“You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life…”
“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,”
Peter’s first sermon certainly isn’t “seeker” sensitive. He’s launching the Christian church, and any good PR advisor would’ve told him to first fill the pews, then start preaching doctrine. But apparently God wanted a preacher, not a marketing consultant.
Peter looked them in the eye and said, “you killed the Author of Life.”… If you can read that and not be cut to the bone by it - then you don’t understand it. If I present that fact in an unoffensive manner, then I have not presented that fact.
Perhaps churches today have confused making disciples with recruiting members. Maybe we should worry less about hurting feelings and be more concerned about hurting futures. Eternity is in the balance, and God will judge sin, even sin our culture has deemed acceptable. Our goal is not popularity, it’s accuracy. We must speak the truth in love, but we can’t change the truth to make it sound more loving.
The church must stop sticking its finger in the air testing the wind for which direction to go… we must follow God’s word whether it is deemed offensive or not. God commands, He does not negotiate. The law was given as a mirror to show what we look like. If you’re offended by what you see… the mirror isn’t the problem.
The “Gospel” is not that “I’m OK, and your OK”… Neither of us are even close to “OK”. If we were, or could do something to make ourselves acceptable, then our salvation wouldn’t have required the death of God’s Son.
The Mirror is accurate… we are guilty. We killed the Son of God, and we must own that. But Jesus ‘sacrifice wiped away our sin, and we have been refreshed and redeemed. Our response cannot be to normalize sin, but to repent of it, and be restored in the joy of His mercy … Anything less than that is not the gospel.
“Repentance is a holy horror and hatred of sin, a deep sorrow for it, a contrite acknowledgment of it before God, and a complete heart forsaking of it.” - I.C. Herendeen
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