Deal With Sin

The gospel is not your best life now, nor the power of positive thinking.

The gospel is that Christ died, was buried, and rose again.

The gospel is that Christ paid the penalty for MY sins. God's wrath was upon Him.

We Americans do have a way of distorting the gospel into a false, prosperity gospel that is no gospel. It is another gospel. And the prosperity gospel won't save anybody.

 

To be fair, I share your concerns, but I think the VBS issue is just matter of contextualizing the message. It is for children, after all.

My church used Outrigger Island, and the ABC song this year told the message but simply. It didn't bring out all of the implications, but it was all there.

 

Unfortunately, too many people sitting in churches these days DON'T know what sin is. Churches are beginning to accept homosexuality as being OK with God by ordaining them as pastors and performing "marriages" between two males or females. That is an abomination to God and should be to anyone claiming to be a Christian. Anyone who claims to be a Christian while accepting sin in their "church" is just "playing church". God said "Come out from among them and be ye separate." We are to be holy vessels separated onto God for His use and not continue in sin.

 

That's what the Bible Study sessions do. You can't pack everything into a children's song.

 

It all depends on what you use those ABCs to represent.

Our church is Independent Baptist, so we're less watered down than what you're saying, I think. I always hear it presented, more or less, as something like the following - and please don't pick it apart, becasue I'm not going to have it right word for word:
A. Admit you're a sinner, that you fall short of God's perfect glory, and that you can't get to heaven on your own because of that sin.
B. Beliee that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh (important to include that, I think), came to this earth, lived a perfect life, and took the punishment for your sins when he died ont he cross, then rose again.
C. Choose to receive Him as your personal Savior. That means to receive what He did - taking the punishment from Almighty God for your sins - as being for you personally. It means accepting you can't get to heaven except that God makes you new on the inside. So you choose to agree with Him about your sin, that you deserve separation from God forever, and to turn away from your sins and let Him make you new.

We can explain the ABCs in a simple way, a complex way, a watered-down way, or a fire and brimstone way, what they really are, in my view, is just one method, a simple way to understand, perhaps even a mnemonic, if you will. Methods can be used for good or bad, but the Gospel will always be the Gospel.

 

When i present the Gospel in my preaching i will use the ABC's in my presentation, but i don't rely just on those little catch phrases like "Admit you are a sinner". I will explain what sin is, how our sins are offensive to God who is holy and just and requires a penalty be paid. After showing how our sin required Jesus to die (the "B" of the ABC's) i will move on from there.
If i'm on a one on one witnessing situation i will also use the ABC's but try to spend more time on each one so that there is some understanding.

 

One thing to keep in mind during this discussion is that cookie cutter gospel presentations rarely work. Everyone is different and even though the gospel is the same for everyone, the presentation is not. Some may be won by the love of God, some need to have hell scared out of them by a hard wrath of God message, and there are many in between.

There are numerous "programs" and gospel presentations and all of them have their strong and weak points in their raw form. They should be used as a training tool with emphasis on adaptation to the situation. An important skill every evangelist should hone is reading people. Pick up on their body language, the phrases they use, their interests, and current events in their life. Then allow the Holy Spirit to tailor a presentation to fit them, pulling verses from different parts of the Bible.

In my personal experience, I've rarely seen a soul won by strictly using an outlined witnessing tool (i.e. Roman's Road, ABCs, et al).

Having said all that, I do agree that there is very little preaching of repentance from sin toward God and I believe you have to get a person lost before you can get them saved.