Wrath and mercy gospel
But don’t mention sin or judgment, because it will only put people off.
This was the proviso included in the invitation which a friend of mine recently received, to speak at a university students’ meeting. Of course we know what the student writer meant. In our contemporary culture the concept that God would ever judge or punish is an anathema. Only the other day, after I had been preaching the good news of Christ crucified, against the bleak backdrop of God’s righteous judgment, someone came to take me to task for being so ‘negative’.