Bad News First
A doctor who only talks about how good you’ll feel after the surgery, and never gets around to telling you what’s wrong, isn’t doing you any favors. You need the diagnosis. Without it, the cure doesn’t make much sense.
I think about that every time I hear the gospel told like a sales pitch. Come to Jesus and your life gets better. Better marriage, better job, less worry. Some of that is true, and the Lord does change lives. But if that’s all we say, we’ve turned Him into a self-help plan. Then the first hard season comes along and folks decide the product didn’t work.
The Bible doesn’t do it that way. It starts with the diagnosis: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). All. Not some. Then comes the best news anybody ever heard: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). A rescue only means something when you know what you got pulled out of.
Now, that doesn’t mean we ought to scare people into the pew. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), and I’d point out that word beginning. A boy who loves his daddy wants to make him proud, and that’ll carry him a lot further than being afraid of the belt. John said it plain: “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
And faith was never meant to be an insurance policy you sign on Easter and stick in a drawer, just in case. Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Love does the keeping.
So when I tell somebody about Jesus, I want to tell them all of it. The bad news first, and honestly. Then the good news, which is better than anything I could ever sell.
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