“Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”
Now if I were to explain the 'Good news 101' it would be that salvation comes by grace. Everybody knows that surely. For years, I would have agreed but my heart was telling me something very different as I strove to be worthy of His grace. I would regularly beat myself up when I failed and try harder to be good to compensate. It was a season of religious misery. It was Keller who set me straight on grace and moved the gospel from my head to my heart. This sermon called 'The Centrality of the Gospel' (29.2.16) unpacks how that works. You should get the podcast and listen to them all.
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