https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-Iebf6kuUI
Why did people who knew they were sinners crowd around Jesus, while so many people today feel they are not good enough to enter a church?
That question ought to trouble us. I keep meeting people whose experiences with Christianity have pushed them farther from Jesus instead of drawing them closer. Often, the Christians involved meant well. They sincerely loved God. Yet somewhere along the way, a message meant to bring life became a burden that brought shame, fear, and distance.
This is the concern at the heart of part four of The Fruit of the Gospel: making the gospel good news again. Not changing Jesus. Not improving on what He accomplished. Recovering the life that was there all along.
When our presentation of the gospel makes struggling people feel they must become good enough before they can come to Jesus, something has gone fundamentally wrong.
Key Takeaways
- People who recognized their brokenness approached Jesus because He offered the life they could not provide themselves.
- Early Christian charity expressed the conviction that every human being possesses God-given worth.
- God’s gifts become burdens when religious performance replaces their life-giving purpose.
- Prayer, Scripture, and church life should deepen dependence on Christ rather than foster spiritual superiority.
People Who Knew Their Need Were Drawn to Jesus
I came to know the Lord at nineteen. Before that, I believed Christian truths. I believed Jesus died for my sins and rose again. But knowing those truths and knowing Him were not the same experience. When I encountered Him personally, it changed my life.
As a young Christian, I often heard an explanation for why people stayed away from the church: they loved darkness, loved their sin, and did not want the light.
But then I would look at Jesus. Tax collectors and sinners wanted to be near Him. People crowded around Him so persistently that finding rest could be difficult. Those who recognized their brokenness were discovering that He had something they desperately needed.
Much of the opposition came from religious leaders and authorities. In Paul’s ministry, opposition also came from people whose income was threatened when others abandoned idols. The gospel was setting people free, and not everyone welcomed the consequences of that freedom.
We should be careful, then, about explaining every rejection of the church as a rejection of Jesus. Sometimes people are responding to a religious culture that does not represent Him well.
What if the message they hear from us is not that Christ saves the helpless, but that they must first become acceptable? What if our expectations communicate that they can come only after they have put their lives in order?
Jesus described His mission in terms of a physician coming to those who need healing. The poor in spirit are not disqualified from His kingdom. They are precisely the people who know they cannot save themselves.
Our confidence belongs in what Jesus accomplished on the cross, not in our ability to make ourselves worthy of Him.
The Early Church Made Human Worth Visible
One reason I love studying Christian history is that it reveals an extraordinary inheritance. The gospel did not merely give people new religious language. It changed the way they treated human beings.
I have been especially encouraged by Bullies and Saints and its exploration of Christianity’s historical impact. One example that stands out is charity in the early Roman world.
The Christian conviction that every person bears God’s image had practical consequences. Human worth did not depend on status, usefulness, health, or the ability to repay a favor. People mattered because they were human beings created by God.
That conviction moved Christians to care for people with leprosy and to nurse the sick during devastating epidemics. Some became ill themselves. Some died. Yet they continued serving.
Compare that with a benefactor system in which generosity could function as an exchange: I give you help, and you return honor to me. My benevolence increases my reputation.
The church challenged that way of thinking. The point was not to do something good so that everyone would admire you. The point was to do good because another person needed care.
Christian charity put the worth of the recipient ahead of the reputation of the giver.
That is a revolutionary difference. It helps explain why the gospel could be so compelling. People were not simply hearing that God loved them. They were encountering a community that treated them as though it were true.
Freedom from idols and fatalism
Accounts of the gospel spreading through England, Ireland, and the work of early Celtic missionaries have fascinated me for the same reason. In histories such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, I see people encountering a different understanding of life.
Idolatry could hold people under an oppressive sense of fate. Their lives were subject to powers they could not escape. Their choices seemed insignificant. Their dignity was diminished.
The gospel announced something different: you are made in God’s image, and there is freedom in Christ. You are not merely a mechanism carrying out an unavoidable program. That challenge also matters wherever modern thinking reduces human beings to nothing more than predetermined processes.
People discovering life in Jesus found something that reached the deepest longing of their hearts. That helps explain why believers could endure persecution rather than surrender what they had found.
I remember reading a testimony from someone who came from a Muslim background and encountered Jesus in prison. The striking part was the discovery of profound freedom while physically confined. Meeting Christ had changed the meaning of freedom itself.
That is the kind of life we are talking about. Not a heavier burden. Liberation.
A Church for Imperfect People, Not People Who Have Arrived
I hear people say they do not feel good enough to come to church. Others stop coming when a problem surfaces in their lives. Underneath their withdrawal is the fear that, if people knew the truth about them, they would no longer be accepted.
Those responses tell us something about the culture we have created.
The alternative is not a community that pretends problems do not exist. It is a community of imperfect people who know that Jesus is their Savior. We follow Him together, love God together, and learn to love one another through real weaknesses and failures.
