For those of you who may have read my blog “Consider His Death,” I have taken the beginning and expanded it to make it more of a introduction to “The Complex Nature of God’s Heart For Lost People.” Please let me know what you think.
1Corinthians 3:11 “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
There is a fair amount of “gospel preaching,” that goes on today. The vast majority of it is being done in our churches, which is all together necessary because the gospel is not only for the unsaved, but for the saved as well. Yet, I long that much more gospel preaching would go forth from out of the church and on to the streets.
Some people see the cross as only a stepping stone to move on to better and more glorious things. I pray that this is not how you learned Christ. Galatians 6:14 “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The cross is not only the beginning of our journey with Christ, but it is also the center of lives. We cannot rightly live one day, if it is not beneath the cross of Jesus. The gospel saves the lost soul, and continually heals, strengthens, and renews the redeemed soul. Understanding the gospel of Jesus we may persevere in our faith, without losing hope every time we fall into sin. Colossians 1:22-23 states that he will “present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard…”
Since the cross is not only the means of our own redemption, but also the foundation for rightly understanding God’s heart for lost people, it is important that we have a heart-felt, all embracing vision of it. The gospel is what must captivate our hearts, and drive us to freely live out our lives out as a mission of love towards others. 2Corinthians 5:14-15 “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” If we have come to understand that He has died for us, then we will be awe struck by His incredible love and motivated by compassion to share the good news with others.
It is absolutely essential; not only for our own salvation, but also for the sake of unsaved people you speak with, that you understand the gospel biblically. Friends, the gospel is Jesus Christ, not a thing, but a person. See again 1 Corinthians 3:11 “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
Reader, beware that the most soul damning teachings a person can embrace are not coming from Satanists, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, or any Polytheists. It is a teaching coming to many called “gospel,” and yet it is no gospel; it is a story about a man on a cross named Jesus, who is no Jesus.
2 Corinthians 11:4 “For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.”
Galatians 1:8 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”
My desire it to thoroughly explore the true gospel in its many sub-purposes underneath one grand purpose, laid out in Jesus prayer in John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” I want to consider the heart with which we should embrace the gospel, as well as the sentiments of Jesus Christ Himself as He went to the cross. I pray that God would grant His people His heart for lost people. Let us examine the hard and seemingly contradictory texts that made me entitle this work “The Complex Nature Of God’s Heart For Lost People.” May we not be so bound up in fear and misunderstandings, that we neglect to be “in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom (we) shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life (Philippians 2:15).”
‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world. –William Booth
