I’m going to start off with a bold statement and say that one of the worst things we have done as Christians is promote that God is love.  The plain fact is that this world has a perverse definition of what love is; it’s not God’s love.

Matthew 7:6 says
Don’t give what is holy to unholy people.  Don’t give pearls to swine!  They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

Isn’t this what has happened? Think about how “God is love” has been abused and thrown back into our faces.  We get it all the time…if God is love then I can love whomever I want.  If God is love He won’t throw anyone into hell.   If God is truly love than He wants me to be happy so and I can do whatever makes me feel good and attain happiness.  And it goes on and on…

We need to stop leading with “God is love” and start leading with turning away from your sins.  But let’s check out what the Bible has to say about it.

John The Baptist

John prepared the way for Jesus.  So did he accomplish this by telling people they were going to meet the definition of love?  How did he tell people to prepare for Jesus?

Matthew 3:1-2
In those days, John the Baptist began preaching in the Judean wilderness.  His message was, “Turn from your sins and turn to God, because the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

Matthew 3:11-12
I baptize with water those who turn from their sins and turn to God.  But someone is coming soon who is far greater than I am – so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He is ready to separate the chaff from the grain with his winnowing fork.  Then he will clean up the threshing area, storing the grain in his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.

The Apostle Peter

Acts 2:14-42 is Peter’s big sermon after receiving the Holy Spirit.  You’ll notice that he never talks about God is love but does say…

Acts 2:38
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Around three thousand people accepted Christ after hearing Peter talk and not once did he say “God is love”.  Peter’s message was about recognizing who Jesus is and our need to repent to receive salvation.  It’s a message of us turning and following Jesus and not the other way around.

Jesus

I saved the most important example for last and that’s Jesus.  Since we are followers of Jesus it’s important for us to see what he has to say about the message we give to others?

Luke 24:47
With my authority, take this message of repentance to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: “There is forgiveness of sins for all who turn to me”.

Jesus says we are to give a message of repentance –  we are to lead with repentance and not love.

Now we know that God is love but to truly understand that statement we have to recognize really bad and evil people will say they love as well.  Now when someone like that says they love we recognize it’s a perverted love because of who they are and what they do.  The same goes for God; we can’t understand that God is love unless we look at God’s character and who He is.

God’s Character

God Is Holy

Isaiah 5:16
The holiness of God is displayed by his righteousness.

God Is Righteous

Psalm 11:7
For the LORD is righteous, and He loves justice.

God Is A Consuming Fire

Hebrews 12:29
For our God is a consuming fire.

God Is Love

1 John 4:7-8
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God…for God is love.

We have to see God’s love through His holiness and righteousness.   We have to realize that God’s love is not separate but flows through his holiness, righteousness and His love for justice.

I’ve seen Facebook posts where Churches go to gay pride parades with signs saying “sorry” and “God loves you”.  How does this message save anyone?  What’s more loving – telling people the truth about sin or saying that God is love so continue with what you’re doing?  We are to give a message of repentance not lead with love.

WARNING: Don’t believe anyone that teaches God loves you just the way you are.  If that were true we wouldn’t have needed Jesus to be our Saviour.  God sent Jesus to us so through Jesus we can become holy and acceptable before God so we can be in His presence.

Matthew 27:46
At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When Jesus took on the sins of the world, our sins, God could no longer be with him.  For the first time ever Jesus was separated from God and the reason for this is because God is holy!  It is the same for us – sin separates us from God.

It’s not that we don’t tell people that God is love but I don’t believe that should be the first conversation.  We need to be telling people why we need Jesus and the consequences of sin first.  I believe as a whole the Body of Christ is very comfortable telling people that God is love or God loves you.  The simple fact is saying that God is love doesn’t (usually) lead to confrontation and you don’t have to get into the messiness of other people’s lives.  But just like Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Apostles we have been given a radical message to give to others and it’s a message of repentance because…

John 3:36
And all who believe in God’s Son have eternal life.  Those who don’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life, but the wrath of God remains upon them.

