Today, both in society and in the church, we place a great emphasis on being nice. The church often aims to be “seeker-friendly”, and there is very little about telling people about sin, and definitely not their sin! To do so is to be “judgemental”, and it may even be construed as hate-speech.
However, if we look in the Bible we find a very different approach. Take Acts 5:29-31 as an example. Peter and the other apostles have been hauled up before the Sanhedrin, now look at what Peter says. “Jesus who you killed ...” , indeed if we look at the early chapters of Acts Peter talks about Israel’s guilt in killing Jesus on several occasions. This feature of being very direct about our sin and sinfulness is a feature of the whole of the Bible, including of Jesus Himself.
Now look at the latter part of v31, “to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins”. Look at that phrase, “giving repentance”. Calling people to repentance has very much fallen out of fashion, indeed if we do so we will be accused of hate-speech, but repentance is a gift of God! It is part of His blessing towards us. When the Spirit works in a person’s life, He will lead that person to repent so that they can receive forgiveness. This is another reason why it is so important that we do not pussyfoot around the fact that people are sinners. If we do mess about, then we are denying people the gift of God. Conversely, if we speak the truth then the saving power of the gospel can be released, for then we are preaching in step with the Holy Spirit.
So when our society tells us to never speak about sin we should look at v29 and consider the words of Peter, “we must obey God rather than man”. We must do this today, both out of love and commitment to the Lord, and out of love for people. For the gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel that calls people to repentance so that they can receive forgiveness and begin to see their lives transformed. Anything else is no gospel at all.
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