Perhaps the dominant myth in the evangelical church today is that the success of Christianity depends on how popular it is.

This is an age-old fantasy. I remember reading a quote from the apologist Edward John Carnell in Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. During the formative years of Fuller Theological Seminary, Carnell said regarding evangelicalism, “We need prestige desperately.”^[1]Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939–1981 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1990), 670n2.

Christians have worked hard to position themselves in places of power within the culture. They seek influence academically, politically, economically, athletically, socially, theatrically, religiously, and every other way, in hopes of gaining exposure. But when they get that exposure—sometimes through mass media, sometimes in a very broad-minded church environment—they present a reinvented, designer pop gospel that subtly removes all of the true gospel’s offense and beckons people into the kingdom along an easy path. They do away with all that hard-to-believe stuff about self-sacrifice, repudiating your loved ones when necessary, and so forth.

The illusion is that we can preach our message more effectively from lofty perches of cultural power and influence, and that once we’ve got everybody’s attention, we can lead more people to Christ by taking out the sting of the gospel and nurturing a user-friendly message. But to get to those lofty perches, “Christian” public figures water down and compromise the truth; then, to stay up there, they cave in to pressure to perpetuate false teaching so their audience will stay loyal. Telling the truth becomes an unwise and costly career move.

Local church pastors are among the first to be seduced into using this designer gospel, crafted to fit the sinner’s desire and carefully tweaked to overcome consumer resistance. They stylize church meetings to look, sound, and feel like the world in order to remove the sinner’s resistance and lure him down an easy and familiar path into the kingdom.

The idea is to make Christianity easy to believe. But the unvarnished, unmodified, unavoidable truth is that the gospel is actually hard to believe. In fact, if the sinner is left to himself, it is absolutely impossible.

But we can’t just pick on the local preachers for reinventing the gospel. They’re acting no different to the big-name televangelists and widely known evangelicals. To maintain their positions of power and influence, their tenuous alliance with the world, and the approval of the unconverted in the church, these public figures must replace the truth with something soothing and inoffensive. This is the pop philosophy: “If they like us, they’ll like Jesus.” And the whole scheme works superficially—but only if we compromise the truth.

Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I am committed to reaching as far as possible both here and around the world to spread the gospel. I long to see the glory of God extend to the ends of the earth. I long to see divine light flood the kingdom of darkness.

I hate the churches of the world, however, that have become havens for heretics. I resent a TV church that, in many cases, has become a den of thieves. I would love to see the Lord take a whip to the religion of our time. I sometimes pray imprecatory psalms directly on the heads of certain people. But mostly, I pray for the kingdom to come. Mostly I pray for the gospel to penetrate the hearts of the lost. I understand why John Knox said, “Give me Scotland, or I die. What else do I live for?” But this desire should never come at the cost of toning down the truth.

I remember being on a radio talk show at a big station in a big city, where the host was a popular “Christian counselor.” She had a three-hour show every weekday, advising listeners who called in about all sorts of problems, some of them very serious. By the kind of questions she asked me on the show, I figured she hadn’t done a lot of reading about Christian doctrine. Off the air, during a commercial break, she said to me, “You use the word sanctification. What exactly does that mean?”

That was a hint. If she didn’t know what sanctification meant, she had some homework to do. We were still off the air, so I asked her, “How did you become a Christian?” I will never forget her answer. She said, “It was cool. One day I got Jesus’ phone number, and we’ve been connected ever since.”

“What?” I asked, trying not to appear too incredulous. “What do you mean by that?”

“What do you mean, ‘What do I mean by that?’” she shot back brusquely.

She didn’t understand that her “testimony” even needed an explanation. Then she asked, “How did you become a Christian?” I started going briefly through the gospel. She stopped me and said, “Oh, come on! You don’t have to go through all that, do you?”

Yes, you do.

I’ve made no truce with the way the world is. I resent everything that dishonors the Lord. I’m against everything He’s against, and for everything He supports. I long to see people brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ. I hate the fact that sinners die without any hope. I’m committed to the proclamation of the gospel. I want to be a little part of fulfilling the Great Commission. I want to preach the gospel to everyone I encounter.

The only question for me is, How do I do my part? What is my responsibility? It certainly can’t be to compromise the message. The message is not mine; it’s from God, and it is by that message that He saves.

