While (evangelizing) introducing someone to the Gospel message, it can be challenging to properly illustrate why it is that Jesus ‘had’ to ‘suffer’ for our sins. And when you are hearing it for the first couple of times, it for sure is a difficult concept to grasp. What does that even mean? Why and how is it that a man being nailed to a cross 2,000 years ago plays a role in our world today? It’s disheartening to see how many people have been preached to before, but haven’t heard the Gospel message in terms they can comprehend. Far too often when trying to explain it, we can easily talk ourselves into a hole, to the point where what we are trying to explain is clearly over our heads. What’s dangerous about that is, when engaging in a heart to heart with someone, more often than not, you can easily tell when they don’t really have an understanding of what they’re trying to preach to you. The more we can put the Gospel message into terms that both the person explaining it, and the person hearing it can understand, not only will it be more easily received, but the more it will genuinely reflect that part of your heart that yearns to share it. When you can find correlations between the Gospel and our day to day lives, the more evident it becomes that you’re not just sharing it as a means of talking down to someone, but that you truly love them and want to introduce them into the same thing that fuels that love.
While sharing the Gospel with someone recently, a key point about fatherhood was made that really seemed to strike a chord with me. The gentleman had mentioned how he did not have the fairest dealing of the cards in terms of a family setting growing up. As the conversation was flowing, he reiterated a point that is all too familiar. You’ve probably heard this in some way shape or form… “The role of the father is to provide his children with the opportunities or the environment or the family setting that he himself did not have the fortune of having.” A loving father is one who will work the three jobs in order to put food on the table. He’s the same guy that although it aches his heart to do so, will show love-centric discipline when necessary. He’s the man that doesn’t hesitate to dive into traffic to pull you out. The one who shows up at the hospital at 4 A.M while you’re getting your stomach pumped. He’s the man that’ll sit through a three hour baton twirling recital. A loving father takes on all of these terrible forms of suffering so that his child will have the life afforded to them that wasn’t afforded to him. When you take this concept to the most extreme example… you are met with the Gospel message. In order to provide us with life more abundant than we could ever conceive, the Father of the universe walked amongst us. He led a perfect sin free life. He would preach revolutionary ethical teachings. Then His people would turn against Him, by being sold out by one of His friends, all the while being innocent. Then He went on to bear the most agonizing death known to man at the time, while simultaneously being publicly shamed and mocked with a crown of thorns. A Father suffers so his kids don’t have to. The disciplinary element of God’s moral standard is that the wages of sin is death. That’s how serious He takes sin, because He knows how poisonous it is for us, He’ll do what’s necessary to remove it. Although each one of us is guilty, He went to the cross to pay our fine. Because as we demonstrated, that’s what a loving father does. So that when you accept His free gift of salvation, you are washed clean of sin, made pure through His payment.