Lately I’ve seen a number of social media comments that go along the lines of, “What kind of God would demand that I love Him or go to hell?”
Ugh. This is what terrible billboard theology presents (like the sign above). It is an atheist producing factory. They mean well but they have not thought about what they are promoting. This is not the gospel.
What is the gospel?
The Issue of Justice
God is a righteous, holy and just God. Something we treasure and want when we are sinned against, when we are the victims of evil, and others wrong us in horrific ways. We want God’s justice. We want him to act. In fact if he doesn’t seem to act, we demand, “Where are you?! How could you allow this?!”
But that same justice applies to us. Hardly a person on this planet thinks that they are anything but a good person. Ask 100 people and 99/100 will say that they are good.
Yet God’s justice, because He is good, demands that evil be punished.
That’s when you get the statement, “Is God going to send me to hell for stealing a pencil?”
Think about it for a moment. Is that the only sin you have committed? Has there not been gossip, slander, hate, sexual fantasy and more? Are we the ones to determine the impact of a crime?
Just this week I’ve been following a known person who raped multiple family members when he was 17. It happened 30 years ago and there has been a number of people defending him. ‘It happened 30 years ago, who cares?’ ‘We all make mistakes, move on.’
But what about the 9 year old that was raped on multiple occasions? And the sister that was also raped as a child. Does the evil against them not matter? Just ‘move on’?
God sees the consequences of evil. He sees the person who is “innocently” made fun of and yet then becomes a school shooter. He sees the person mocked and ends up jumping off a building. We see these things as “small” compared to other sins, God does not.
Add to that each culture has it’s own hierarchy of sin and evil. Not all sins are the same in other cultures. Stealing was no big deal in a village I lived in. In a village my friends lived in for awhile the worst crime was losing your temper. And a co-worker lived in an area where in PNG where the worst sin was unforgiveness.
Who are we to become the judge and jury of the severity of a sin? We are not.
God is holy. Nothing unholy can live with him. Nothing.
We are not holy. We have sinned tens of thousands of times.
God as a holy God has every right to bring judgment against us. And that is what we deserve.
We are Sentenced by Justice
Back to bad billboard theology. Justice requires that we are sentenced. And that sentence is death. We have wrong and done evil against a holy God.
We do not have a choice of heaven or hell. We are in prison with a death sentence over our head. We have made our choice and it was to rebel against God.
The Only Option
Start reading social media comments on Bible videos and you will begin to see numerous people say, ‘I don’t want to serve a God that says ‘love me or go to hell”.
The only option we have is whether we want to receive God’s rescue through Jesus Christ or not. It’s not a choice of heaven or hell. We are hell bound now.
Nor is it ‘love me or go to hell.’ It’s ‘do you want rescue from divine justice’? ‘Do you want deliverance? That’s it. That’s the question.
Theology matters. Billboards matter. And there’s some truth to what they say, but the way it is said communicates something different to unbelievers.
I know the billboard people probably have some fruit. But let’s make sure we are communicating the right things.
Let’s know the gospel.
And let that be what we proclaim.
