There is no news more important than the good news of the gospel we profess. We must preach Jesus, His grace and His finished work. But can this gospel ever be complete without a proper and sufficient dose of teaching on hell and sin?
You've probably heard of or directly heard a preacher who leaves out sin and hell. People like Pastor Joel Osteen, senior leader of the megachurch Lakewood, who think that it is unnecessary and even hurtful to preach a message that even mentions sin, curses, hell or Satan.
I don't intend to bring down the work of Osteen or any other preacher who preaches a message similar to His. If there is one thing that Pastor Osteen is right about is that there is a lot of messages already out there that profess the consequences of sin and the horrors of hell. While there is really no way to quantifiably measure how much of hell and how much of grace is preached (there is no such thing as a grace-o-meter), one thing is for sure -- neither the sinfulness of man and the graciousness of the God we profess must never be left out.
The most important thing is that we balance both the message of the bad news and the message of the good news. And while some will argue that bad news with good news is never good news, think of it this way -- if you heard the news of a thousand men being saved from a factory fire, do you believe that the bad news of the factory fire strengthens or weakens the good news of the salvation of human life?
Without a shadow of a doubt, the bad news makes the good news seem like great news! The same holds true with the message of the gospel. We will never truly understand the grandiosity of God's amazing love and grace if we don't understand the weight and magnitude of our sinful ways.
We are extremely sinful. Ephesians 2:12 tells us, "Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."
We were completely removed from the presence of God and the blessing that comes along with His presence. But out of the great love of God, He sent Jesus Christ to fulfil the laws that we could never fulfil on our own and pay for the penalty of sin that we were to instantly suffer from.
Our sinfulness not only makes us look bad. It makes Jesus look really really good and loving. That's why sin and hell should never be left out because we must always remember what we have been saved from.
The message of Jesus's finished work will never be complete without the elements of our sinful and broken nature, the consequence we should have faced, and the amazing work that Jesus did to free us from our dark and hateful fate.
