The Gospel Offensive but Effectual


   The desire for immediate results and numerical success has brought many preachers to preach a gospel that is what Paul called “another gospel.”  It is less offensive to man because it is a man’s gospel.  God’s gospel comes from God as He is to man as he is.  Thus, it has an immediate offensiveness to the sinner because it declares salvation entirely the work of God alone.  This offends sinful, powerless man who wants a part in saving himself.  He wants a part because he wants the glory of it which God will not share! 

When men leave out the essential doctrines of God’s free and sovereign grace in Christ, they have a less offensive message but they also have an ineffectual message.  They preach a god that cannot save.  In the true gospel man meets the God of the Bible who has predestinated all things after the counsel of His own will, the God who has chosen a people unto Himself before the world began, the God who is just in all He does in salvation, and a God come in human flesh to save all His people from their sins. 

Man meets a God who holds us in His hand, a Sovereign who can damn us or deliver us, and simply, a God who does what He will to whom He will, how He will, when He will and “none can stay His hand.”  Paul distinguished between the two opposite messages, “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision (works), why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.” (Galatians 5:11)  These doctrines that declare God’s sovereignty in salvation, the doctrines of divine predestination, election (which are inseparably joined to the true grace of God) are used by the Spirit of God to humble us, to cause us to flee from our refuge of lies and, as He says, “to stain the pride" of man (see Isaiah 23:9). 

Men hide in the refuge of “universal salvation and redemption.” But when Christ says, “I lay down My life for the SHEEP,” it offends and they can no longer hide.  They must face the truth of Christ’s particular redemption and bow to Him as such a Redeemer who “shall save His people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)  The ministries of many preachers will be seen false and their converts consumed as wood, hay and stubble.  Christ said they would claim to have preached in His name (see Matthew 7:21-23) but they didn’t preach the “offence of the cross.” Only God’s gospel glorifies Him and gets the results HE desires!

-preacher Gary Shepard

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