Because I am an English teacher, I have always cared about the words we use to communicate the gospel. I am sensitive to how language and even the connotations change. What were once fresh metaphors dry out and lose their power to make us see. And some language, like a lot of traditional evangelical language, doesn’t travel well outside of the religious community.
It is hard to know how to present Jesus in our culture. Apologetic proofs for God or various kinds of historical evidences for Christ are interesting, but seldom move unbelievers. We are so multicultural that many see religion not as an issue of truth, but rather of style. Movies, television, and literature has made it quite clear that Christian faith isn’t cool.
Postmodernist philosophy has hammered this generation with the idea that truth is relative, that everyone has their own truth, or that all truth is simply a social construct. The claim that Jesus is the way, the truth and life is meaningless to many and offensive to some. They ask, “What does Jesus offer that no other religion does?”
His blood.
Yes, I know; this is that religious language that seeker-friendly churches try to avoid. We do not want to frighten people with talk about being “washed in the blood of the Lamb” or plunging into a “fountain drawn from Immanuel’s veins”. Nonetheless, the best news we can proclaim to this generation is the power of Christ’s blood to make us clean.
This is a generation that is awash in filth. Kids are exposed to sexual impurity at an earlier age than any previous generation. The ease with which kids can now access pornography and the rancid stuff now accepted on television and in movies has created a culture of defilement. Many of my 18 and 19 year old students have gone through a half-dozen sexual relationships and are already nostalgic about the innocence of childhood.
The deep stain of sin, the piercing sense of uncleanness, and the longing for innocence all cry out for a Savior with the power to cleanse. Even more heartbreaking is the loss of hope among young people. In resignation many have let their sins define them; they expect nothing better than impurity from themselves or others. Yet, as much as they try to make themselves at home in the mud by refusing shame and embracing filthy language, the possibility of becoming clean, of having every sin washed away has a powerful appeal.
Yet in our admirable desire to be relevant and avoid religious-speak, we have become reluctant to speak of the blood. A good quality of this generation is its desire for reality; love that bleeds for us is real.
For a generation mired in impurity and exhausted by hedonism, it is good news that there is still power in the blood. For those entangled and smothered by impurity there is hope in Christ. It is never too late to get clean. No stain is too deep or habit too strong. Though our sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be a white as snow.
