I was invited to give the sermon at a wedding last Saturday. Many unbelievers were present. I wanted to present a biblical message that would be helpful for the couple and that would also communicate the gospel to those who had never heard it before.
I picked a hard passage: Ephesians 5:22-33. I told the couple I had a hard thing to say to each of them: submit and love. I told them I also had a beautiful thing to say to them: that as they did so, they’d mirror Christ’s love for his people.
Yes, I talked about submission. I could have avoided it, but I didn’t.
This happens so often. If you preach Scripture for any amount of time, you’ll come to parts that contradict us and seem strange. I used to try to soften or avoid them. No more. I run to these passages now.
The older I get, the more I believe that the hard parts of Christianity are also points of leverage. We don’t need to avoid hard topics among unbelievers. On the contrary, we need to move to them for three reasons.
It’s more honest
I’ve heard of churches that avoid hard issues. Inevitably, though, they come up. The response from many is disappointment. It feels like a bait and switch. We believe many hard and difficult things, and it’s important to be upfront about these so people don’t feel like we’ve hidden the hard parts from them later.
Witness the sermons in Acts. The apostles were very good at communicating to hostile audiences. Quite often, they go right to the points of tension. It’s no use avoiding or soft-pedalling these difficult parts. It’s better to be open about them from the start.
It’s more powerful
One of the reasons it’s important to be open about them is that the hard parts of Scripture are actually the points where Christianity provides the counterpoint that we need.
Every time I’ve found a difficult Scripture, I’ve found that, properly understood, that Scripture provides good news that we need. It doesn’t always seem like it at first, but it is. In fact, the harder that Scripture is to accept, the more we need to pay attention to that passage rather than avoid it.
What are the tension points between Scripture and the people we’re addressing? Don’t avoid those tension points. Run to them. Show how Scripture’s message provides just the corrective we need. In the end, Scripture’s correctives always point us to life and a better way of thinking.
You can’t avoid the hard parts without avoiding the gospel
In the end, it doesn’t make sense to soften the hard parts of Scripture, because you can’t do this without compromising the gospel. The gospel contradicts all of us (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). We believe a lot of things that are hard to believe: that Jesus was born to a virgin; that he was God in the flesh; that his death, burial, and resurrection lie at the center of history; that Jesus ascended to heaven and is coming back again. All of it is strange to unbelieving ears, and you can’t soften any of it without compromising the gospel.
It’s better, I think, to be honest about the fact that Christianity doesn’t line up with the way we tend to think. It challenges us and calls for a response. When it contradicts modern sensibilities, the right approach isn’t to soften that contradiction, but to show how Scripture provides a needed and better word to us today.
Don’t soften the hard parts. Talk about them. Run to them. The hard parts, the strange parts, the weird parts can help us communicate the beauty of God’s revelation, and show how God speaks a better word than the beliefs we currently hold.
