Keith Green 'What's Wrong With The Gospel?'

"We cannot remove the threat and terrors of hell. Jesus...He didn't wince from talking about the penalty of not serving God. But we do. We need to have people see themselves as criminals, not poor misguided souls. Now, we might be able to see them as poor misguided souls...but we can't have them look at themselves that way. ...When your little 3 year old boy tells him exactly what not to do you don't pick him up and go, 'Oh poor baby, you don't understand.' [smack] That will help him understand. That's the law... We have no right to remove what Jesus didn't remove. ... There is verse after verse after verse about the threats and punishments of being disobediant to God."

"But because there is so little real conviction of sin brought about by the preaching of our modern Gospel, we cannot truly require repentance anymore. This is very important. ...If we did, no one would come forward at all. Because, remember? What produces conviction? The law. What makes people want to repent? Conviction. If we don't preach the law, people aren't convicted. If they aren't convicted, they have nothing to repent for. If they have nothing to repent for, they can't be convert. Therefore we have to 'invent a whole new system, based on gooey sticky kindly preaching,' which doesn't produce repentance... If we did, no one would come forward at all. For repentance is easy to him who sees how ugly and horrible sin is. But repentance is impossible where the law does not convince a sinner of his wicked heart - Compelling him to turn from his sins in the arms of a waiting, compassionate God.

You see that all these removed parts of the Gospel are connected. In God's wisdom, every aspect of the appointed way of salvation is irreplaceable. You take out one car from the train, and the rest of it just stays in the station!"

We need to follow one train. Jesus Christ.

He was scared for sinners! That's why He warned them! But we are scared of scaring. So we don't warn them. He was scared for their ultimate fate. We are scared for the instant fear that we might produce in them and we don't care about their ultimate fate enough to scare them a little bit... I know a woman who died of breast cancer. She wouldn't go to the doctor. She was afraid that she had breast cancer. And so she wouldn't go to the doctor. Until her chest was throbbing. And boils started to show up. They started breaking out and bleeding. And she went to the doctor and the doctor said 'You have breast cancer.' And so she said, 'I didn't want to come to you because I was afraid that I had breast cancer!' He said, 'If you would have come to me even three weeks ago, I could have saved your life. But I can't now. It's too late.' She was afraid of finding out what was! Because it was. And all the fear in the world that they're going to hell wont keep them from hell - all the fear in the world that they need an operation. Now, he had to save her life by removing her breast. A horrible thought. But she had children 5, 10 years old, and she died within 6 months. ... Fear of having something does not make you not have it. And our fear that we're going to hurt someone isn't going to help them at all."

"The law of God that condemns sin is harsh. The law is very harsh...The law of God is black and white. The justice of God is black and white. The condemnation of the law is black and white, but the mercy of God is not - the mercy of God will reach out into the black to try and bring somebody over to the light. The love of God will go into hell - David said 'even if I make my bed in hell, behold, though art there.' That's heavy. Why did Jesus go to hell and preach to the sinners in hell? It says He did. Because He had mercy. They were condemned. But you see, God's mercy doesn't mean a hill of beans to anyone out there listening to the Gospel - Unless you show them what God needs to be merciful to them about. What if the judge says to the Guy who's guilty of murder - 'Well, I sentence you to death, but I don't want to freak you out, so I'm acquitting you?'

But, does that mean the same to the guy who's sentenced to death and he's waiting 2 years on death row, and he's coming up to the last minute and he's waiting, and he's praying 'God, h ave the governor or the president disgrant the execution,' and he's waiting and waiting and waiting and he's sweating and the priest comes and they lead him off to the chamber, and he has his last meal and he's walking toward it and at the last minute the guy's about to pull the switch and they say 'Wait a minute, the governor just called. You're free.' That's the Gospel. The law HAS to condemn."

"Now, what is the cross of Christ? What does it mean, Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Nowadays, it isn't 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified,' it's 'Jesus Christ and what He can do for you.' You cannot have more exact opposites than the Bible's Christ-cente red Gospel and our modern, cross-less me-center ed Gospel. Today, if anyone teaches self-denial as a condition for discipleship - you can hear the comments afterward - old-fashion-ed, harsh, legalistic. I dare say that our dear Lord would have as much trouble finding acceptance among our preachers as He had among the religious leaders of His own day."

Keith Green, 1982, What's Wrong With The Gospel?