Cauterized Consciences
Trading The Good News For Some Good Advice
This quote will likely result in folks wanting to either throw John 3:16-marked tomatoes at me (professing Christians) or say, ‘This is why Christians suck; they think they’re better than us,’ (Christ rejectors). Before you give in to your emotional reactions, please take a step back and consider what is being said by the ‘always gentle’ Mr. Pink. First, what does it mean to have a cauterized conscience? Basically, that when it comes to having morals, all standards and feelings towards violating those standards are gone. Since we’ve leaned in heavily to the ‘I just want to tell you God loves you’ evangelistic method, and even had a so-called ‘Jesus Revolution,’ has our society and culture become more or less moral? Not clear enough, yet? Here’s one more question for you — Has the world become more like the church or the church become more like the world? The answer should be clear. I argue, as Pink does in his quote, that preaching a gospel which is all love and no wrath results in a sense of security in our sins. If God loves me despite my sins, and there is no emphasis on the need to turn from my sins (repent and believe), it is pretty easy to see how one of two scenarios would occur. It’s likely someone would either ‘accept God’ and continue in the same sins with no sense of urgency to repent OR reject God because if God loves me anyways then why would I want that stupid religion stuff?! Do you meet a lot of the former folks in your churches? Have you run into a lot of the latter when sharing the gospel? I’m guessing ‘Yes’ on both fronts. Maybe I’ve gotten you to embrace the first part of Mr. Pink’s quote. Now let’s look at the second part…
Is the love of God for the saints only? First of all, let’s define saints. Sorry to my Catholic friends, but your system of sainthood is not biblical. Saints are people who are set apart for the Lord and His kingdom — ALL Christ followers. Here is a short explanation from gotquestions.org which contains a lot of Biblical references. So, contrary to common misunderstandings and false assumptions, genuine Christians are not people who believe we are ‘holier than thou,’ but rather folks who have come to know we are sinners who are so dead and lost that our only hope is God’s grace. His grace from what though? His wrath! Sending Jesus to endure the punishment and death which we deserve is the signature act of grace! We rightly recognized that we were enemies with God and there is only one way to be reconciled to Him — Jesus Christ. Are we so clever to have figured this out on our own? No! It’s also due to God’s grace that He caused us to come to this realization. Consider this fact: Every Christian in all of time once believed something completely contrary to what he/she eventually came to know as saving faith through Christ alone! What changed each and every one of our hearts? The real question is WHO changed each and every one of our hearts? God Himself. How else could we go from there are none who seek God (Romans 3:10-12) to there are some who now do?!
So, where did we go wrong? After all, God is love. His love is big enough to love every person. Yes, but He hates sin! He’s going to deal with unrepentant sinners in a way that nobody would consider ‘loving’. They will literally suffer the wrath of God, which will look nothing like the figurative way we like to throw this phrase around. It’s perfectly just for Him to do this. Why would we shield folks from this reality? Is it because we want God to look more attractive to people? Is it because we don’t want to scare them away? Is it because we’d rather give people good advice than the good news? Are we afraid of sharing the bad news? I think God can more than handle Himself, so we really don’t need to present Him in the best light possible in the hope people will better digest Him. In fact, we are dishonoring God and doing folks a disservice when we do this. As we looked at in the previous post, what people need is the good news of the gospel; no more, no less. Just let God be God and the gospel be the gospel. Let’s close with another A.W. Pink quote. Don’t worry, this one is actually much gentler…
