“What's really interesting is if you ask the average unbeliever, or your unbelieving friends [or] coworkers what they think the essential message of christianity is, nine times out of ten i'm wlling to bet you're not going to hear a summation of the gospel. You're going to hear some variation of works religion--be a better person, be a good person, love God, love your neighbor, do unto others (the golden rule), maybe go to church, maybe read the bible--but there's just that essential goodness--works. And of course we know that the essential message of Christianity, as good as good works are, is not that we are saved by our effort, but that God saves us purely by his grace, and that it's received purely by our faith alone. So that message actually can be quite polarizing.
We see that even as Jesus was using the message of the in-breaking of the kingdom--the gospel of the kingdom--that he had an attractive effect on some people, but also a very repellent effect on some people. So just as Paul would say the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, you may discover that as you share this message of the gospel with some folks, they find it somewhat antagonistic to their own sense of self-righteousness, because most people want to believe they have what it takes--‘I can be good enough to earn enlightenment,’ or heaven, or reconciliation with god, or forgiveness, or whatever it is. But others, who have never heard the message of the gospel before, who now encounter it for the first time, if you're able to express it clearly and simply, it can be quite surprising and really compelling.
I remember when I was pastoring a church in Vermont, it's the least churched state in the nation, and legitimately people there [had] no church background, [they] don't know the bible stories. If you say David and Goliath, they may know that in the context of a sports analogy (’Its a real David and Goliath story’) but no Sunday School, no church membership, that sort of thing. So the best lead-in that I would have, usually as I'm talking to somebody in the coffee shop or getting my hair cut, when they find out I'm a pastor, now we're in a religious conversation, I would simply ask them, 'Hey what do you think the message of the church is? What do you think the message of Christianity is?' And I never heard anyone articulate the gospel. No one, not a single person said, 'The essence of Christianity is that God saves sinners through the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.'
So I was able to respond and say, 'You know, you're response was good, whether it's be a good person or do good works, and the Bible does talk about those things, but do you know that really what makes Christianity unique, what makes it stand out from every other religion and philosophy in the world, is that we can be reunited with God, we can be reconciled to God, through Christ, purely as a free gift of grace from him? That Jesus Christ came to live the perfect life that we couldn't, and to die the sacrificial death that we wouldn't, and if we put our trust in him, we can be saved from the wrath of God for sin?’
Those who are taken aback by that, those who've never heard that before, they have to reckon with that, they have to somehow deal with that. Maybe they reject it, and most times they did, but that in and of itself, that message which is so startling and so strange and so new, unbelievers actually find the message of the gospel really compelling, at least to wrestle with even if they don't believe initially. They find it really compelling, if only because most of them have never ever heard it. So to me that's one of the exciting things about the world that we live in right now, the culture as it is right now. Christianity is weird again, and the gospel is fresh and new again. I think that gives us a lot of encouragement, that God really is working through this message to save sinners.”
- Jared Wilson
