Proud to Be in God’s Family

Jesus is not ashamed to call us siblings according to Hebrews 2. We share a Father with Jesus. Through baptism, we are adopted into God’s family. Jesus becomes our brother. Jesus passed through suffering to work salvation for all of us, and despite our sins, despite the fact that we sent him to the cross through our failings, Jesus is unashamed to call us his siblings. If Jesus is unashamed of us, it should be obvious that we would not be ashamed of him, right?

In Romans 1:16, Paul says that he is unashamed of the Gospel. This sounds like a definitive answer, but the fact that Paul even needs to make that claim in the first place casts some doubt on it. Why would anyone be ashamed of the Gospel? Why would Paul have to clarify that?

The Good News of God’s mercy can be hard to preach in a world that is largely unreceptive to it. Sometimes we have trouble receiving the Gospel ourselves. How can we expect people with less practice to be ready to hear the Gospel? There are many problems that may produce infertile spiritual soil for the Gospel.

Sometimes people haven’t been sufficiently humbled by the Law. They don’t think they need the Gospel. Some people see themselves as perfect enough on their own. They think that they can be good enough for God and the world by simply doing the right things. They can control themselves and their fate. They don’t see themselves rooted in sin. They see themselves as occasionally making a few mistakes that can easily be remedied. They might laugh off the Gospel message as a comfort they don’t need.

Sometimes people have been too humbled by the Law and don’t see themselves as able to receive the good news of the Gospel. Some people have such a low view of themselves that they don’t even believe God could love them. They have been told for so long that their sins make them uniquely unworthy that now they have given up. They have resigned themselves to the wrath of God, and through a mix of bad theology and bad proclamation, they are lost in despair. They may hear the Gospel, but it won’t change their outlook until the proper groundwork is laid to receive it.

Sometimes people simply don’t believe in any of this. They don’t believe in God. They don’t believe a perfectly good and powerful God would have to die to save us from sin. They don’t think there is a heaven to go to, a hell to be saved from, or a savior to save us. The Gospel probably won’t make sense for these people

With all these potential problems, it is understandable that we would be a little hesitant to talk about Jesus. Who wouldn’t be a little ashamed of the Gospel? When there are so many people who might reject the message in so many ways, why not just keep it in church? If they want to receive the Gospel, they know where to find it. We’ll preach the Gospel to them once they come through our doors, but we don’t want to be rejected out in the real world. That would make us timid. And we don’t want to be scared of proclaiming God’s message of love and grace. We’re afraid of being afraid, so we just don’t do it. We are ashamed of the possibility of failing.

But then again, Jesus isn’t ashamed to call us family. Why should we be ashamed of his story?

There is a temptation here to make the Gospel message more broadly palatable by secularizing it. We might be able to reach out to even the atheists with the Gospel if we put it in their terms. Instead of saying that in the person of Jesus Christ, God went to the cross to save us from our sins, not because we are worthy of such love, but simply because God loves us, maybe we should say that there is abounding forgiveness and love as part of an impersonal universe. Maybe we can take God out of the Gospel so people will be more willing to hear it. Maybe if we sanitize forgiveness, removing the baggage of judgment and religion we can spread the Good News of Christ.

I will admit, I have done this before. I have shared the Gospel as if it had nothing to do with Jesus, and in my defence, that is important sometimes. I have friends who are atheists for whom talk of Jesus does little, but who still need to hear that they can be forgiven and that they can forgive themselves. This has its place, but it isn’t always the right thing to do. If you take the judgment and sin out of forgiveness, what are people being forgiven for? If you take the consequences out of the story of salvation, from what are you being saved? You don’t need a savior if you lie about your condition. If you never admit that you are seriously ill, you never admit that you need a doctor.

The only way to successfully take God out of the Gospel is to undermine the entire message of the Gospel, to remove the problems it addresses. But in fact, there are a lot of people who are hurting. Some people become arrogant and self-righteous because they know that if they are aware of the ways they have hurt people, the truth would break their hearts. There are people who feel unworthy of love because they simply haven’t received the love they’ve needed. There are people who flee from the idea of God because their parents used God as a cudgel to drive them to obedience through fear. People need to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People need to know that the angry, violent God they see is an idol invented by the powerful to undermine the complaints of those beneath them. People need to see the true face of God, the face of one willing to undergo anguish on behalf of God’s beloved children.

As much as we may fear rejection by those who have been too hurt to trust the Gospel we preach, we must remember that Christ wasn’t too ashamed of us to go to the cross on our behalf. Jesus faced rejection and brutal public punishment for us. We can face a little bit of shame, a little bit of rejection, to take this life giving message to those who need it most.