In the last post I wrote: “Showing people sin is the easy part. Showing people the grace of God is not so easy.”
A profound—but plagiarized—thought.
The simple truth is that convincing someone of personal sin is not hard. I remember reading the story of a horror film writer on opening night of his movie sitting in the front row and watching the ghastly evil on the screen and realizing that this entire movie had been born in his heart. It was a sort of Ah-ha moment of his own sin. He was no Christian and I’m not certain he ever became a Christian. Every sinner knows that they are sinful, this is a truth none of us can escape–we can only suppress its reality.
And for those of us who are Christians, who have openly and honestly looked into the eye of that heinous beast of sin residing in all our hearts, a preacher can convict us of sin with little trouble. But if we are more aware of sin than grace the conviction of sin can easily dominate and suffocate a more important truth of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In the last post, this led Tom post this comment: “As a pastor I desire to present Christ in all His goodness and glory in such a way that He is beautiful desirable, attractive and appealing, and yet I feel I so often fall short. You would think that it would be easy to present Christ in such a way that people would have a natural hunger and yearning for Him, yet I find it to be a great challenge and am frustrated that I fall so short of proclaiming Christ’s glory winsomely, fruitfully and effectively.”
Great thoughts, Tom. Its worth taking a moment to understand how we can better communicate the grace of the gospel.
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