(1 Corinthians 14:8-9) “For example, if a bugle doesn’t sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? In the same way, unless you speak an intelligible message with your language, how will anyone know what is being said? You’ll be talking into the air!”
(1 Corinthians 2:1-5) “When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come and tell you about God’s secret with rhetorical language or wisdom. For while I was with you I resolved to know nothing except Jesus the Messiah, and him crucified. It was in weakness, fear, and great trembling that I came to you.”
“My message and my preaching were not accompanied by clever, wise words, but by a display of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.”
The God of the Bible is not complicated, or unreachable, nor does He require you to be a theologian to understand His message of love. God speaks in a language that everyone understands and can receive. This is what made Jesus popular with the crowds. His message was for the poor, the rich, the prostitutes, tax collectors, the uneducated, physicians, farmers, priests, sinners, children, men, women, and anyone who needed hope. He sat down with the sinners and spoke at their level, He challenged the Pharisees with riddles and religious questions, He explained the secrets of heaven to farmers and fishermen with parables they could relate to.
We tend to complicate God’s simple message of love and salvation with traditions, doctrines, and religious words that most people don’t understand. When I first started to read the Bible, there were many words in English that I had to look up in a dictionary, especially when I read the King James Version. Even though I am also fluent in Spanish, I encountered the same obstacles when reading the Bible in Spanish. Sure, it helped me grow in my vocabulary, but sometimes it discouraged me from reading further.
Just like Jesus, we need to learn to simplify the message of salvation. We need to stop trying to impress people with expensive words that require a college education, and get down to basics. If you cannot explain the gospel in a way that a 10-year-old child would understand, then you are doing something wrong.
Most people don’t understand words like redemption, atonement, ministry, only begotten, or anointing. Religious leaders that are threatened by your questions, will answer by saying that these issues are too complicated for you to understand because you lack education. This is the strategy used by false religions to make people blindly believe in whatever is taught and thus keep them under their control.
Apostle Paul came to the conclusion that philosophy, doctrine, and clever words and tactics of men were not as effective as simply preaching Christ crucified. There is power in the simple message of the cross, as this is when your intellect stops working and the Holy Spirit is allowed to take over. If you convince someone only through smart answers to accept Christ, someday in the future, someone smarter than you might convince him to leave Christ. Most often, a simple answer can completely destroy a complicated argument.
If your message is too complicated to follow, then you force people to find God through intellect and not through simple faith.
Prayers
• Father, You are Consuming fire, You are like refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap, The great and awesome God.
• Thank You, Lord, for being a God who is near to us and who wants to be found and understood.
• Thank You that You do not require for us to be intellectuals, or of a certain social status to follow You.
• Forgive us for complicating Your simple message of salvation and for adding our own strategy to it.
• Forgive us for thinking that we have to preach with excellence in speech before we can transmit the gospel.
• Teach us how to preach Christ crucified and to submit to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
• Give us the boldness to share your love and your message in any situation.
• We want to be like Jesus and sit with anyone who is in need to hear about Your love.
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• We ask in Jesus’ Mighty Name. Amen