Cyber-Discipleship

Sin is I-centered. It is all about me and my desires. Ad people capitalize on this idea with slogans like, “You deserve a break today”, “We do it all for you”, and “Get the ___ you deserve.” Some megachurches have also embraced this philosophy. The sermon is centered around the audience and not around God. Songs exalt the person and not the Savior. Some churches even refer to themselves as “seeker-sensitive” rather than “Gospel-focused” or “Bible-preaching”. However, even the gospel is twisted in these churches. In these churches, the gospel is “me-focused” and not “God-focused.”

As Paul told Timothy in his second epistle, the time would come when people will stop listening to and receiving sound, biblical doctrine, but having ears that want to be tickled, they will seek after people who will tell them what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3). This is why the social and the prosperity gospels are so popular. There is no holiness of God in it. There is no sin or sinfulness of man in it. There is no call for repentance or accountability in it. There is also no power in it. You get as much out of these types of sermons as you would going to an Amway convention.

The Gospel should be all about God. We did nothing. We contributed nothing. We did not save ourselves. We did not lift ourselves up spiritually by our own bootstraps. God did it ALL. He came up with the Plan of Salvation before man was even created. He sent His Son to be the Sacrifice. He initiated reconciliation. He calls us into a relationship with Him. He gives us the faith to believe. He has promised to heal us, seal us, and redeem us. What, in this scenario, did we contribute? The only thing we did was believed, which is all God commanded us to do.

In these me-gospel churches, it is about us. God loved us, God needed us, so He sent His Son to die for us.  ‘We are the apple of His eye.’ ‘God has a reckless kind of love for us.’ ‘God broke the law to save us.’ All these are lies, heresy, even blasphemy.  Yes, God loves us. Yes, Israel is called the apple of God’s eye. God does not need us to be complete. He was complete before He created us.

So, why did He create us? He created us so He could display to us and the angels His great grace, mercy, love, and compassion. He knew we were going to mess up before He created us. Yet, He created us anyway. He knew we would need a savior before the world was. This is why 1 Peter 1:20 says, “[Jesus] indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 say this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. “ And that not of yourselves…this tells us that there was nothing in us that would cause God to desire us. We were rebellious. We were His enemies. We were full of sin—a stench in His nostrils. Yet, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

The Gospel is for us but it is not about us. It is about God. To Him be the glory.