The Message We All Need to Receive
Political preachers seem to be everywhere. But the message from Christ is something that, when you hear it, changes your life forever.
The politicizers of the Christian message, who occupy both Right and Left positions on the political spectrum, are doing their damnedest—and I mean “damnedest,” as in their preaching anything other than Christ and Him crucified is damned by God—to make Christ and the Gospel odious.
So, to clear away the fog their false gospels have created, here’s the Christian message, in a nutshell.
You and I are sinners, meaning we are born alienated from God and from others. We suffer from the condition of sin.
From our condition of sin, we sin and sinners sin. We sins when we act or think in way that are either actively contemptuous of or contemptuously indifferent to God our Creator or to other human beings who are as loved and valued by God as we are.
Our situation would be hopeless and we would be condemned forever were it not for God rolling up sleeves to save us from ourselves.
How?
God the Son, Jesus, was conceived in a virgin’s womb, a new and sinless Adam whose life didn’t come from human antecedents but from God Himself.
He proceeded to face down temptation and sin, kept living a perfect life of love, and then offered that perfect life on a cross, becoming the perfect, sinless penitent, bearing the death and condemnation you and I deserve.
Jesus did this so that when God the Father raised Him from the dead, He could open eternity to all who turn away from the constraints and condemnation of sin and death (that is, when they repent) and who believe or trust in Him.
This belief or trust is what the theologians call “saving faith” in Christ.
Such faith is foreign to us.
Our default is to trust in ourselves, other people, political isms, self-attained goodness or righteousness, money, power, sex.
The power of such things ends at the grave, of course, and we can’t attain life—life lived in the presence of God and, despite our sinful nature, under the approval of God, by our own efforts, grit, or supposed “niceness.”
We are saved by God’s charity (His grace) alone through faith in Christ alone.
AND FAITH IN CHRIST IS A GIFT GOD GIVES TO US AS WE RECEIVE HIS WORD: HEARD, READ, OR GIVEN TO US IN HOLY BAPTISM AND HOLY COMMUNION.
What must sinners do to have life with God that can’t even be stopped by the grave? NOTHING.
Simply receive God’s grace and forgiveness that comes from Christ and you ARE saved.
Find a church where this message is proclaimed and you can receive the gift of saving faith every time you gather to worship God with God’s people.
Don’t pay attention to the politicizers of the Gospel.
Pay attention to Christ and His Gospel.
Listen for it.
Receive it.
That’s where life is for you, now and forever.
And it’s through Christ and His Gospel that God will empower you to love God and love your neighbor. That love will change you and, as you share it, other people, communities, and nations for the best in ways that no political program ever could. God bless you.
[By the way, I think you might receive Christ and His Gospel of forgiveness in one of the churches you’ll find in this directory and in other churches too. Listen for it. Whenever you hear the call to repent and believe in Jesus alone for hope and you hear the pastor say, “In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven,” you’ll know you’re in the right place, among the right fellowship of recovering sinners.]