The Book of Signs: 31 Undeniable Prophecies of the Apocalypse

by David Jeremiah

know that some of you are thinking, Do we really have to deal with all this? Why can’t we just focus on the grace of God and get away from all this sin stuff? But before we ignore sin and bask in the grace of God, we need to hear these words from theologian Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.: To speak of grace without sin is . . . to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ, to skate past all the struggling by good people down the ages to forgive, accept, and rehabilitate sinners, including themselves, and therefore to cheapen the grace of God that always comes to us with blood on it. What had we thought the ripping and the writhing on Golgotha were all about? To speak of grace without looking squarely at these realities, without painfully honest acknowledgment of our own sin and its effects, is to shrink grace to a mere embellishment of the music of creation, to shrink it down to a mere grace note. In short, for the Christian church (even in its recently popular seeker services) to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.18