That has always intrigued me. This idea of, "Bow your head, close your eyes, repeat after me. And now, with no one looking around.. if you prayed that prayer (and meant it!) raise your hand!"
You all know exactly what I'm talking about!
What gets me most is how it seems to be so common to find the preacher that says, "With no one looking around..."
Because I would argue, if the true, living, conquering Gospel about God Himself leaving His throne, becoming man, being nailed to a Cross as a sinful man yet sinless, raising from the dead three days later all to redeem us from the very pit of hell.. if that Gospel was just preached and received why can't we look at who just made the very step out of hell and into the blood of Christ?
I feel as though the Church is becoming far to numb to the Gospel. I know for me, if I depended on a preacher to remind me of the Gospel that has redeemed my life.. I wouldn't understand the Gospel at all.
Why is this?
So often Churches today don't preach the Gospel.
Yes, I said it. Hear me out.
Many Churches preach the forgiveness of sins when we take the step of faith in Christ, which is true.
Many Churches preach how we are now considered "holy and blameless" (Eph. 1), which is true.
Many Churches preach heaven, which is true.
What're they missing?
They're missing the Good News itself!
They preach forgiveness without preaching on our filthy, awful, evil desiring flesh first.
They preach our holiness without first describing the holiness of God in-spite of our sinfulness.
They preach heaven without first preaching hell.
Did you get that?
Churches are so quick to preaching heaven but never feel the Spirits calling to preach hell.
It is impossible to have a life changing encounter with the living Christ without the real understanding of our eternity without Christ. Aka. Hell.
See, if we never realize how desperate we are for a Savior.. we will never really understand the kindness of the Cross.
We are all worthy of hell. (When was the last time you heard that preached from the pulpit?)
We are all damned for an eternity apart from God.
That's what hell is. Hell is the eternal absence of anything God.
Every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17).
That means that everything that brings comfort, joy, pleasure, peace is from God. That would then make hell, the absence of anything we can think of that's good, right, comforting, joyous happy and peaceful. (Matt Chandler- "Explicit Gospel")
If that doesn't sound bad enough, Revelation 14:11 says, "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever."
If that's the most gruesome picture in the world, I don't know what is.
That's hell. That's what we all deserve. You all know the verse, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23)
That excludes no one.
Now, here's my turnaround:
Christ has come. Whether you believe it, feel it, know it, like it, or don't care:
Jesus came. He died. He rose and He's coming back.
Clearly, we have nothing to offer the Lord. As we just talked about, we're terrible apart from the Cross.
BUT that's supernatural proof of how much the Lord loved us.
"God made [us] alive together with him, having forgiven all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with it's legal demands. This He set aside nailing it to the Cross."
Col. 2:13,14
He nailed it to the Cross.
You see, without first preaching the severity of hell.. the image of all our shame and debt being nailed to the Cross can never make sense.
Without first understanding our damnation for hell prior to faith in Christ, we would never appreciate the security of an eternity with the Lord.
Matt Chandler in Explicit Gospel said, "The correct response to the severity of God, then, is not to dismiss, deny, or denigrate it but rather repent of our self-regard and throw ourselves back into his glorious self-regard and wondering . . . [t]he horror of hell is an echo of the infinite worth of Gods glory."
Understanding the severity of hell is not to make us feel even more worthless, it's to allow us to get a better image of the powerfully sovereign glory of God. Because with an eternity apart from God is that real, an eternity with God does not seem so far fetched. When we believe the true Gospel by faith in Christs death and resurrection redeeming every past, present and future sin, we are now new creations in Christ. The old is past and the new has come. We are no longer damned for hell but are considered sanctified and holy. (2 Cor. 5:17)
For it is by grace (Eph. 2:8).
That is the Good News!
I'd challenge you to reflect on your own view of who Christ is to you. Steven Furtick said once that the first thing you think about when you hear the name of Jesus is the most important thing about you.
Because if you've never been told the realities of hell and our state without the grace of the Cross.. i'd argue that you may not know the Christ that redeems our life. The nice sounding Gospel is preached often; but the reality is, the Gospel is a beautiful mess. And even further, the mess is key in the beauty. Don't allow yourself to believe the beauty without first understanding the mess.
Begin to view the Cross for what it really is, not what it's often made out to be.
And then when you grasp it, don't keep it inside. It's life and death.
And next time your asked to not look around, pray that every soul with a hand raised understands the true Gospel and is not swayed to believing the prosperity Gospel. And then, clap. Or yell. Or both. Because if they heard the unclean, bloody version of the nailing of Christ, they have walked from the pit of hell to a never ending life in Christ. And that, is the Good News.
But who am I?
I'm just Nerissa who is in need of a Savior as much as you and who gratefully, has had my blindness turned to sight.
But you don't have to ask me.. Ask the Lord. He'll show you.
"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time for the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of GOd, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 6:20-23
