Shepherd the Flock

As we preach and share the gospel of Jesus Christ to our congregations and to those outside of Christ, why do we press upon them the urgency of submitting to Christ in faith and repentance?

Growing up, I always heard the same tired reasons for ‘choosing this day whom you will serve’: choose today, lest you die in a car wreck on the way home! Come to Christ without delay, because you don’t know if you’ll live another week!

More often than not, particularly when I was in the youth groups, these pleas for decisions were joined to horrific stories of sudden death, young people dying here and dying there, unexpectedly, etc. The stories were emotional, they hit me hard as a young, very impressionable kid, but they rarely produced any lasting change.

Why the Gospel is Urgent

I would submit to you that the gospel isn’t an urgent message simply because the unknowns of life and death. Obviously, statistically speaking, the vast majority of the people we preach and witness to will go on to live many more years after hearing our message. And people know this. They’re not stupid. Most can recognize when a preacher is manipulating their emotions and playing to our natural fears of death and dying.

Instead, we must understand that the gospel is predominantly an urgent message because the unbeliever listening may never hear it again. The scriptures say that ‘Faith comes by hearing…the word of Christ‘. And ‘how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?‘ In other words, it is the hearing of the gospel that is the means to salvation. And when someone hears the gospel, they are not guaranteed to ever hear it as clearly, ever hear it with the same conviction of the Spirit, ever hear it with the same understanding, or to ever hear it again.

When we press men to avoid even resting until they have closed with Christ, we need to impress upon them the reality that they simply cannot repent and be saved just whenever they feel like it, and that turning away from the gospel even one time could be the last opportunity ever afforded them to hear it clearly, with understanding, and with the conviction that they now feel.

Pressing men to turn to Christ because they might face death tomorrow is indeed a valid argument, but it becomes completely invalid if it isn’t couched in the truth that they cannot simply repent and believe whenever they choose. Why? Because telling men that they can repent and believe just whenever they choose is precisely what will cause them to delay.

“It is to be feared that Calvinistic doctrine becomes most evil teaching when it is set forth by men of ungodly lives, and exhibited as if it were a cloak for licentiousness; and Arminianism on the other hand, with its wide sweep of the offer of mercy, may do most serious damage to the souls of men, if the careless tone of the preacher leads his hearers to believe they can repent whenever they please; and that, therefore, no urgency surrounds the gospel message.” – CH Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students