9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:9-10 (NASB)
If you listen to the vast majority of “gospel” preaching these days, the statement by our Saviour in the passage I place at the top of this post will appear to be somewhat backward. The reality that is preached from those pulpits is that salvation is a product of Human reason after hearing a sermon that shows the wonderful benefits of allowing Jesus to come into the hearer’s life. It is all Man’s choice or decision based solely upon a person’s own ability to reason.
The result of this form of preaching the gospel is that people do respond to the call to become a Christian based upon Jesus coming into their lives just to make them better. It is like those long distance phone wars several years ago. At that time I had switched our long distance service to one that advertised that they were Christian based. One Sunday afternoon I received a call from a telemarketer who offered to switch me back to AT&T at a much reduced rate. I told him no. He then asked me, “Don’t you want to save money?” I told him that money was not the issue. The issue was that his company actively promoted certain things that I was against. His response was a total disbelief that anyone could make a decision like. All of the bullets in his gun were based on saving money. He was used to everyone jumping ship from whatever long distance company they had a contract with just to save a few bucks. “Don’t you want to save money?” he asked. The 21st Century preacher asks, “Don’t you want to go to Heaven when you die and for Jesus to make your life better?”