A Focus On Life, Not Sin And Hell

This morning I had an interesting thought while thinking about sin and hell. I thought about how so much of some churches message is based around those themes when its only a very small part of the Gospel message from Jesus, and the New Testament. I decided to do a little research on the Greek words as the are used in the New Testament, pertaining to sin and hell, and other themes. The two primary Greek words for sin are skandalon/skandaliza (44 times), and Hamartia (177), and of those only 31 are in the Gospel and thus possibly attributable to Jesus. Hell and Hades are used a total of (19) times 13 in the Gospels. While the Greek words for love, agape and phileos are used (345), faith - Greek pistis (243), hope - Greek elpis (84), Kingdom - Greek Basileia (162), Father - Greek Pater (413), Spirit - Greek pneuma (379), mercy - Greek eleeo (59), forgiveness - Greek aphiemi (145), Heaven - Greek ouranos (275), heal/save- Greek sozo (106), heal - Greek therapeuo (43), heal - Greek iaomai (26). In summary, there is much to speak about, much to focus on in the New Testament rather than sin and hell. Note: some of the counts are combined with slightly different variants of the same Greek word, that mean the same thing.

The way I saw it was that there is this huge message about the awesomeness of God, and the potential of life within Him, and we only talk about what's the punishment if we don't embrace that life option. It is not that we shouldn't speak about sin, judgment and hell, but the message should be in balance with the rest of the Gospel. Paul says it well in Romans 6:22-23 NIV:

[22] "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. [23] For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

In other words, let us not focus on the wages of sin, but on the great gift that we have been given in Christ Jesus our Lord, the one who has set us free from sin! So often we only hear the first part of verse 23 preached, when the focus of the verse is the second part - the great gift we have been given, namely eternal life. If we have been set free from the sin, then we have been set free from the effects of it as well, or the wages associated wth it.

So, let us look to the good news, the promise of eternal life, the message of the Kingdom, faith , love, mercy, healing, forgiveness, salvation, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and recognize that this is the message we have been called to preach and represent. Let us focus on that which brings life, that which encourages us forward in our relationship with the Lord, and the life available in Him.