As soul winners, we are not to hold up a modified standard of holiness before our people and say, “You’ll be all right if you reach that standard.” Scripture says, He that commits sin is of the devil (1 John 3:8). Remaining under the power of any known sin is a mark of our being the servants of sin, for his slaves ye are to whom ye obey (Romans 6:16). The boasts of a man who harbors the love of any transgression are ineffectual.
Charles Spurgeon, The Soul Winner
Chapter 2 of The Soul Winner presses into first matters of preaching the gospel: bringing the weight of sin to bear on those who hear. This is something that, as many will point out, often seems lacking in a lot of modern Western churches. The words “Jesus saves!” are not lacking, but exactly what Jesus saves from is not made clear. For the sake of all those who read this, I will make it clear: that salvation is from the wrath of God that is coming against all sin.
The preaching of the gospel can hardly be considered started if we don’t begin where the Bible does: with man’s sinfulness, and his need for a holy and perfect Savior, found only and completely in Jesus. My church has a little slogan we use, that our desire is “showing the beauty of Jesus to the heart of Denton.” Surely we seek after that, and one of the components of that showing is the flipside of that coin: showing the ugliness of sin. This doesn’t mean we make a mockery of those who commit sin, or that we act as though we personally are above sin.
On the contrary, it involves us being honest with others about the sin that has marked our lives, and in the same way, showing the way Christ has rendered a transformation in our desires and our hearts. Our society today has decided that such preaching is decidedly bad, because to call someone to repent of sin might also involve calling them to repent of something that they have taken as a very identity of themselves. But that is exactly what we want to do: there is no identity other than in Christ that will bring any hope, and in fact every other identity we could adopt (and I mean every, so don’t think you’ve found the loophole) will ultimately bring only frustration and, in the end, death.
We do desire to show the ugliness of sin, and at the same time, to show exactly how beautiful Jesus is, because “while we were still sinners,” while we were absolutely in love with all manner of sins and idolatries and evil, “Christ died for us.” More than that, He lives for us, as a perfect and great high priest, and by whom we have the right and the joy to go to God in prayer, as adopted children. Rejoice in that, and trust completely in Him.
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KINGS WAY TALK 