Sin Does Not Provoke Our Own Wrath

This has always ,to my mind been a delicate balance. In todays church , yes it is true that often forgiveness of sin is passed over like a minor cut , Jesus being our band aid. However in the past you had such a hell fire and legalistic yoke placed upon many ,they never could experience the love and grace of God because they failed to ever live up to their own standards of pleasing God , driving many to despair. This is why I think we need to see our sin for what it truly is ,an affront and attack on a holy God that warrants His wrath and that should make us tremble and bow our heads in tears and contrition but then the gospel of Christ comes into play and the sweetness of the cross and what Jesus did lifts our souls . Unless both the law and gospel is preached properly, as Dr. Micheal Horton, on the White Horse Inn has been talking about for years, we will either fall into the trap God is happy as long as we do our best or fall into despair because we can never live in perfect obedience . The law leads to repentance and the gospel , the sweet song of grace to our humble and repentant souls. The one thing many Christians forget , and I used to be one, is that the gospel is still for Christians . May we, as we reflect on the cross and the completed work of Christ , strive to put to death sin in our lives but never forget it is in Christ that we are declared righteous. Should that not motivate us !!

Jim , I don’t know what your background is but in my area you either had fluff preaching , or a hyper-free will view of salvation that was always depended on what you are doing. In this style sin and hell were used as a hammer to guilt you into doing more acts , not to bring you to repentance and faith . In many ways it resembled the style of Charles Finney , who I consider a heretic and did not preach the gospel . You are right in saying that in many ways , some that was presented was not the gospel and that many of these churches in fact , illegitimate . But I do hold that its a delicate balance that can easily be swayed to one side or the other, but if you preach the whole counsel ,like you recommend and let the word of God speak, I think that will do the job. So many that fall into this trap of either gospel light or forgetting grace pick and choose a text that will fit their view and as James White has shown when exposing many cults today , force a thought out of the text .

Flora I agree totally with what you said and the men you referred to . Both of them hold a special place in my library . Both I think reflected the type of preaching that is needed . They preached hard concerning sin , God’s wrath etc… but they never forgot about the cross of Christ. If you read the puritans and such , they applied the law to bring about the realization of sin and the coming of a holy God’s wrath but they preached grace and called men to repent , look to Jesus and cling to the cross. Something lacking in many places today.

Flora, I do not disagree with any of the points you raised . I can only reflect what I have been exposed to , which is either Pentecostal and Baptist. Plus I never implied that the preaching of sin and the coming wrath wasn’t vitally important . Plus to be fair , the Churches in my area in Nova Scotia , Canada , the flip is now happening and its been almost devoid any preaching concerning the serious of sin . The emphasis has been on love that most people have little conviction of their sin !! Plus like I said before I have plenty of Spurgeon and Jones , plus I hope to do a bible study in the future at my church using R.C Sproul’s Holiness of God and then his new book The Truth of The Cross. Thanks for your well thought points and God bless you .