a confrontational gospel

many of today’s church leaders are engaged in the popularity contest and there is a lie masquerading as the truth that is circulating in congregations all over the western world and many church leaders are adopting it as Biblical without holding it to Biblical standards. it whispers that time is short and we must do whatever it takes to save as many as possible. it goes so far as to adopt a “seeker-sensitive” platform, this nothing more than diluting the power of the Gospel and compromising its message.

this reprehensible ideology renders the Gospel impotent. the Gospel of Jesus is offensive. it more than suggests to the unsaved that they are wrong and unless they change the way that they live, they are damned to hell. to seek to make the Gospel inoffensive is to compromise the very message we are trying to advance. the leader who adopts this “possibility” is more concerned about his own image than the message of Christ Jesus. they seek to be esteemed in the eyes of the world by tolerating the sins of the world. did not Jesus say that the student is not above his master? did not the world hate Jesus? indeed, they crucified Him. who then, is the teacher of today’s leaders who are embracing “seeker-sensitivity”?

surely this is offensive to Christ. as I mentioned in a previous post, “these are neither hot nor cold, and will be cast away” from the Lord.[i]

the Gospel of Christ is not peaceful. Jesus said “i have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew chapter ten goes on in verse 35 and says that it will turn fathers against sons and mothers against daughters. families will be at odds with each other over the Gospel. “a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (10:36), and “whosoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (10:38). the cross is forever a symbol of violence.

tradition has beautified the cross and has lost the sense of the violence of it. most of the “christian” movies that depict the crucifixion make it seem bearable even though Christ died the most cruel and inhumane of all forms of capital punishment.

the message that goes against the popular grain of society and culture meets with much backlash and violence. and most of the backlash and violence comes from within the four walls. joseph parker wrote, “the man whose little sermon is ‘repent’ acts himself against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral tone he challenges. there is but one end for such a man- off with his head!”

it is alarming to see how we miss the point so often. we focus too much of our attention on the miniscule non-essentials. we stress wholeness psychology over souls, we seek to save our christian society instead of the lost, we preach tithes and offering while we neglect the needy and dying. we cripple ourselves. we want all the money before we step out the door and do something for God, but we purchase cars, houses and clothes on credit and never think twice about it. we spend more on beautifying our property than on evangelizing a city.

what, then, can change this? being a true disciple can change this. what is a disciple? a disciple is a disciplined follower. Jesus had many thousands of followers, but after He had died, only a hundred and twenty stuck around. many people claim to follow Christ, many congregations claim to be following Jesus, and they may be on the outside, but they have no discipline.

no! We don’t want discipline. discipline is too much like a pattern. a pattern too closely resembles a tradition. a tradition is too close to bondage. and that is guilt by association, not by due process.

we may consider ourselves disciples, after all, we’ve been following Christ for years- even decades, but in most cases, we are just onlookers.

we scream out legalism at anything that suggests discipline. we have decided that christianity is not a religion. because the word for religion in greek resembles the same word that we get the word bondage from. and because we know the truth and “the truth shall set you free,” christianity is not bondage but freedom. so christianity cannot be a religion, but a relationship.

forgive me for stepping on some toes for a short while, but christianity is both a religion and a relationship. if we are not bound in our relationship to God by that relationship, then what is to keep us from wavering from our faith? prayer? prayer is a religious activity. talking is a relationship activity. but praying is our way of talking to God. my point is simply this: we are in a religious relationship. we must pursue our relationship with God with a religious fervor. we must seek to be bound to Christ in our relationship with Him.

too often, we overstress the importance of our healing and don’t focus enough on glorifying God through our sicknesses or infirmities.

it’s not that He doesn’t want to heal us, He does! it’s that He knows the status of our hearts and He knows whether we are capable or incapable of giving Him the glory for it and to really mean what we’re saying and not merely going through the motions because we saw other people doing it.

what you do in private is infinitely more telling about who you are than what you do in public. it also is infinitely more telling about what you believe in God and who you believe He actually is. because if you truly believe that God is who He says He is and what His word says about Him, then what you do in private will speak louder than any public action ever could.

as people of the christian faith, we obligate God to bless us by invoking His name and His blessings. yet, we point to this blessing as proof that we can live with common sense as our guide, completely devoid of leaning on the Lord to guide our daily lives. the blessing God wants to give us, however, is not out of his loving obligation or duty, but one that is given from a beloved to his lover. the Lord is our Lover and we are His beloved, are we truly lovers, in return, and He our beloved? it is not enough to simply be loved by God- countless millions have been loved by God, and yet have entered an eternity completely separated from Him- we must also be pro-active and truly love Him in return.

we appear to have a conditional love for an unconditional God. we base our affections solely on the focal point of the cross and what was accomplished there. that is not enough. abraham, joseph, job, enoch, david and others could not base their love on the crucifixion; they loved in faith, not knowing what we know, or understanding the things we can see.

if we live our lives out through common sense, then we live little more than common lives. in point of fact, one becomes a practical atheist when, saying they believe in God, they live as though there were none. if we, however, live passionately affectionate lives that honor our God, then we will live revolutionary christian lives. and through those lives, we would be given the holy privilege of finishing the task of taking the name of Jesus to every person on this planet so the King, the Son of God, can return to the earth and take us to our rightful place. our lives must be commended to Him until every person who lives, worships God.

we must seek to know Jesus so intimately, so intensely, that we know his very emotions. our hearts must burst into joy when His springs into joy. when we become conscious of His heart, we become a conduit through which signs, wonders and miracles flow freely.

the more frequently we pursue that knowledge, the greater the frequency of the presence of those signs, wonders and miracles.

it’s not about whether or not we can, it’s whether or not we choose to know Him that intimately.


for the world-wide renown of His sovereign glory...


[i] Revelation 3:16. For further study on the idea of those who are in danger of being cast away, I suggest the following texts: 1 Peter 4:17,18