By Andy Waits
This past week I had a conversation with a friend about a taboo subject in the church today: Sin. He felt strongly that the church today had pointed their finger at people long enough in judgment. It was time for a new day and new reputation among God’s people. The church needed to spend its energies focusing on love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Our attitude and self-righteous piety has been a major cause of the decline in Christianity in America. His point was singular: The Body of Christ needs to shift from focusing on people’s sin to a message of hope and redemption. Pastors shouldn’t preach on things that tear people down; rather, they should encourage and build up. People are hurting and the last thing they need is the church rubbing their face in the mud.
This argument sounds great. It makes me feel good. In my flesh, I wish this is how church would be every week. Who doesn’t want encouragement when they meet with their Faith Family? We all want to walk away from church feeling good about how great of a person we are. However, when measured against the Bible, this way of thinking is dead-wrong. While it contains a small element of truth, at its core this argument is anti-biblical and anti-gospel. This is the precise definition of false teaching.
The gospel requires man to submit himself to Romans 3 to be saved. All men are sinners. We have been forever separated from God because of our sinful nature. Our thoughts are evil. Our speech is evil. Our motives are evil. Our actions are evil. Our hearts contain not even the slightest drop of goodness and are totally depraved. We are spiritually dead from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5). Jesus even preached in the Sermon on the Mount that we are all adulterers, liars, murders, drama-queens, and self-centered little brats. Why? To expose our heart condition, showing every person that their righteousness and good works will never come close to pleasing a holy God. Eternal life requires a transaction. It requires surrendering to the fact that my works will never be enough to gain entrance into Heaven and that Christ is only way by which I will ever be able to please God. That’s the good news of the gospel! While we can never make it on our own, God has provided the way to Himself through the finished work of His Son on the cross. When we surrender our life to Him, our sin is placed upon Jesus Christ . . . and His righteousness is placed upon us forever.
A church that refuses to preach on sin is betraying its members. A pastor that says he only wants to encourage his parishioners does not love his people; in practice he deceives them. This would be the equivalent to a doctor not telling his patients when they have cancer because he doesn’t want to upset or offend them. Salvation is even more important than life or death; it’s an eternal matter and we have the cure! Churches can still love on people and deal with the sin in their lives.
It seems to me pastors and churches have two options. We can refuse to confront sin and send people to Hell with a smile on their face . . . or we can lovingly confront sin and see people enter the Kingdom of God with their hands lifted in the air!