Dare to Be Lutheran: Nice Isn't Enough

By Rev. Todd Wilken

Joel Osteen is the pastor of the largest and fastest growing church in America. His Houston congregation has an average weekly attendance of thirty-five thousand. Thirty-five thousand!

Joel Osteen is a TV star. His show, Lakewood Church, is seen by millions every week. He has appeared on Larry King Live, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. Joel Osteen is a successful author. His first book sold over four million copies. For his next book, he has secured the largest advance for a nonfiction book to date—thirteen million dollars. And to top it all off, Joel Osteen is a nice guy— a really, really nice guy.

I’ve been watching, reading, and listening to Joel for three years now. As far as I can tell, the smiling, soft-spoken, sweethearted Joel isn’t just acting nice. He really is nice.

The God that Joel preaches is nice too—really, really nice. According to Joel, we underestimate just how nice God is. Joel says that God wants to give you your best life now. Joel says that the more we believe this, the nicer God is to us. But nice isn’t enough.

In his book Your Best Life Now, Joel writes: “God knows we’re not perfect, that we all have faults and weaknesses; that we all make mistakes. But the good news is, God loves us anyway” (pp. 57–58).

Isn’t that nice? God sees our imperfections, faults, weaknesses, and mistakes, but He doesn’t care. He’s willing to overlook them. He loves us anyway. Nice. But again, nice isn’t enough.

Joel’s God is in denial. Joel’s God sees our sin, but instead of dealing with it, He ignores it and acts like it doesn’t exist.That’s not enough. There’s no denying our sin, not for us and certainly not for God. Scripture says that God sees our imperfections, faults, weaknesses, and mistakes for what they really are: sin. Scripture says that God doesn’t overlook or ignore our sin.

Now, compared to Joel’s God, Scripture’s God doesn’t sound very nice. But that’s good. When it comes to our sin, nice isn’t enough. Sinners like us don’t need a God who ignores our sin. We need a God who has dealt with our sin once and for all.

Joel says, “The good news is, God loves us anyway.” But that’s not true. “God loves you anyway” is nice, but it isn’t the Good News. God doesn’t love sinners any way. The Good News is that God loves sinners in one very particular way: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9–10 ESV).

God loves sinners like us this way: He sent Jesus to take our place at the cross.

At the cross, God didn’t ignore or overlook your sin. At the cross, God laid your sin on Jesus, His Son, and made Him the atoning sacrifice for your sin. At the cross, God dealt with your sin once and for all.

Thank God He isn’t nice. If He were, He wouldn’t have put His own Son to death to pay for your sin. If God were nice, He would have just ignored your sin rather than sending Jesus to take your place at the cross. Joel Osteen and his God are nice. But nice isn’t enough. Jesus dying for you on the cross isn’t nice, but it is enough.

Rev. Todd Wilken is host of the nationally syndicated radio program Issues, Etc., heard on about one hundred stations nationwide, on XM radio, and on the Internet at www.issuesetc.org. He also hosts the weekday edition of Issues, Etc. heard on AM 850 KFUO in St. Louis and on the Internet at www.kfuo.org.