I always look to buy things of the best quality I can at the lowest price I can; I love a bargain. While she was growing up, my daughter Elizabeth was often my shopping companion, especially at Sale time, and through this learned how to obtain the best value from limited funds. Ever since she moved away to university and subsequently married and had her family, we have both delighted in sharing news of particular bargains that we have managed to secure.
A tricky customer
My dad used to tell the story about a tricky customer that he encountered. He worked in a retail furniture store, and one day a ‘posh’ woman came in seeking a small item of furniture, an upholstered footstool, if I remember correctly. For each item that my dad brought to her, she asked the price and then declared that it wasn’t what she was after.
Having shown her one of every type in stock, my dad realised that his customer was equating quality with price and was turning down each item because it wasn’t costly enough. He then produced another stool, in a different colour to an identical one that she had rejected, but made the price greater – this turned out to be just what the customer wanted, and purchased!
Which ‘buyer’ are we dealing with when we share the gospel? Is it the bargain hunter who we imagine will want to get the benefits on the cheap, or the one who sees the cost as the mark of quality and value? I detect a current eagerness to ‘make a sale’ and, accordingly, present a bargain basement gospel message. Maybe this is made in the hope that, when the true cost becomes apparent, the new convert won’t baulk at this and will eventually be prepared to pay the price of discipleship. But I must say that I see little evidence of this.
To proclaim a cheap gospel does nobody any favours
The 19th-century Scottish Evangelist, Henry Drummond, declared that: “The entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing: the annual subscription is everything”. This is the truth that every genuine follower of Jesus Christ needs to appreciate. I suggest that, as with any commercial transaction, the ongoing costs should be made apparent at the outset.
Maybe the problem is not so much that people are unwilling to pay the cost, but that we are failing to persuade them of the value. Normally, salespeople talk up the value of their merchandise when seeking to persuade a customer to buy. They elaborate on how beneficial the product will be; what an enhancement to their customers’ life. Advertisers sometimes go even further, explaining that surely you can’t do without their product (although they rarely tell you the price at that point!).
Immeasurable quality
The truth is that what we are presenting – the gospel message – is of both the greatest possible value to the recipient, and also bought for us at the highest possible price. If the price paid is a mark of value, then we cannot doubt that, whatever the ongoing cost to us, it will be worth it.
The benefit is certainly eternal, and thereby incalculable, but at least as importantly, it is for our lives now, today. The gospel is transformative, opening the way to a life spent in communion with God and lived according to his design and purpose.
This is where the cost comes in – being a Christian entails laying aside self, pride, arrogance and more. The bargain price version of the gospel message fails to tell people this, whereas the enhanced price version tells them that the benefits must be enormous and worth the ongoing cost that so many who have gone before have been glad to pay.
A double-sided message
The gospel is like a double-sided coin; you can’t have one side without the other. The face is the good news that Jesus paid the price for our sin, and through this we can be totally forgiven for everything we have thought, said or done that is displeasing to God; we can be made spotlessly clean.
The flip side has even more good news – that we can be transformed through adopting Jesus as the Lord of our lives, to guide us into the ways of God, but also to enable us to live the way that he has designed for us; to live optimally.
This is counter-cultural in our selfish, individualistic society, but at the same time, it is what many people crave in their hearts. They have turned their backs on ‘religion’, but they want hope, to have a deeply fulfilled life, and are open to hearing the good news, the full-throttle gospel message that proclaims a new way of living, tuned in to eternity. Of course, they won’t all accept this message, but our role is to declare the entire gospel and trust that the Spirit of God will draw to himself those who are destined for salvation.
John 3:16; Acts 3:19; Romans 12:2; Romans 8:28-30; Rev 21:6; Luke 14:25-34