If the Good News Is So Good, Why Aren’t People Flocking to It?
The Rejection of Good News If God is really so good, surely mission must be the easiest work in the world. Simply hold out Jesus in his gospel, and people should come flocking. Of course, that’s not how it is. Quite the opposite. Bizarrely, the wonderful good news of free grace is a tough sell. People dislike not just the idea of God in general but the message of the gospel specifically. Late in his life, George Orwell recalled that as a schoolboy, he hated Jesus and even felt sympathy toward Judas and Pontius Pilate, who had betrayed and executed him.1 Orwell’s attitude may well have been the perversity of a schoolboy, but it expresses something of our natural hostility toward God and the gospel. Human beings are fallen, and this is why we do not intuitively worship, trust, and love God. The radiance of God’s glory shines not into neutrality but into darkness. Indeed, Paul writes that our hearts are “darkened” (Rom. 1:21) because we reject the Lord. The truth is that human beings, o