When someone is struggling, the church should not become the place where hope disappears. It should become the place where that person finds companions who will walk with them and strengthen them in the Lord.
Imagine a community where:
- People can acknowledge weakness without fearing immediate rejection.
- Those who are struggling receive hope rather than another layer of condemnation.
- Believers encourage growth without pretending they have already reached perfection.
- Love shapes the way faults, failures, and disagreements are handled.
That begins to reflect heaven on earth. And I believe such a community can become compelling again.
This concern also belongs within the broader conversation about spiritual growth in our Life Springs preaching collection: how does the truth we confess become the life we share?
Renewing the Mind Means Remaining Willing to Grow
Much of my own journey has involved discovering things that were already in Scripture but were new to me. They were not new truths. I had simply not understood them before.
That is one of the things I love about walking with God. There is always a deeper appreciation of His goodness, a greater reason for thanksgiving, and another place where our thinking can change.
Romans 12:1-2 connects a life offered to God with transformation through the renewing of our minds. We are not meant merely to conform to the patterns around us. God’s Word reshapes how we understand Him, ourselves, and other people.
The fruit should become visible: more humility, more grace, more fullness of life, and a clearer expression of God’s kingdom. That is how we become salt and light.
It also requires humility about our interpretations. I enjoy talking with Christians who see a passage differently. Of course, I think my understanding is right, and they think theirs is right. But an honest conversation can reveal that more than one perspective is consistent with the purpose and spirit of God’s Word.
If I cannot learn anything next year that I do not understand today, am I really growing?
One particular realization transformed the way I read Scripture. It begins with something Jesus said about the Sabbath.
The Sabbath Was Given to Bless People
In Mark 2:27-28, Jesus explains that the Sabbath was given for humanity’s benefit, rather than humanity existing to serve the Sabbath. He also identifies Himself as Lord of the Sabbath.
That changes the question we ask.
Instead of asking only, “Have I observed the rule?” we begin asking, “What good was God giving through this command?”
The Sabbath speaks of rest, freedom, and the goodness of life under God. It is a gift. But when we reverse its purpose, the gift becomes a test of belonging: perform correctly, or feel that you are not good enough.
Consider how quickly a superficial rule creates contradictions. Someone feels righteous for not working on Sunday, then goes to a restaurant and depends on someone else working. Or someone needs emergency care and expects doctors, nurses, ambulance crews, police officers, and firefighters to be available.
Are those people failing God by serving human need? Or have we misunderstood the purpose of the command?
My daughter, who works in food service, has described the reputation some Christians have for poor tipping. She has even heard people justify it by saying they already gave their tithe at church.
Think about that. We can feel satisfied with our religious observance while treating the person serving us without generosity. We have kept a form and missed its purpose.
A practice meant to express God’s goodness has gone wrong when it becomes a reason to disregard another person.
The same question applies to other systems
This principle reaches beyond Sabbath observance. Take voting. I want people to vote, but voting also carries responsibility. The purpose is not exhausted by everyone possessing a ballot. We must ask whether we are using that responsibility to choose moral, wise, capable leaders.
If we celebrate the existence of a system without evaluating whether it serves its purpose, we can miss the whole point.
The church faces a similar problem when people demand teachers who tell them only what they want to hear. Paul warns about that appetite. It is not simply a leadership problem. Communities help sustain the pattern through what they reward and demand.
Breaking that cycle takes courage from all of us. We have to become willing to question comfortable habits and recover the life those habits were supposed to serve.
The Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life
Paul’s argument in 2 Corinthians 3:4-6 begins with dependence on God. Our sufficiency does not originate in ourselves. God equips us as servants of the new covenant, whose life comes through the Spirit rather than the letter.
That context matters. We are not being invited to replace dependence on God with confidence in our own religious competence.
The distinction between letter and Spirit helped me recognize how Scripture can be handled in profoundly different ways. We can use it as a club to make people feel the weight of every failure. Or we can handle it faithfully in a way that reveals Jesus and serves God’s purpose of bringing life.
I know this danger because I have been guilty of it. As a new Christian, I could assume that my interpretation was obvious and that anyone who resisted simply did not want the truth.
Now my concern is different. It is not that I am afraid to say something difficult. I am afraid of misrepresenting God.
There is an enormous difference between avoiding truth and handling God’s Word carefully because we want to represent Him accurately.
These questions have become important to me:
- What is this passage revealing about God and His purposes?
- What kind of relationship with God and other people is it meant to produce?
- Does my application reveal Jesus and lead toward freedom, or does it create bondage?
- Am I helping people receive life, or using religious correctness to feel superior?
This is not a matter of making Scripture say whatever we prefer. It is a commitment to understanding the world God’s Word is meant to form, rather than assuming our first reading automatically captures His intention.
