I said in my sermon today, “A reason we put salt on (even good) food is to enhance its good flavor. The gospel is good. But the way that we present it, can enhance its ‘flavor’ to people.” This is a disclaimer to that statement.
We shouldn’t try to make life in Christ seem like something it is not. We don’t want a restaurant to serve us dog food seasoned to taste like ground beef. Instead we want a little salt to enhance a good steak. The gospel is not dog food that we need to fix up. It is a good steak.
For example, we shouldn’t try to enhance the gospel, as many people do, by making it sound like becoming a Christian fixes all your problems and makes the world fantastic. That’s not true. So we shouldn’t say things like that to try to make the gospel taste good to people. Rather, if we are truly drawing close to Christ, and trying to live for him, there are real benefits, even amongst difficulties. So in talking about our lives, we shouldn’t pretend not to have struggles; rather, we admit our struggles, which they often can relate to, but then we tell them how Christ helps us, like by giving us good direction in the Bible, or by helping us live different by the power of the Spirit, or how the family of God in the church encourages us. But those things should be true for us, not made up.
We are not to be fake. We have to be real. That’s why how we live is so important. If we aren’t living the gospel, it’s hard to authentically represent it in our speech.
So, when I say we enhance the gospel by our speech and behavior, I mean, the way we present the gospel needs to spring out the goodness of the gospel. It is a gracious message. We need to reflect that with gracious speech. Be kind. Be respectful. Listen. Care about the person you are sharing with.
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