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February 18, 2021
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
One of the greatest revelations we can have about evangelism is to realize that there is a reason that the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing.
We are sinners—transgressors of God’s moral Law. The gospel is the good news that Jesus paid the fine for the Law that you and I have broken. When Jesus cried out, “It is finished,” He was saying that the debt had been paid. He had satisfied the demands of eternal justice. That means we can live forever! There is no better news than that, but it makes no sense to the unsaved because they don’t understand that they have broken the Law.
“The way to make the good news make sense is simply to do what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places: by showing the lost that they have transgressed the moral Law.”
The way to make the good news make sense is simply to do what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places: by showing the lost that they have transgressed the moral Law.
If I told you that I paid a fine for you, it would be foolishness if you didn’t realize you’d broken the Law. But once I explain that you have violated its precepts, and you see that you are in big trouble on Judgment Day, then the good news of Christ paying the fine on the cross will not be foolishness, but the power of God unto salvation.
Therefore, use the Law as a schoolmaster to bring sinners to Christ. Don’t keep preaching that which is foolishness to your hearers. Instead, precede the good news with the bad news, and it will no longer be nonsensical. It will rather be the greatest news this world could ever hope to hear.
It’s a very simple concept. The stone is useless without the sling. Put the stone of the gospel into the sling of the Law, and it will give it its thrust.
For further teaching on this vital subject, listen to “Hell’s Best Kept Secret.”