An Example of How to Share the Gospel

I want to end with an example of how you can reach out to others about the gospel. This approach is from Torben Sondergaard and I really like how he makes it easy to share, no Christianese language that people aren’t going to understand and it also puts sin into perspective.  This has been slightly adapted and if you like it feel free to adapt it yourself to make it easier to remember and share with others. J

Think of a chess game (or better yet use one as a visual).  You take your turn then the person you’re playing with takes a turn.  You cannot move more than one piece on your turn at a time.  You cannot take 2 turns at a time.

The problem is people are waiting for God when it’s their turn.   Many people will say “if God is real he needs to come to me, if God is real he needs to show me.”  God is real but he has done everything He should from his side and now it’s up to you to respond to it.  You have sinned.  God sent His son, Jesus, to die for your sins.  He commanded you and people all over the world to repent and come back to Him.  Immediately when you repent towards God He will save you!  He will do it immediately because He is waiting for you, He wants you to move so He can forgive you.  When you get baptized He immediately sets you free from sin, immediately when people lay hands you receive the Holy Spirit.

Imagine this chess piece is God.  God created man to live with Him.  Everything was good, they had fellowship, they were walking together and everything was good in the beginning.  There was no sin in the world there was no sickness there was no depression.  Adam and Eve walked with God, they talked with God and they knew Him.

God created a lot of trees, plants and bushes that Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from.  Now in the garden and there was also the tree of life and when you eat of that tree you are going to live forever and you’re not going to be sick.  There also was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They were not allowed to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Why did God create a tree in the garden they were not allowed to eat?  Because true love is only possible when you have a choice to say no and God wants us to love him out of our own free will not because we have to.  But Adam and Eve made the wrong choice and they ate of the tree of good and evil.  Then sin entered the world, sin came into man.  Man sinned against God and he changed.

God didn’t want man to also eat from the tree of life because that would mean they would live forever and then we will always have a problem with sin.  So Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden and God posted angels to keep them away from the tree of life.  And because of that people didn’t have fellowship with God anymore.

Adam and Eve had kids and they sinned and they had kids who sinned and now we are living in this world where people are living in sin far away from God and people don’t have fellowship with God.  We are living in a fallen world where there is sin, death, suicides, sickness, depression and war.  This world today is so different from the world God created and I have met many people who say how difficult it is to believe in God because of all the evil that happens in the world.  But you need to read your Bible!  All the evil that happens is proof that the Word is true because God is saying it is like this because we are living in a fallen world.  We were not created to die.  God did not create men to die but death came into the world through sin.

We don’t see sin as a problem today because we compare ourselves to each other.  While you are standing here in this fallen world you compare yourself to this person, this person and this person. When you do this you will be thinking that you are okay because this person cheats on her husband and I wold never do that so I’m a good person.  Or that person steals from his work and I would never do that so I’m a good person. You won’t think of yourself as a bad person and you will not see sin as sin really is because you’re comparing yourself to a fallen world.

But if you compare yourself to God and how the world was before sin came into the world you will see how much you have fallen and it is much more that what we think it is.  The Bible says you shall not lie and every liar is going to be thrown into hell.  But today we put sin in a sliding scale, for example, if you asked people out of 10 with 0 being not at all and 10 really bad where would you place lying?  People are going to put in on the low end with some maybe even saying 0 yet God says all liars are going to hell.

We have to understand is it’s not so much what we do, it’s also who we do it against.

If I lie to my 9 year old daughter she can’t do anything.  But what if I lie to my husband?  What can happen then?  Well, I think the divorce rate says it all.  What if you have a job and you lie to your boss?  Well, you can get fired and we are talking about the same thing “you shall not lie” So if I lie to my daughter, nothing is going to happen, if I lie to my husband I could have a problem and even get divorced.  If I lie to my boss I can get fired.  But what if you’re in a courtroom and lie to the judge?  You can go to jail?  Do you see what I’m saying?  You can go to jail because of a lie to a judge.  Because the more authority the person has that you sin against the stronger the judgment is going to be.  We need to understand that when we lie (aka sin) we don’t do it first to a person but we do it to God who has created us.