Not only can I not compromise the message, I can’t compromise the cost. I can’t change the terms. We know Jesus said, “If you want to come after Me, deny yourself” (see Luke 9:23). Jesus said we have to take up our crosses all the way to death, if that’s what He asks. I can’t help it if that gospel offends a society awash in self-love. But I know this: The preaching of the truth truly influences the world and genuinely changes one soul at a time. And that happens only by the life-giving, soul-transforming power of the Holy Spirit, in perfect fulfillment of the eternal plan of God. Your opinion and my opinion are not part of the equation.

The kingdom does not advance by human cleverness. It does not advance because we have gained positions of power and influence in the culture. It doesn’t advance thanks to media popularity or opinion polls. It doesn’t advance on the back of public favor. The kingdom of God advances by the power of God alone, in spite of public hostility. When we truly proclaim it in its fullness, the saving message of Jesus Christ is, frankly, outrageously offensive. We proclaim a scandalous message. From the world’s perspective, the message of the cross is shameful. In fact, it is so shameful, so antagonizing, and so offensive that even faithful Christians struggle to proclaim it, because they know it will bring resentment and ridicule.

Embarrassed by Jesus

I’m sure you’ve noticed how hard it is for Christians on television or in the public eye to say the name Jesus. Even well-known evangelical leaders avoid the word when speaking to a wide audience, not to mention cross, sin, hell, and other foundational terms of the faith. They talk a lot about faith in a general, unattached sort of way, yet they shy away from any statement that requires them to take a stand.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, many Americans instinctively sought courage and solace in Christ. But even then, in a service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., broadcast live around the world, a Christian clergyman offered a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ but “respecting all religions.” All religions? Druids? Cat worshipers? Witches? A Christian minister in a Christian church shouldn’t feel compelled to qualify or apologize for praying to the one true Savior.

Paul made a remarkable statement in Romans 1:16–17: “I am not ashamed of the gospel [of Christ], for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’”

Now why would Paul say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel”? Who would ever be ashamed of such good news? Would someone who had found the cure for AIDS have to overcome immense shame to proclaim it? Would a person who had discovered a cure for cancer have to get over terrible shame to be able to open his mouth? Why is the cross so hard to mention?

Even though Paul’s message of salvation was the greatest and most important message in history, audiences and authorities had treated him shamefully for preaching it, time and again. By this point in his ministry they had imprisoned him in Philippi (Acts 16:23–24), chased him out of Thessalonica (Acts 17:10), forced him out of Berea (Acts 17:13–14), laughed at him in Athens (Acts 17:32), branded him a fool in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:18, 23), and stoned him in Galatia (Acts 14:19). He had every reason to feel ashamed, yet his enthusiasm for the gospel was undiminished. And he never, for a moment, considered watering it down to make it more appealing to his audiences.

At some point in our Christian lives, we have all been ashamed and kept our mouths closed when we should have opened them. Or perhaps you’ve hidden behind some sort of innocuous “Jesus loves you and wants to make you happy” message. If you have never felt shame in proclaiming the gospel, it’s probably because you haven’t proclaimed the gospel clearly, in its entirety, the way Jesus did.

Why can’t the Christian business executive witness to his board of directors? Why can’t the Christian university professor stand up before the whole faculty and proclaim the gospel? We all want to be accepted—yet we know, as Paul discovered so many times, that we have a message the world will reject, and the stronger we hold to that message, the more hostile the world becomes. So we begin to feel the shame. Paul rose above it by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, and he said, “I am not ashamed.” It’s a striking example for us, because he knew the price of fidelity to the truth: public rejection, imprisonment, and ultimately, execution.

Human nature really hasn’t changed much throughout history; shame and honor were as big a deal in the ancient world as they are today. Back in the ninth century BC, the epic poet Homer wrote, “The chief good was to be well spoken of, the chief evil, to be badly spoken of by one’s society.” In the first century AD, the apostle Paul shamelessly preached a shameful message about a publicly shamed person. And so the message was an affront. In the eyes of the world, it was indecent. It was stupid. It was moronic.

Yet, as 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” It was this scandalous, offensive, foolish, ridiculous, bizarre, absurd message of the cross that God used to save those who believe. Roman authorities executed His Son by a method they reserved only for the dregs of society; His followers had to be faithful enough to risk meeting the same shameful end.

Like them, we too must be prepared to face the consequences of preaching the unpopular gospel.

(Adapted from Hard to Believe)