The Offense of the Cross

There is a great deal of unbiblical preaching for Christians to share the Gospel in love, peace, and humility, and to not be offensive. ‘We don’t need to offend someone or tell them they’re going to Hell, just tell them 'God loves YOU, Jesus died for YOU.'’ Oh!!! It makes me so mad! I don’t read my Bible as often as a I should, but I don’t fault people for not reading theirs as often as I read mine, as long as they're reading it. But I would think that if my spouse wrote me 66 letters bearing soul, mind, body, and intentions, I would at least glance at them to see what they say. My favorite Bible Verse(not because it’s all lovey-dovey, but because it contains the whole counsel of God) at the top of this page instructs us to share the Gospel in love, peace, and humility, but it says exactly the opposite of not being offensive.

When you preach the truth to the unregenerate, you are preaching directly in opposition to their nature, a nature which they’ve grown to love and one which defines them; telling them they’re wrong is going to be offensive. If that wasn’t bad enough, verse 26 tells us we’re arguing with agents of satan himself.

Paul never intended for us to be inoffensive, another of my favorite verses says "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles." (1 Cor 1:22-23)

Earlier in his ministry he called preaching, "The offense of the cross." (Gal 5:11)

The Cross is offensive, it attacks your self-righteousness, sets your conscience ablaze, and demands that you repent or perish.

In order to rescue your soul from the doom of Hell, your God had to subject Himself to the broken and diseased world of earth, where He lived a perfect example of faith, obedience, righteousness, and love; but His pointing out of faults was so offensive to the Pharisees that they KILLED Him for it.

God takes sin very seriously, He counts lust as adultery (Matt 5:28), hatred as murder (1 John 3:15), lying lips are an abomination (Prov 12:22), and all of these will be thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 21:8)

Our sin was upon Christ at the Cross, He bore our burden in love, He had no burden of His own to carry and carried ours solely so we could be rectified and God could be glorified. By me preaching to you that Christ carried your sin to the Cross, then that implies that you have sin, and not only so, but a great deal of it. Christ paid for your sin in His own life's blood, so that where sin increases, grace abounds all the more.

Repent of your sins, cease your transgressions, apologize to God for wrongdoing, and turn towards righteousness, and then place your full trust in the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. If you do these things, God will forgive you, your sinful heart will be replaced with a new heart, and you will be reborn into the family of God. Not because you are a good person, but because you are a bad person whose sins have already been to the Cross, and you have been forgiven by a good God.