God Motivation and Niceness

Be nice. This is a command that most of us learn from our parents at a young age, and it's good instruction. Yes, it's a good line that keeps us from being hateful toward others, from initiating conflict, and from being that bully that everyone avoids. Be nice--good advice.

But all good advice needs to be both correctly informed and rightly applied. In other words, being nice sometimes involves telling people what they need to hear in order to keep them from going down a deadly path. In such cases people need to be told to turn around; that's just the nice thing to do. When Titus (3) is running around the house with the laundry basket on his head and I see him heading toward the stairs that lead down to the first floor, I don't say, "Have fun in Jesus, Kiddo!" That would not be nice. The fun that he would have for the next few steps are not worth the fall that he would experience a moment later.

I wonder if we have eyes to see the laundry baskets on people's heads, given the way we often present the gospel to people today. It seems that so many have been made to think that Jesus fits in quite well with their current life path. Just put a "Jesus loves me" bumper sticker on their basket, one that they decide is cool to don, and send them on their way, perhaps encouraging some life-reform...in a nice way. Recently though, I noticed a thread running through the gospels that seems to give us a model of "niceness" that looks a bit different. Consider the following texts:

• In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:1-2).

• Then, skipping to the start of Jesus' ministry, we read, From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17).

• Finally, the twelve apostles, having been sent out by Jesus, went out and proclaimed that people should repent (Mark 6:12).

The reoccurring theme here is hard to miss. All three people/groups called others to repentance. The nice thing that they were all doing was to tell their audiences to turn around, to abandon their current paths, and to pay attention to the Ruler of the heavenly kingdom. They weren't so much interested in making people's current lives better but in seeing their lives completely transformed.

I question sometimes how hard I really work at making sure that people become God motivated. What I mean is that I'm all too satisfied with simply trying to say and do the right things myself while the people I'm relating to are headed toward the deadly stairs under their baskets of sin. I'm probably scared. See, there's also a common theme in the lives of all these people/groups in near totality: martyrdom. Consider here the One for whom the other mere men died. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God... (1 Peter 3:18). Didn't He do enough to give us cause to carry on the legacy? All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). People cannot be reconciled to a holy God without true repentance, and they won't ever become God motivated people if they never behold God for the great treasure that He is.

As a church, we need to wake up to our responsibility of following the model set forth in the gospels to call people to repentance. We cannot expect our own local flocks or the people of the world to think or act by any standard other than their own if we're silent about their sin. And even more, we rob everyone of the great joy of knowing life eternal through Jesus Christ when we leave them under their blinding burdens. The time is only growing shorter; be nice, for Jesus' sake.

Father, if You're to be my motivation, and if I desire others to be motivated by and toward You as well, please help me to start doing what in many cases is the nicest, most kind and compassionate thing I can do: call them to repent. Lord Jesus, awaken us as Your church to see Your great worth so much that we turn from every sin and esteem You so greatly before others that they are challenged to turn in the same fashion. Amen.