God’s authority is so much greater than any judge here on earth and because He is so much bigger the punishment is so much stronger and He is Holy.  And this is why Jesus said you will not kill and many think, “I’m okay I’m haven’t killed anybody”, but Jesus goes deeper because it’s not only what you do it’s also your thought life, he said if you have hate in your heart you are already a murdered.  If you said idiot to somebody you are going to go to hell and He said you must not look in lust after a woman or man because if you do that in your heart you have already done adultery in the same way as though you have physically done it.  These are still sin and God sees it the same as if you go out and actually do it.

Try to imagine God is going to judge you out of “His standards”.  So let’s imagine that at birth they put a chip in your mind and that chip recorded every thought every deed you ever had from the day you were born till today.  And I got that chip and I made a 5 minute video of all the bad things you thought, said or did, everything you did behind closed doors and thought nobody knew – nothing good because when you’re in court the judge doesn’t care about what you did that was good he looks at the crime you committed.

Imagine I take that 5 minute video clip and put it on the internet maybe on Facebook so everybody could see it.  You would be so ashamed you’d never want to leave your house again.  I would be so ashamed.  And the thing is we know that everybody around us is guilty but one day you are going to stand in front of a Holy God who has never done the things we have done and that day you are not going to say “it’s not my fault”, you’re not going to open your mouth and pass the blame to someone else, you will fall down on your face because you will know you are guilty.

And God can still send every person to hell and still be a good God because the problem is us.  Some people say how can a good God throw people to hell?  He can because God is not the problem, its people.  We have sinned and we have fallen so far from the standard that we don’t see it anymore because we compare ourselves to each other.

But God is a good God the same as a good judge and he is going to take people who have done crime and put them to jail.  God is going to punish sinners and everybody have sinned and if you deny that you make God a liar and if you are honest you know you have sinned.

So this is the problem today, sin came into the world and if God wants he can throw the whole world into hell and He will still be a good God.  But God love us so much that He sent his son Jesus Christ.  Jesus was born by God, the son of God, he is God.  He lived a life here without ever sinning.  He didn’t steal or lie and He kept God’s commandments.   He did everything God had commanded him and he never sinned, He walked with God before Adam sinned and sin entered into the world and when He was 30 years old he got baptized with the Holy Spirit and from that time on he started teaching and saying that the Kingdom of God is near and repent from your sins.

He healed the sick and cast out demons because God was with him.   He walked here and did miracles and he died on the cross but because he had never sinned like you and me after he was buried He rose up again and came to his disciples and talked to them about the kingdom and went to heaven and sent his Holy Spirit down here to help us live a righteous life.  So we need to do what the Bible says – repent for our sins, get baptized in water and receive the Holy Spirit.

So what is a disciple?  What is a Christian?  A Christian is somebody who has recognized their sin.  They recognize that they have sinned against God and they repent toward God and believe in Jesus.   And when you do that God is going to remove the stone heart and give you a new heart and new life is going to come inside of you.  But you need to bury the old dead body.  Your spirit is alive so you need to bury the dead body and you do that through water baptism.

Let me explain.  When someone dies you bury them because the body begins to rot and that body is going to create a sickness, it’s going to kill the life there is so it’s very important that you bury the old body by dying with Christ and coming up again in new life with Christ and then you receive the Holy Spirit.  The same Holy Spirit in Christ - you don’t receive a small Holy Spirt and he has a big Holy Spirit, it’s same Holy Spirit.

And now you are walking here on earth in Christ’s place free from sin, baptized with the Holy Spirit and going around teaching others the good news and healing the sick, the same way Jesus did.   And when people believe your word about Jesus then they repent toward God from their sin and they get baptized into Jesus Christ and then they receive the Holy Spirit and start to walk here on earth in Christ’s place.  So this is what you need to do to get saved, you have to repent from your sins, accept Jesus into your life, get baptized in water to break sins hold on you and receive the Holy Spirit.

Your Sister in Christ,

Angela

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