the gospel has merely been assumed, not taught.
Mainstream society has not put enough emphasis on the Gospel, and too much emphasis on current and "pressing" events. We have this "ho-hum" attitude towards it saying "yah yah I have taught the gospel story one thousand times can I preach on a more relevant topic now like racism or war?" Too often, Scripture is treated more along the lines of a divine version of Aesop’s Fables rather than the revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Preachers assume we have heard the gospel, when in fact it is often not being preached with the power and authority and conviction that God intended it to have.
A direct consequence of this teaching has caused many Christians to fall away from the church. The assumed gospel is too shallow, and when life gets messy you will turn against the cross in order to please a group of people because your relationship with Jesus was not built on a rock of faith but on your own moralistic, egocentric, therapeutic idea of who God is.
Cue Pontius Pilate.
Pilate knew that Jesus was an innocent man, but he also knew that he was in a sticky situation, so he thought he would be sly and offer the people a choice that they could not possibly mess up. He would as a Passover tradition offer to free either Barabbas the murderer or Jesus the man who had only done good. The people looked at Jesus and said
Crucify him.
They said the murderer was more worthy of freedom than Jesus. So Pilate went against God to please a group of people and had Jesus flogged and crucified. As I shudder in horror at the audacity of Pilate, I think about all the times in my life where the crowd has been too loud and I listened to them instead of my Savior. Where I have looked at the cross and just became numb to its power, seeing it as a burden to my popularity rather than what saved me from the pit of hell.
I don't want to be a Pilate. I want my faith to be built firmly so when the winds start to blow and the waves start to crash I will stand firm in God's presence. I want the voice of my God to be louder than the voice of the crowd around me. He is not some fairy god mother or a genie in a bottle He is the God of Abraham and Issac, a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. We have been set free by His sacrificial blood, the crown of thorns on His head. Through the nails, we are redeemed. We were chosen specifically for His glory.
So will you stand for Jesus, or just simply know that He is innocent?