HOLLOWNESS OF GLAMORIZED GOSPEL

By Akin Ojumu

When the Gospel is preached in its purest and unadulterated form, there’s really nothing glamorous about it. The proclamation of the Good News doesn’t invigorate, exhilarate, stimulate, or animate. What you often find is that it condemns, offends, crushes, dismantles, exposes, and frightens the hearer.

ISAIAH 53:1-2

“Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.”

Where it’s preached raw and unfiltered, unsoiled by seeker-sensitive theatrics, people-pleasing histrionics, or ear-scratching melodramatics, the Gospel inflames outrage, triggers antagonism, and provokes hostility. It hits the soul with such an overpowering force that those who hear it reflexively want to block their ears, shut their eyes, and pick up stones to pummel to death the one who brings the Good News.

ACTS 7:57-58

“But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.”

That the Gospel evokes such a violent response from the world should come as no surprise. The Lord Jesus is the rejected Cornerstone and a Rock of offense. His Good News is bad news for a wicked world.

ISAIAH 53:3

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

An inoffensive Gospel is a powerless Gospel, it lacks the power to save. To take the offense out of the Gospel is to render it impotent. Those who sanitize the Gospel to make it palatable to the sinful world undermines its power and robs it of efficacy. All these silly efforts to contemporize the Gospel to make it more appealing to lost souls will only produce more and more dead Churches packed full of impenitent deadwoods whose lives remain unchanged.

The truth of the Gospel is hard to bear. It doesn’t matter how nice the preacher seems or how loving they sound, telling people they are wretched sinners totally alienated from God is not a message that’s pleasing to the ear. Don’t expect people to clap their hands when they are told they are enemies of God destined to spend eternity in the raging flames of hell if they don’t repent of their sins.

MATTHEW 7:13-14

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Where the carcass is, there the vultures will gather. False Gospel is like a rotten corpse, it tends to draw religious scavengers in search of temporal meat. Megachurches are disconsonant with the true Gospel. It’s impossible to fill a Church to the brim when the true Gospel is what is preached. Beware of places of worship where the crowd is packed to the rafters Sunday after Sunday. They are nearly always whitewashed sepulchers full of dead men’s bones.

1 CORINTHIANS 1:18

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Diluted and adulterated Gospel is spiritual poison that tickles the ear and gives false assurance of salvation to hell-bound souls. The preachers of a false Gospel and those who consume their poison are playing Russian roulette with their eternal destiny. 

If you want to make heaven, seek a Church where the true Gospel is preached on a regular basis.