There are many ways to reach people for Christ, but the most persuasive one is face to face, with our words. I presume here on those who are studying to show themselves approved, (2 Tim. 2:15) on those who have a heart for the lost, and who realize that there is above all the love of Christ for that person that must be expounded upon.
Yet for the last few decades, that seems to be the extent of the conversation upon those who profess to know Him, they understand the love, but a major component has been left out of most of those conversations, that of sin. Better said perhaps would be the conviction of the personal sin in the person that you are speaking to, the knowledge that they are a sinner in need of repentance.
This is one of the sure signs of the falling away, attempting to lead people to Christ by the path of the love that He has for them, without ever bringing up the truth that they are, in their unrepentant state a wicked person who needs to repent of their sins against the Lord God.
Think back here, the person that brought you to the cross, the tract that you read, the pamphlet, or whatever it may have been, was the knowledge that you were a sinner in need of repentance a part of the knowledge of His grace that was available to you, or was it just that He loved you, just as you are. Most people that come to the Lord are in desperate times, circumstances have never been worse, they are emotionally despondent, and most people crave love, they want to be loved. At those moments, the last thing on the person’s mind that is speaking to them in hopes of them becoming saved is to add, as they say, “insult to injury,” they want to express concern, compassion and love.
To speak to those people when they are at the lowest point in their life about the need for repentance does not enter into the mind of those who are trying to console them, in fact, nearly all who seek to reach those for Christ today would not dare bring up John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”
In the Old and New Testament you will read this word over and over, “Repent,” but today even from many of the Evangelical churches, what you hear instead is that Jesus loves them. And so, what we have in our midst is a large group of people who claim to know Christ, who say they love Him, who sit in the pews and sing the songs, but have never repented, they have not been convicted of their sins. It is a path that may lead to a good moral life, but it is not the path that leads to salvation my friends.
“Ye must be born again,” (John 3:7) you must shun all evil, in your life and in the lives of others, you must hate evil, despise it with every fiber of your being, and you must do something about it. “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.” (Prov. 8:13) It’s easier for these good-natured individuals to just bring up how much Jesus loves the person in front of them, to tell them that they will always be loved. It’s not so easy to look them in the face and tell them that they are wicked in the eyes of God, that they are sinners, and if they remain in their sins they will face eternal punishment. It is a rare thing to even hear this from the pulpit today.
If you have not turned from your sins, if you are not continuously pleading for the Lord God to show you the sins in your life, and to show you how to remove them, if you are still of the world, then you are not of Christ. He went to the cross because of His love for us, but if you do not repent, if you do not turn from your sin, if you are not born-again, if you have not been crucified with Christ, if you are not carrying your cross, all the love that you have for the Lord Jesus will avail you nothing.
