Reasons for Unbelief
The word “gospel” means “good news”. And that’s exactly what it is. The gospel (as defined by the Bible) is the good news that Jesus died on the cross to pay our sin penalty and rose from the grave to conquer death so we can forever enjoy intimate relationship with God in a new heaven and earth where only righteousness dwells! No more death. No more suffering. No more pain. The gospel is the good news of forgiveness and new life. It’s God’s gracious offer to make us everything he intended us to be and to give us everything he wanted us to have before we chose sin and self-destruction.
Who wouldn’t want to embrace this gospel? Who wouldn’t want to escape eternal condemnation and live forever under the umbrella of God’s love? Apparently, most people. But why? Why would the vast majority of humanity choose condemnation over forgiveness? Death over life? Self-destruction over peace and restoration?
Some blame Christians and the Church. They say lost people won’t embrace the gospel because we won’t faithfully proclaim it. Worse, even when we do proclaim the good news about Jesus, they say our witness is marred by our own pride and hypocrisy. Tragically, there’s truth to this. Still, even when Christ is proclaimed with love and integrity, most people reject the salvation God graciously offers!
So why do so many reject God’s good news about Jesus? Why do they remain at odds with their Creator when he offers them forgiveness and new life? Why do they take offense at God’s gospel? There are at least three answers to that question. First, accepting life and forgiveness in Christ requires confessing that we are hopelessly corrupt and worthy of condemnation. In short, trusting Christ as Savior requires us to confess we’re sinners. Sin is anything we do, think, speak, or feel that violates God’s character and his intent for our lives as revealed in Creation and his written Word, the Bible. The fruit of our sin is relational separation from God manifested by our subjection to death—spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death (also known as hell). Because we all sin, we are all—left to ourselves—hopelessly lost. Dead in trespasses and sin (Ephesians 2:2-3). Unable to save ourselves.
This is a sobering truth. But until we embrace it, God’s gospel will never appeal to us. Who seeks a Savior without recognizing a Savior is what they need? Who cries out for mercy without knowing mercy is their only hope? Simply put, the gospel has nothing to offer people unwilling to acknowledge the depth of their sin.
Here’s a second reason most people reject the good news about Jesus. It’s related to the first. Accepting life and forgiveness in Christ requires acknowledging the reality of God’s wrath. Most people have no stomach for the notion of divine wrath and final judgment. Some feel wrath is unworthy of a loving God. More often, however, we believe ourselves to be unworthy of wrath. But what does Scripture say? Does it not warn, it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Heb. 9:27). Are we not told, …no creature is hidden from his (God’s) sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account (Heb. 4:13)? Is Jesus lying in Matthew 25:31-46 when he describes the Day of Judgment in detail? Are we safe to dismiss John’s vision of God’s Judgment Seat when he reports, …if anyone’s name was not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire…(see Revelation 20:11-15)?
Today, few tremble at God’s promise to judge the living and the dead. Tragically, those who fear no judgment see no need for God’s gospel of salvation through faith in Christ.
Finally, many people never embrace God’s good news because accepting life and forgiveness in Christ requires believing that only Jesus can save. Many are offended by the exclusivity of the gospel. In their arrogance, most people demand to be saved, not on God’s terms, but their own. This is an eternally deadly mistake. Jesus says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me(John 14:6). In Acts 4:12, Peter speaks of Jesus when he proclaims, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
To believe God’s gospel is to know that all roads don’t lead to heaven. Because only Jesus is God become man who died on the cross to pay our sin penalty—and because only Jesus rose from the grave and forever conquered death—only Jesus can save us from our sin and the eternal hell we deserve. There is no other Savior. There is no other way.
This is God’s gospel. Have you embraced it for yourself? Will you embrace it today?