by Jacob Ninan
The way many preachers these days call out to people to come to Jesus is by saying, "Come to Jesus, you will have heaven on earth. You will prosper and be in good health. You will be the head and not the tail. No one who stands against you will succeed. Enjoy the abundant life which God has prepared for you. Jesus has done everything for you, there is nothing you need to do. Etc." Certainly, this is a very attractive message to hear in the midst of all the trouble we have in this world, and so many people flock to these preachers and their churches. But then, sooner or later, the reality hits them that trouble has not disappeared altogether as they had been given to believe!
This kind of preaching paints up a wrong picture of God's plan for us, and therefore it is a false gospel that they are proclaiming. It also misses the essence of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not come to offer us a comfortable life on earth. But the Devil knows that people who are struggling with problems can be drawn to such a message and be diverted from hearing the true Gospel. People who follow this false teaching will finally end up in destruction because they missed the true way to God that Jesus came to proclaim. Many who have never been saved at all believe that they have been saved, and some others have only experienced a small part of salvation.
The root of our problems is sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, they had turned away from submission to God and His ways to Satan and his lies. Just as God had warned them, they died – they got disconnected from God, His fellowship, protection, plans, guidance, etc. Now they had to manage their lives by themselves without support from God.
Satan became their antagonist (that is what his name means) (Gen.3:15). Life on earth became a struggle (Gen.3:17-19). Their desires became self-pleasing (Jas.1:14,15). We suffer from the consequences of our sins, the particular sins of people against us, and also the consequences of the collective sins of mankind, such as pollution, deforestation, etc. Sickness began to increase. We face the possibility of getting the judgment of hell, if we don't first get things right with God.
So the point of the Gospel is not about giving us a comfortable life here on earth, but getting us right with God. Without dealing with the issue of sin, no other solution can be a gospel for us, especially considering the point of view of eternity.
In order for each of us to get back into a proper relationship with God, we have to personally deal with the matter of sin in our life. The first hindrance many people have when it comes to this is their inability to recognise themselves as sinners in God's eyes. They compare themselves with other people and conclude that they are not as bad as those others. But what we need to do is to compare ourselves with God. How can we even talk to God if there is sin in our heart (Psa.66:18)? Our sins will block God from reaching out to help us (Isa.59:1,2). God tells us that sinners cannot find a place in His kingdom (1Cor.6:9,10;Rev.21:8). Even careless words we speak will be held accountable by God (Matt.12:36). If we thought that we were free from gross sins like murder and adultery, God clarifies what it means to commit these in our heart (Matt.5:21,22;27,28). When we stand humbly and honestly before God, every one of us has to admit that we have sinned and come below His standards (Rom.3:23).
The first step we must take towards God is to recognise and admit that we have personally sinned against God and deserve His judgment to the full.
It is then that God presents the Gospel to us, that Jesus has died and taken our punishment on Himself. It was for this that Jesus came into this world, and not for giving us a nice time on earth (Matt.1:21). Now God is waiting to forgive us because of His great love for us.
Just because Jesus has died for us, it is not automatic that we receive forgiveness. We must first repent from our sins. We must have a deep remorse and sorrow in our heart for having sinned against God. Then we can confess our sins to God and make a decision in our heart not to go on sinning in our life. We ask God for forgiveness on the basis of Jesus having died and taken our punishment in our place. God will now forgive us and accept us as His children. He will supernaturally give us a new heart, with a desire not to sin again. If we do not find any sorrow in our heart over our past sins and a desire to stop sinning, we have to reckon that our repentance or faith is not genuine.
After we have become children of God, our life does not become comfortable! We enter now into a battlefield, where we find opposition from Satan, the attractions of the world and the desires in our own old sinful nature. It is a battle because now we do not want to sin any more, and these are trying to pull us away from that goal. We begin to understand that to be tempted is not a sin but something that needs to be overcome because Jesus Himself was tempted but He did not sin. There will be always challenges for us from other people and situations, in which we have to learn to overcome in order to live in a godly way and to become more like Jesus (1Jn.2:6). We have to stand in the position that God has given us, to be dead towards sin, and learn to yield every part of our life to God to do His will. That is how we can ensure that sin will not be allowed to rule over us any more (Rom.6:11-14).
We will no longer be looking for a comfortable earthly life, but an overcoming life. We will learn to be more focussed on the eternal life than our earthly ups and downs. We will also begin to experience that the troubles of this life can actually serve to prepare us better for eternity.