Christ The Savior Or The Fairy Godmother

Oh, how we have fallen!  “Come to Jesus, and He will help your marriage…Come to Jesus and He will bless you financially…Come to Jesus and He will make you feel better about yourself…Come to Jesus and He will improve your self-image…Come to Jesus and your problems will be over…”

Exaggeration?  Maybe, a little; but not so much.  The call to come to Jesus is a call of repentance from sin, a call of following Jesus Christ as Lord.  When we diminish the gospel call to a promise of meeting so called “felt-needs,” we preach a false gospel.  Consider these words:

“. . . Nor would it be saving faith if a man in that condition called on the Lord Jesus Christ just to soothe him, cheer him up and make him feel confident again.  Nor should we be preaching the gospel if all that we did was to present Christ in terms of a human’s felt wants.  (‘Are you happy?  Are you satisfied?  Do you want peace of mind?  Do you feel that you have failed?  Are you fed up with yourself?  Do you want a friend?  Then, come to Christ; he will meet your every need’–as if the Lord Jesus Christ were to be thought of as a fairy god-mother, or a super-psychiatrist.) . . . ” (Packer)

If not that, then how should we preaching?  (To be continued–next blog)