Being a college-aged student means I’m around college kids a lot. I hear all the time about the prosperity gospel and everything that conversation ushers in. But something new I have started to hear more and more lately from the kids/young adults in my generation is something I have started calling the “fluffy gospel”.
It’s the idea that our God is just a loving fluff ball living up in the clouds who has no judgment, condemnation, or wrath towards His people on earth anymore. This idea even leads to the paradox question, “How could such a loving God let good people go to hell?”.
I can’t tell you how many times I hear, “we should just love them”. YES, we should. It’s the second greatest commandment that sums up the whole law (Matthew 22:36-40), but just love alone will not save people from hell. Jesus tells us repentance and remission should be preached in all the earth (Luke 24:47). He commands us himself to tell people to turn away from their sins. Our God is a Perfect and Holy God that cannot be in the presence of sin. So when we do not tell people that their sin is wrong we are passively letting them be separated from God and eternity with Him.
We should love the people and hate the sin. But most of the time the christians in my generation only make it through the first half of that statement and get stuck on the love part.
Every believer should take the time to read the old testament after they completely understand the Gospel and the salvation that is found only in Jesus. They will see that our God is a God full of love but also a God of judgement, jealousy and of wrath. For crying out loud, he drowned the whole earth because they became comfortable with their sin and did not need a god (Genesis 7 ). Our God is constant and was the same God then as he is today. (Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17)
The only difference from the old testament God and the new testament God is the veil of grace Jesus lays out over us. There is such a loss of reverence for God today that it makes me uncomfortable. Just because there is grace now does not mean God’s character has changed. God’s wrath will still be poured out on the world in the end and those not under Christ’s veil will feel it.
I’ve heard of students (witnessing) to people and telling them “you should just become a Christian, it’s the best. Being a child of God is so amazing”. Even though both of these statements are true, neither lead people to the cross.
We should not be scared to share the good, bad, and the ugly. We are all sinners. We all deserve death. And there is nothing we can do within our power to change it. The good news is we were already given a way out.
I know the bad and the ugly are bad and ugly, but they should not be left out of the Gospel. They are the base need for our salvation. You cannot tell someone they are in need of a savior if they don’t know something is wrong. Scripture tells us there are consequences for our sin (Romans 6:23) and not telling someone this is just going to rob them of their salvation and Christ of his misery on the cross. In fact, seeing a friend on a path to destruction and not telling them that they are destined for death is the opposite of love.
In conclusion, there has to be a balance of grace and truth in the presentation of the Gospel. With grace only, a sinner will feel loved but never receive all that Jesus is trying to offer them. However, simply beating them over the head with the bible will not help in leading people to Jesus either. In fact, it will deter most. Jesus tells us that he did not come to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17) and we should follow suit. On the spectrum where the fluffy gospel and the hard gospel meet, where grace meets truth, you find the true Gospel. The one Jesus died to create which is the real gospel. And all those who accept it will be under the veil.
