The Gospel without Sin

I couldn't go to sleep last night. So, in flipping through our numerous (read: six) channels, I came across Jonathan Falwell preaching at his church, Thomas Road Baptist Church. He was doing a pretty decent job. His use of scripture was less than desirable in my mind, though. The message title was something along the lines of "Moving in and Moving out", and consisted of many points, each of which were punctuated by a scripture supporting that particular point, but not really relating to each other much at all. It was akin to quoting a well-respected book or author to support each point. My only problem with this is if you use the bible in this manner (you defining something and using the Bible to back you up), then you are teaching your congregation that you can live the same way, determining yourself what must be done and then using scripture to support your decision rather than letting the scripture define you and your life.

But that's not even what scared me the most. When he got to the climax of his message, talking about "moving out" - basically evangelism, he started a nice little list of reasons why we share Christ. It was a nice list, primarily focused on the joy, peace, and comfort found in Christ, climaxing in that Christ has washed us white as snow. But he never once mentioned sin. Not once. I was listening, waiting for it.

Take the book of Romans, not just a single passage, but, say, at least the first five chapters. Paul here is dealing with salvation, and sin is integral to it. Check out Ephesians, specifically the first half of the second chapter where there is this wonderful description of the Gospel hinging on the reality of sin and God's provision for man because of it.

The sad thing is, if you share Christ with someone without ever addressing the sin in their life, their acceptance of him never approaches the fullness of the Gospel. In fact, if they never repent of and turn from their sin, then, biblically speaking, they really aren't saved at all (see the essentiality of understanding, repenting of, and turning from sin to in Romans 6:1-14).

There is no gospel without sin - there's no need for the gospel without sin. If you remove sin from what you are teaching, then how is it really different from the numerous self-help doctrines permeating our society? Let us never lose site of the fact that it was because of our sin that Christ came, it was our sin that put him on that cross, and that because of our sin we can only have a right relationship with God through Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.