Grace Changes Ordinary Human Interactions
Sometimes an ordinary experience makes the difference between letter and spirit surprisingly clear.
A missing audiobook and two different responses
I bought an audiobook of Bullies and Saints on sale. Later, while waiting for an oil change in Liberty Hill, I tried to play it. It would not work, and its image had disappeared.
I checked my receipt. I had paid for it. Yet the app was offering to sell it to me again.
Through customer support, I learned that the audiobook had been updated. The proposed solution was to refund my original purchase so I could buy the updated edition. The problem was that I had purchased it on sale, and the new purchase would cost more.
I kept explaining that I simply wanted access to what I had already bought. The conversation went in circles.
Eventually, I found a phone number and spoke with another representative. That person offered to refund the purchase and provide a credit so I could obtain the book without paying again.
What a difference. I left the exchange feeling that I had connected with a human being rather than a machine.
The lesson is not about a person’s nationality or background. Judgment and racism would contradict the very human dignity we are trying to honor. The meaningful contrast was between two approaches: applying a narrow procedure without resolving the problem, and using judgment to help the person the system existed to serve.
An anniversary trip rescued by compassion
Alan shared a similar experience from a thirtieth-anniversary visit to Disneyland. After long waits, rides shut down just as they were ready to board. Several disappointments piled up, and they had spent substantial time without enjoying the experiences they had come for.
When Alan explained what had happened, the staff responded with care. They provided a VIP pass and helped turn the day around. He was particularly excited about the Star Wars attraction, which they were able to enjoy twice.
The staff could have treated the situation as unfortunate but outside their concern. Instead, they listened, showed empathy, and used their ability to help.
Neither story is a theological proof by itself. Both illustrate something we recognize immediately: systems feel different when people remember the human beings inside them.
The Golden Rule asks us to consider how we would want to be treated. Rules and systems should serve people. They should not make us forget that people matter.
That is a challenge for everyday life, and it is certainly a challenge for the church.
Prayer and Bible Reading Can Become Religious Performance
The most uncomfortable part of this discussion is that we can lose the spirit of something while continuing to practice its outward form.
When I was a young believer, I prayed a great deal because I loved experiencing God’s presence, grace, and Holy Spirit. My pastor once asked how I could pray so much. To me, the answer was simple: being with God was wonderful.
Because I loved prayer, I read books about it. One book offered a system built around making lists and organizing everything I needed to pray about. I assumed the author must know more than I did, so I tried it.
For two days, I was miserable. The connection I had known was missing. I had adopted a method but lost the life that made me want to pray.
Looking back, I can see another danger. Had I continued merely to prove my faithfulness, I might have begun feeling like a better Christian than those who did not follow the same system. Then I might have prescribed my method to everyone else.
That is how something sincere can become self-righteous.
The problem was not that a list could never be useful. The problem was confusing a method with the living relationship it was supposed to support.
The same danger applies to reading the Bible. It is possible to read Scripture and pray regularly while becoming increasingly critical, judgmental, and unpleasant. A person may become skilled at identifying everyone else’s faults and call it discernment, when what they are actually practicing is accusation.
The goal is not merely that we perform spiritual activities. The goal is that we find life in Christ through them.
I want people to discover what happens when they approach God’s Word with hunger and He begins speaking to them through it. I want them to experience prayer as communion with Him, not just as evidence that they completed their religious responsibilities.
Those encounters can change everything. They renew our thinking, deepen our gratitude, and produce the fruit of God’s kingdom.
Self-righteousness can imitate that sense of satisfaction. It can feel good to believe we are doing everything correctly. But its fruit may be comparison, superiority, and condemnation rather than love.
Making the Gospel Good News Again
This danger is not new. Jude uses forceful images of emptiness and fruitlessness, including clouds that bring no water, to warn about destructive people within the church. Elsewhere, Scripture warns of an outward appearance of godliness without its power.
Paul challenges the Galatians for trying to complete through human effort what began through the Spirit. That question reaches straight into our lives: have we substituted religious performance for dependence on the God who gives life?
The power of the risen Christ is meant to work in us. We are not meant to preserve an impressive religious exterior while hiding the light that could bless others.
So what are we trying to build?
A community where imperfect people love one another. A place where we encourage rather than tear down. A family that offers wisdom, grace, and strength to people who are struggling.
When someone already feels the weight of failure, we do not need to pile on condemnation. We can offer hope. We can walk alongside them. We can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
That is more than keeping the forms. It is receiving the life those forms were meant to serve.
I believe people can be drawn to Jesus again through a church that reflects Him faithfully. The answer is not to ask broken people to make themselves worthy before they arrive. It is to help them encounter the Savior who freely gives what none of us could provide for ourselves.
We make the gospel good news again when the grace we proclaim becomes the life people encounter among us.
