We don’t live in a world eager for the Good News of the gospel. No, we reside in one fixated on superficial, self-serving, “good” advice.
People want tips on how to be a better spouse, get the dream job, or make the most of their youthful days before they’re gone for good. Our age is one in which self-help books flood the shelves, and podcasts on how to be “the best you that you can be” are all the rage. “As long as I can still turn down your advice, you’re welcome to give it to me,” some proclaim. “But don’t you dare force your opinion on me and tell me how I should live my life.”
This doesn’t exactly make sharing the gospel message easy, now does it?
Let’s face it, people don’t want to hear that they’re a sinner. Heaven? Sure, that’s fine. Hell and eternal torment? A joke to most. Secular minds scoff at “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” God’s rules and His morality are such a snore fest to the person who craves freedom — or at least what they consider freedom — in doing anything at any time on their terms. Of course, this is not true freedom. But we’ll come back to this in a moment.
Living in a world that wants good advice means the believer and the message of Christianity is unwelcome in most circles. Unfortunately, this often leads many Christians to refrain from sharing their faith out of fear of being ridiculed, rebuked, or rejected. Others dance a weak line — Christian in name but never “too much.” We water down the gospel, hoping a softer message will somehow make a harder hit. We lean shakily on the safe, logical talking points to try and lure the unconverted, mumbling excuses about saving the raw, spiritual truth for some later date.
All of this, while understandable, is not how the Christian is called to live. We aren’t called to shrink back in evangelism and proclamation of the gospel. Rather, Scripture calls us to be unashamed (Romans 1:16), bold as lions (Proverbs 28:1), and persistent in doing what is good (Galatians 6:9). As theologian Charles Spurgeon once said, “We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel. Man’s fall, his need of a new birth, forgiveness through atonement, and salvation as the result of faith. These are our battle-ax and weapons of war.”
So, how do we avoid caving under pressure? It begins with seizing this bone-shattering reality: the world is drowning in its need for the Good News — even as it’s cursed and trampled underfoot.
Philosophy doesn’t save. Metaphysics doesn’t save. One road alone leads to eternal life, and the Bible thunders it relentlessly: repent and believe. No detours. No alternatives. We must lock this truth in our bones, because the secular world is clawing after purpose everywhere except Scripture’s path. They chase after shadows of deceit, always to stagger back empty, broken, and lost. But we Christians hold fast to the news that can bring them home. We embrace the blazing answer to their gut-wrenching cries about life, meaning, and why anything even matters at all.
The late Pastor R.C. Sproul once explained how everybody wants to be treated with dignity, and yet, so few truly understand what dignity is and where it comes from. “Here’s the thing,” Sproul stated, “we want to believe that we have dignity, that we have importance, weightiness, significance.” But so few realize that the only “reason we have dignity is because God has assigned dignity to us.”
“In other words,” he continued, “the reason why you count is because God says you count. And the reason why I’m called to treat you with dignity is because God commands me to treat you with dignity, because He has assigned importance and weightiness and significance to every person who bears His image.” And so, “if you want to deny the existence of God and still claim you have dignity, you’re on a fool’s errand.” No one who believes they “came up out of the slime and emerged fortuitously from the dust, and then … are destined to annihilation” can truly “celebrate” their life.
Ultimately, Sproul argued, “If you come out of insignificance and you go to insignificance, you are insignificant” —which is exactly “the thing that modern man refuses to face.” So, as we Christians hurl ourselves into this mission of preaching the gospel with fire and unrelenting urgency, we won’t just occasionally face pushback. No, we’ll slam headfirst into hostility and persecution, time and again. And we must accept this. Because even though those of us in America have Constitutional protections, Sproul rightly noted years ago that “there’s a growing disenchantment … towards any influence of the Christian faith in the public square.”
And while we may not be persecuted as Christians are persecuted in Nigeria or the Middle East, we do face our challenges in terms of living out our faith with boldness. And really, more so than in other countries, I wonder if it’s caused some Christians in America to be tempted to simply fall back in the shadows and live a comfortable life to their liking. We’re not immune to the enticement of self-serving advice either, you know. We too are “looking for how to have peace with our children,” Sproul said, “how to get along in our marriages, and how to be successful in our business relationships. We can get that advice from our barber or from our hair stylist without ever reading a page of the New Testament.”
However, he urged, “If God is holy, and He is, and if God has wrath, and He does, and if God is concerned about righteousness and justice, and He is, then we need the cross.” We need the Good News. And really, Sproul added, “the best news we can ever hear is that Christ has come to satisfy the demands of the righteousness and justice of God, that Christ has taken in Himself the fullness of the wrath of God directed against our sin, and that He has clothed me with His own righteousness, which alone will meet the demands of a holy God.”
But “if God is holy, dear ones, and I’m not, and there’s really no ‘if’ to that equation, is there? And as long as God is holy and God expresses wrath against unholiness and against sin, then I need a Savior. I need the cross” — a message that utterly revolts the ravenous wolves prowling this world. The wolves that, as Sproul continued to say, don’t “want to hear about a holy God.” This is exactly why Jesus warned us that we would be hated for sharing His truth.
So, if we’re to share the Good News in a world that only wants good advice, we must first acknowledge the deep need for salvation every person has, and we must then let this understanding fuel us to uncompromised evangelism. And if you want good advice on how to share this Good News, Sproul had a little more to say on the matter: “The Christianity that we have here, the message that Jesus is giving, is the message of the gospel that includes a cross. And if you want to take away the cross from Christianity, you’ve taken Christianity itself away.”
Don’t take the cross away. Rather, proclaim it boldly. Proclaim it passionately. Proclaim it as though our lives depend on it — because they do. “If you had the cure to cancer, wouldn’t you [share] it?” Kirk Cameron once asked. “You have the cure to death … get out there and share it.”
This article appeared originally here.
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