that God showed to be both Lord and Messiah by raising him from the dead (Acts 2:36), and then he called them to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38). Paul, in a Gentile world, call the idolaters of Athens to repent because God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed” (Acts 17:31).
Repentance means a change of mind and heart. The New Living Translation of the Bible translates the Greek metanoia as “turn from sin and turn to God.” More fundamentally, it is a turning from serving false gods (oneself included) to serving the true, living God. So, with this in mind, it seemed to me that we should begin presenting the gospel in a way that presented Jesus first of all. This is where the Apostles began. The Gospels that we have, I believe, were the first evangelistic presentation of Christ to the world and of calling it to leave idols and serve the true God by becoming a disciple of the One that God sent to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world and to be Lord of all, and to whom all would one day be accountable to on the Last Day, the Day of Judgement, the Day when God’s justice will be fully revealed. That justice was revealed in the cross and the resurrection if only people would see it, but on the Last Day that justice will confront all men whether they like it or not.
Using the traditional gospel presentation, it is possible to leave our listener’s idolatry intact. Let me illustrate. Public school teachers, and the media, regularly challenge young people: “Become all that you want to be.” So, the teen leaves school, matures in the world, and eventually fails to achieve their dream. With this sense of failure, they hear a Christian say, “Recognize your sin. Jesus died to pay the penalty of your sin. Accept him as your Savior and Lord. Confess your sin and profess your faith in Christ by praying.”
Our listener does listener follows our leading. They are freed to follow their dream without the bondage of guilt and shame. They feel free to leave the past behind and strive to overcome future challenges. Think of a situation in which someone tries to start a business, but they were failing at it. They were lazy, stubborn, prideful, unwilling to take advice, selfish, spend-thrift, etc. They were losing their family through overwork and neglect. They recognized their faults, accepted Jesus. They trusted in God for success and were able to devote more time to family. Then, their enterprise moved forward with success. They think, “Jesus is helping me achieve my dream. Praise God!”
The problem is that their dream is a product of their god—the god of self-determination. “I myself am free to determine my destiny in the way that I desire.” With this mentality our listener is actually using God as an aid to accomplish his own personal desires. They have not renounced the god of SELF and surrendered to the true God. They are now allowing the true God to show him what his will is as revealed in the Bible.
We who claim to be followers of Christ need to examine ourselves to see if we are hanging on to some false, self-made god. Then we are called by Christ to help our listener identify their self-made god, considering that they often have so little knowledge of the true Creator God. The problem is not so much a failure in regard to specific sins`, but a failure to surrender to the true God who is both lawgiver and judge, the one who has revealed himself as Savior and Lord through his Son, Jesus Christ. This is how we understand Jesus’ challenge, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it it” (Mark 8:34-35). The denial of the god of SELF is the denial of the god of position, power and wealth (Mark 10:21-23), the god of family (Mark 10:28-30; Luke 9:59-62), or the god of tradition (Mark 7:6-13). Without the denial of self, and the surrender to Jesus, we are actually children of our father, the devil, the original liar and murderer” (John 8:42-45). This is harsh language for all who are deluded by their own self-will and their own self-determination.
So, considering these things we want to return to how Jesus presented himself as the fulfillment of the good news promised by God through the prophets. We are led to the basic outline of the gospel, the good news, as it comes to us in Mark’s record of Jesus’ first words, “The time has come. . . . The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).