The Quick And Easy Gospel

The Modern Salvation Message Designed Specifically For Christians Who Are In A Hurry To Get Converts

Does your church need converts but you don’t feel like waiting for God to convict the sinner and convert him or her?

Do you want to grow your church and don’t want to “turn off” any potential new members?

Well then, have we got a gospel for you!  It requires very little effort and is very seeker friendly!  In fact, our modern quick-and-easy gospel method is so easy to use and so attractive to lost sinners, you won’t have to pray much or preach much and you’ll hardly have to get out of your own comfort zone at all.

Here it is… Just tell sinners that all they have to do is say the “sinner’s prayer” and really mean it of course, and voila! They’re saved!  Just like that! No need to preach the Law of God (Romans 3:20), or about sin or hell or God’s eternal wrath or any other “unpleasant” stuff like that.  No need to tell sinners that God saves whom He wills when He wills (Ephesians 1:4-5).  No need to mention God’s immense hatred for sin or the fact that He is “angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11) and that He “hates the workers of iniquity” (Psalm 5:5).  No need to even mention that Jesus is eternal God or that God would send the sinner to hell forever even if they committed only one sin during their entire lifetime (James 2:10). No need to quote Bible verses, especially scary verses like “the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night” (Revelation 14:11).  This modern easy gospel can be preached quickly and efficiently without ever requiring the preacher to bring up any of the harsh realities of the true Christian life such as “carrying your cross daily” (Luke 9:23).   You won’t need to tell your hearers that “all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).  

Now doesn’t that make life as a Christian a whole lot easier and make witnessing a piece of cake?  Of course it does!  But the only problem with this quick-and-easy gospel is that it is a false gospel and only creates false converts who think they are saved simply because THEY DID SOMETHING (they recited the magical sinner’s prayer), when if fact, they are still as spiritually dead as they were before they said that prayer. Only if you are God himself would you be able to say that such a person was His child at that point. As for the rest of us mere mortals, as believers in Christ, all we can do is wait and see if the person exhibits the fruit of the spirit over time. Of course we can and should pray also – to the Lord of the Harvest – for souls to be saved and for God to have mercy on others as He has had on us. And we should continue to water the seed of the gospel by continuing to preach and teach the Bible to those whom God has put in our path and who have ears to hear.

The REAL gospel requires hearing the Word of God preached (Romans 10:17) – including the law of God, conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit (John 16:8) and conversion and regeneration by God (Titus 3:5), resulting in TRUE Christians – people who know they are saved because JESUS CHRIST truly converted them (2 Corinthians 13:5) as evidenced by a changed life (2Corinthians 5:17) and a changed attitude towards sin and towards God.  They did not convert themselves… by reciting something or by walking down an aisle or raising their hand, etc.  People who DO those things may in fact already be saved or they may just be seeking some cheap “fire insurance” – an easy manmade way of getting to heaven.

True Christian evangelism is not about getting sinners to say they accept Christ as their Savior. Certainly we are to lead people to the Savior but we can only do that by showing them why they need a savior. Which means that evangelism is really about obeying God’s command to go out into the world and preach the Gospel, the true Gospel. And that preaching is about proclaiming biblical truth – regarding God’s standards of righteousness and holiness – to a world that hates God and hates the messenger and the message. And it is about letting God save whom He wills after the preaching has taken place, whether it be a minute later or years later. A great example of biblical preaching, the kind of preaching that God uses to change hearts of stone into hearts of flesh can be seen in the example of Stephen’s uncompromising preaching to the Jewish leadership (the Sanhedrin) until they took up stones to stone him. As a result of Stephen’s bold preaching along with having been exposed to the Word of God by his own reading of it, the man named Saul of Tarsus became one of the greatest preachers, teachers and evangelists who ever lived: the apostle Paul.
 
SEE ALSO:

• Revelation 3:20 and the Offer of Salvation

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