Jesus the Preacher: Warm Fuzzies or Fire and Brimstone?

Article I wrote for StrongChurch (http://www.strongchurch.org/jesus-the-preacher-warm-fuzzies-or-fire-and-brimstone/)

It was Paul, not Jesus, who told us to season our speech with salt (Colossians 4:6). Our words must be tasty if the world is going to receive them, but we must never compromise the truth for the sake of flavor. Everyone has experienced food (and language!) which was too salty and, therefore, unpleasant. However, Jesus practiced Paul’s exhortation in His own preaching. There was a balance between positive, feel-good messages and warnings of judgment urging repentance. Sometimes the message was very easy to swallow and other times the audience choked on the sharpness of the “salty” rebuke.

Some preachers have made the assertion that Jesus preached more about hell than heaven. Conversely, detractors of modern Christianity have claimed that Jesus only preached love, acceptance, and peace during His ministry while those claiming to follow Jesus today spout messages of division, hatred, and bigotry. What do the gospel accounts actually say? Was the preaching of Jesus generally more positive or negative in tone? Was Jesus more like Joel Osteen spreading a gospel of joy and self-affirmation or was His message more like Jonathan Edwards preaching “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”? The only way to determine the answer is to go verse-by-verse through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John counting the statements which could be classified as either positive or negative in tone.  So that is what I decided to do. Armed with a pink marker for positive, happy, uplifting statements and a blue marker for negative, rebuking, condemning statements, I began reading in Matthew 1:1.

Criteria

The methods for this exercise need to be explained. How best to make this determination about tone? First, only direct statements by Jesus have been considered. Second, asking questions about the verse or passage is helpful. Was He focusing on God’s love or His wrath? Was Jesus endorsing the attitudes of His audience or rebuking them? Was the Lord encouraging His listeners to continue their current lifestyle with His approval or was He urging them to repent? Was He polite to His critics or calling them out harshly? Was His message designed to make hearers feel good about themselves or drive them to understand their sin and need for God’s mercy? Were Christ’s words received gladly by His audience or did they provoke the crowd to anger or sorrow? The reaction of the listeners often reveals the perceived tone of Jesus’ words and I have used their reaction to determine the tone of the statement. Some verses contain positive and negative messages (Mark 16:16 for example) and have been counted as both.  My judgment and classification is admittedly subjective, so I generously added a 10% margin for error and took the high side in favor of the positive tone. The gospel is, after all, the “good news.”

Results

In the gospel of Matthew, there were 251 verses found to have a discernible positive or negative tone (in the author’s estimation). Of those, 61 were seen as positive (24%) and 190 were viewed as negative (76%). Applying the 10% margin for error (on the positive side) yields results that show the preaching of Jesus in Matthew was 34% positive and 66% negative. In Mark’s gospel, 31 out of 132 verses (23%) were positive while 101 (77%) were negative. Thus, Mark’s gospel reveals Christ’s tone as 33% positive and 67% negative. The gospel of Luke shows a trending toward the positive with 92 verses out of 236 (39%) having a positive tone as opposed to 144 verses (61%) coming across negatively. The margin for error puts Luke’s gospel nearly in balance at 49% positive and 51% negative. Counting through John’s gospel finds 89 out of 158 verses (56%) as positive while only 69 verses (44%) display negativity. Applying the margin for error makes John the only one of the four gospels that is more positive in tone and markedly so at 66% positive to 34% negative. So what conclusions may be drawn from this exercise?

Analysis

It seems clear from the data that the preaching of Jesus was not primarily affirmative in tone as some allege. Matthew’s gospel shows Christ’s message to be one-third positive in tone and two-thirds negative. The same 2:1 ratio seen in Matthew is also found in Mark showing twice as many negative verses as positive ones. This is even more remarkable because Mark’s gospel is much shorter than Matthew. Mark’s gospel has a characteristic bluntness to it and the word “immediately” is an important theme. It hints that Jesus was not concerned with mincing words or tickling ears with such an important message. Luke showed a nearly equal use of positive and negative tone. This is significant because Luke contains many long teaching discourses spoken by Jesus. It may, therefore, be a more accurate estimation of the overall tone of Jesus in His public preaching. John is sometimes referred to as the “apostle of love” perhaps more due to his epistles rather than his gospel. It is worth remembering, however, that it was this same John (along with his brother James) who asked for Jesus’ permission to call down fire upon the Samaritans who had rejected the Lord’s teaching (Luke 9:54) thus earning them both the nickname “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17 NASB). John seems to have learned the importance of maintaining balance as well!

Pink and blue highlighting often appears together and the text rapidly shifts from one tone to the other. There are some interesting juxtapositions. Contrast the soaring love of John 3:16 with the stern rebuke of those using darkness as a cloak for their wickedness in 3:18-20. These factors may affect or even guide our own personal study.

Application

It is fascinating to consider that we, with the benefit of the full revelation of God’s plan, may interpret the words of Jesus quite differently than the original audience. When Jesus told Nicodemus one must be born again of water and spirit, the poor man was utterly confused. We have a much better idea of what the Lord meant. Peter was absolutely scandalized when Jesus foretold of His suffering and death in Matthew 16:22. We would tell him, “Settle down, Peter, it will be a good thing!” When we are tempted to think to ourselves, “How did they not see that?” perhaps we should cut them a little slack. We know many things they did not.

Knowing the tone of the gospels may be helpful not just in our own study, but in efforts to evangelize others. If someone is very depressed and needing hope, it may be wise to recommend they read the gospel of John and be lifted up by its positive tone. Maybe a person is at that rock-bottom point where sin has left them adrift and aimless; stuck in neutral.  Perhaps they would benefit from the blunt wakeup call of Mark’s gospel to slap them in the face and get them moving toward God.

A troubling reality is that this entire study is based upon a fundamental flaw: that a message must be either positive or negative. It is often both. Indeed, it must be both. The gospel must be bad news before it can be good news. Romans 6:23 exemplifies this two-part message: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NASB). Sinners must be confronted with their sin and the danger of judgment before they will be compelled to avoid that judgment by seeking a remedy for their sin.

The whole message of truth (Acts 20:27) must have a little bite to it. False pleasantries such as, “We are all going to heaven by different roads,” “Hell does not exist,” and the so-called “Sinner’s Prayer” contain only the sweet, sugary taste of theological candy. Truth has a bit of salt in it. That is one way to tell sound doctrine from wishful thinking.

It seems the popular notion that Jesus never condemned anyone and only preached positive, uplifting messages is proven false by examining the gospel record. It goes too far, however, to characterize Jesus as a “fire and brimstone” preacher. Certainly He preached about the danger and reality of hell, but only to encourage sinners to escape it. The underlying message was ultimately one of love, hope, and deliverance. Too many today perceive scriptural admonition as an act of intolerance and hatred. What they fail to appreciate is that Christians are compelled to share the whole counsel of God out of love for souls, not hatred. Allowing our neighbor to be condemned to an eternity of darkness just because we fear our efforts may be received in a negative way—THAT would be an act of hatred.