Why would you have a different message for people who are walking the streets of this world, and are about to die?
***Jesus had a message for the thief on the cross who was dying next to Him. It did not involve as much conviction of sin as it did the love of God.
I believe the thief knew he was a sinner. Seems like the lady thinks she is good and had to be shown otherwise... Are you a good person?” She predictably said she was, so I took her through three of the Ten Commandments—.
Might we assume you are a fan of Rob Bell?
Consider the context and the most probable sequence of events: The thief was on a cross, and he got there by sinning. He knew he wasn't coming down from that cross alive, because no one ever had. Concerned about his eternal destiny, it's intuitive he had pieced together what the Scriptures said of the Messiah (the Christ), because the debate of the week in Jerusalem centered on the person of Jesus. So the thief had already repented, and engaged the only person who could save him.
Because the conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment (Jn. 16:9) was already there: the man confessed that he was getting what he was judged and sentenced for, in contrast to Jesus Christ the righteous, and thus he asked for mercy, which finds its appreciation in the light of justice.
The hardest labor of evangelists as instruments of the Holy Spirit is to bring souls to be convicted of sin, righteousness and judgment. Once souls realizes they are drowning, it is easy to tell them how the life preserver works and to get them to use it.
You know, as I was reflecting on this thread and the judgment of God and the love of God, it occurred to me that as much as people hear that God doesn’t like sin, the message is more than out there that God is love.
Sometimes, saying that is just not the thing people need to to hear again. When people are looking at divorce, loss of job, a bad diagnosis, death of a family member, whatever, they look at that situation and question *If God is love, why do things like this happen? Why does God allow it? If this is an example of the love of God, who needs it?*
The reasoning being that if they were God, they wouldn’t do that to someone or let that happen to someone. The enemy can get a lot of mileage out of questioning the very concept that God is love with that.
What people need to hear, and perhaps this is what you’re referring to, is that God CARES for them. The concept that God cares for them, for every personal intimate detail of their lives is something very few people seem to grasp or accept when they hear it. It’s a foreign concept to them. I mean, really, God is so big. There’s a whole universe to run and a planet full of almost 7 billion people. Who am I that God should notice me?
The concept of a personal, intimate God who WANTS a relationship with His created just never occurs to them.
It comes across different to say that God cares, as opposed to *God is love*. Instead of being able to question even God’s goodness in the midst of trials, it portrays more of a concept of God in which we can go to Him and He will help us through the situation, not merely deliver us.
I visited a church in Sarasota while on vacation there and the pastor was just starting a great sermon series about the topic of evil and suffering, etc. It’s called “Hey God.... I was just wondering.....”
Here’s a link to it.
South Shore Community Church
Pastor Frank Burns
http://www.southshorechurch.com/pages/currentseries.cfm