Red Hot What?

So this little fundamentalist church I drove past not long ago has one of those “let’s put a clever reductionist version of the Christian gospel out front” kind of signs. Their most recent foray into the world of church-sign evangelism is: Red Hot Bible Sermons – Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. I have a picture to prove it, in case you doubt that such a sign exists.

No wonder Rob Bell felt compelled to write a book titled Love Wins. While I’m not willing to endorse all that Bell has to say in that little venture into the world of theological speculation, I at least understand why he thought such a book needed to be written. It seems to me like he has been reading a little N.T. Wright, which can’t be a bad thing!

I’m not sure I understand this kind of “God in your face” mentality that seems to permeate more than a small minority of the more conservative Christian thinking. The one verse nearly everyone knows, if they haven’t even memorized it as many have, speaks in contradiction to that idea. “For God so loved the world . . .” Why would a God who loves the world enough to send His one and only Son want us to advertise the gospel He came to established with “red hot Bible sermons?”

The one word that seems to get overlooked in John 3:16 by so many is the word world – kosmos in Greek. That particular word occurs some 185 times in the New Testament – but by far John is the author most fond of it. It is found 78 times in the Fourth Gospel, 24 times in the Johannine Epistles, and 3 times in Revelation. If my math is correct, that is about 57% of the uses of kosmos are in John’s literature. That’s a pretty fair indication that the word is a favorite for John.

For John, the world was made through Christ (1:3), Jesus calls Himself the Light of the world (8:12, 9:5), and multiple texts suggest that Jesus was sent “into the world.” (3:17, 11:27). Jesus, during His final conversation with the disciples, reminds them “you will have trouble in this world” (16:33). The enemies of Jesus, the Pharisees, once said “the whole world has gone after Him!” (12:19). Having been sent to the world, “his own world did not recognize Him” (1:10) That same world doesn’t know the Father (17:25) and cannot receive the Spirit. Yet it is that world that God loved enough to send His Son.

God loves the kosmos! If He does, shouldn’t we? If He were willing to come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and offer His life on the cross, isn’t that sort of what Jesus means for us when He encouraged His own disciples to “take up your cross?”

I’m just not sure there are too many people in heaven because they have had the hell scared out of them by “red hot Bible sermons!” Having lived a relatively decent life – never been in jail, never had my picture displayed in the post office as one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, never had a DUI, DWI, or any of the other such designations, and unlike many modern politicians, I haven’t ever smoked weed, inhaling or not – I can’t think too highly of myself and my life and think “red hot sermons” are for others. Honesty would compel me to declare that the person I saw early this morning in the mirror is not deserving of what Christ and done in his life. Not to insult anyone, but the person you saw isn’t deserving either.

Where do we get this idea that somehow we are deserving? I know we wouldn’t say we are, but sometimes it seems that we act as though we think we are. That is especially obvious in those “red hot moments” when we think that a person is so awful that God delights in condemnation. Do we really think that there are “degrees of awfulness” when it comes to the fact that we don’t measure up to God’s perfect holiness?

I know there is a place for instructing the world, for rebuking the world, and even a reminder that the way of the world does not lead to life. I just don’t think we are in tune with the life and ministry of Jesus when it sounds as though we are deserving of heaven and the world is deserving of hell.

At some level I guess it boils down to how important the biblical idea of grace is to us. Grace makes some folks nervous – people won’t behave without rules. But I’ve noticed in my own life that even in my relationship with other humans, I’m much more prone to be responsive to those who call me to a relationship of grace in the context of love than I am to those who think they can make up rules to regulate my life. If that can be true in our relationship with other humans, how much more so should it characterize our relationship with God.

Grace takes me much closer to the heart of God and His holiness than “red hot sermons” could ever do. If God loves the world enough to send Jesus to redeem it – the whole kosmos – then I’m guessing I should as well.