I’m sitting here staring out the
door of the she-shed into the garden and trying to figure out how to express my
thoughts. Butterflies are floating around out there in record numbers this
year, I guess because I’ve added one more butterfly bush and my lantana is
especially loaded with blooms. It’s an idyllic scene and contrasts sharply with
the burden in my heart.
It seems there are so many folks trying to rewrite the gospel. Now, I don’t think they would admit that. It’s an insidious thing.
It reminds me of someone I knew
long ago who often referenced the love of God. “God is love,” he quoted from 1
John 4:8. Well, yes, yes, and yes. But I felt he focused on this aspect of God to
cover over the wide range of his behaviors that were inconsistent with other attributes
of God—among them justice, righteousness, and holiness.
When I
fully surrendered to the Lord, I memorized a little booklet Campus
Crusade for Christ (called CRU) publishes, The Four Spiritual Laws. These
were put together from scripture by that great saint of God, Bill Bright.
Still today, I don’t know of any better way to tell the story of what God has done on our behalf. In summary, God loves us and has a plan for our lives, but we are separated from God by sin. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for that sin and the way to experience his love and plan. We must accept him into our lives as Lord and Savior to know God’s plan and have eternal life. (I’ll give a direct link to the exact wording from Cru below. I receive no monetary remuneration for doing so).
The point
is, yes, God is love, but we are separated from Him by our sin. If we
weren’t, there would have been no reason for Jesus to come. It rips the heart out
of the gospel if we remove the acknowledgement of ourselves as
sinners needing to repent.
If we talk
about the love of God without acknowledging our need for a Savior, what are we
doing? What kind of gospel is that?
I turn to C.
S. Lewis from Mere Christianity, “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect
creature who needs improvement; he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.
Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have
been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the
ground floor--that is the only way out of a ‘hole.’ This process of
surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance.”
We can talk
about the love of God and try to gloss over our sin, but God’s love is fully embodied
in Jesus, who died for us. Our sin caused his death. There is no way around it.
I see people
following a gospel which is no gospel at all. It has the appearance of all love
and acceptance but skips this very essential step of repentance of sin.
I recently
bought a shopping bag that had written on it, “Oh, happy day.” I don’t think its
creators had any idea where those words came from. But some of us know it’s
from an old hymn, “Oh, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away.”
And let me testify
right here, it was indeed a happy day, when I repented, and Jesus washed mine
away and gave me a new life.
May we all find our happy day.
A story set on the lovely Saint Simons Island HERE.
