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Wiser than God!
- Jacob Ninan
We will not dare to say that we are wiser than God, but many times we behave as if we know better than God! When God tells us something in His word, we ignore it and go ahead with our own ideas, thinking that we know better in our special context. We show more 'love,' 'kindness,' 'wisdom,' etc., than God and think that we are justified in our behaviour, not realising that we are actually ending up doing more harm than good in the process.
Jesus said that the way to life was narrow and few would find it (Mt.7:14). We must remember this comes from the heart of God who does not want any to perish but want all to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Ti.2:4;2Pe.3:9). With a heart as large as His, He still recognises that only a few are finally going to be saved. But we don't like the word 'few.' So what we do is to somehow make the gate and the way broader so that more people can get in!
When John the Baptist came preaching he asked the people to repent (Mt.3:1,2). Jesus preached the same thing (Mt.4:17), and so did the apostles (Ac.2:38). But what do we preach? Nothing about repentance but only about 'accepting' Jesus and how He will solve all our problems! We mention about how Jesus would heal our sicknesses, solve our financial crises, and would generally be at our beck and call to run errands for us. But nothing about turning away from our sins or starting to live lives that are pleasing to God. We may think that once God begins a work in these people He will do a perfect job, and also that they will get to hear about repentance and such things in the course of time as they come to church. But what actually happens is that people continue with their old lifestyle and on top of that they believe that now they are immune from punishment and guilt because they have come to Christ!
If we preach repentance in these modern days we might become somewhat unpopular compared to some of the famous preachers out there, and certainly our 'results' would be less impressive. So we compromise the message, and make problems for both our hearers and for ourselves. Our hearers get a very shaky start in their Christian life, and we get a 'mixed multitude' in our churches who create all kinds of problems later on.
Of course we would, just like God, want all men to be saved. If we would truly save them, we should give them the true gospel of salvation which includes repentance from sin and their old way of life, true faith and trust in Jesus for their salvation and a genuine commitment to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. By taking time and effort to make these issues clear to them we will save them from a lot of confusion and trouble later on. We also need to help them to be protected from the many wolves out there who are just waiting to pounce on the new sheep with their 'gospel' of seed money and harvest. Let us not shirk our responsibilities in this direction and palm it off to God to fill the gaps in our message.