Before we come to understand the good news of Jesus Christ, we must come to understand the grave news of sin. Whether we know it or not, all of us are in the most real and the most grave of danger apart from the gospel. Not one of us knows which breath will be our last; which sunrise will be the final one we see; which phone call will signal the end of our days; and once that happens, it’s done.
Christians are meant to live with a sense of urgency. Urgency is not panic; it’s not anxiety; it’s not acting before we think; but it is a sense of insistence that requires steady, and often swift, action. Why is that?
The answer, of course, is simple – it’s because the message of the gospel is a message of urgency. Before we come to understand the good news of Jesus Christ, we must come to understand the grave news of sin. Whether we know it or not, all of us are in the most real and the most grave of danger apart from the gospel. Not one of us knows which breath will be our last; which sunrise will be the final one we see; which phone call will signal the end of our days; and once that happens, it’s done.
We are, therefore, in danger. The world is in danger. And the fact that the majority of the world does not recognize the danger isn’t evidence that danger does not exist; it is, in fact, the opposite. The inability to recognize the real and present danger at hand actually serves to show how great the danger is.
What’s more, not one of us knows when Jesus will return. It could be… now. Or now. Or now. And when He does come back, there will be no mistaking His identity any more. He will split the sky, and that moment will either be the moment of tremendous joy and validation or the greatest fear and regret with nothing in between.
The Christian, therefore, lives with a sense of urgency because we are the people who have been entrusted with the only message of safety and well-being – the only message that can bring peace between sinful man and a holy God. The Bible might not necessarily use the word “urgency” to describe the posture of the Christian, but it does use the word “ready.” And in many ways, these ideas are the same. How do we live with a sense of readiness for the end? We do so by living with urgency in our day to day lives:
