Bestselling evangelical author Max Lucado wants Christians to revisit the “core question” of the faith, which concerns “God’s great invitation” to salvation.
He says to accomplish that means revisiting one of the Bible’s most familiar verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
According to the Bible account in which that verse is contained, Jesus said those words to Nicodemus, a Jewish spiritual leader who visits the Nazarene teacher by night and is told he must be “born again” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Mr. Lucado says the passage is “a 26-word parade of hope” that’s vital for today’s challenging times, which is why he has republished his book “3:16: The Numbers of Hope” with Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.
The book was first released in 2007, but Mr. Lucado, the teaching minister at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, said 2022’s spiritual climate suggests it’s time to send the book forth again.
“I just felt like it was a good opportunity for us to invite people to go back to the main message that God loves so much that God gave so that we can live, we won’t perish, but will have eternal life. I don’t think it gets much more essential than that,” he said in an interview.
He admits this basic Christian message “is a candidate for getting lost” in a religious world of megachurch services replete with worship bands and smoke machines, even if sports fans hoist signs bearing the inscription and players inscribe it in the eyeblack they wear on the field.
The “theatrical presentation of the story, and then also the politicizing of the church, [of] people wanting to see the church as simply another marketing group, a subculture to which you know, people can market their either their product or their view or their opinion” are among the reasons the subject of individual salvation gets lost,” he said.
“The word ‘Gospel’ means good news,” Mr. Lucado said. “But the good news contains some convicting news, that apart from God’s help, we are lost. And that’s a message that doesn’t fly well today.”
Cultural avoidance of the salvation question comes amid “the mental health crisis in our country,” he says. Pointing to what he called “an all-time high” in reports of anxiety as well as in suicide attempts, which he blamed in part on the multi-year COVID-19 pandemic, he says a focus on getting more has put people’s understanding of why they are here “simply off track.”
“The reason we’re on this earth is so that we can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God’s grand invitation” to eternal life in a world made new,” he said.
“The heart of the problem of the human is the heart of the human,” Mr. Lucado said. “We are born with this proclivity to selfishness, and we really need to be [what] the Scripture calls ‘born again,’ we need a new person to be placed within us.”
Getting that message across this time included Mr. Lucado taking a new step: Last summer he spent three days in a studio recording “3:16” as an audiobook, a task he normally leaves to professional narrators. He says he’s “always had voice issues,” but felt this message would have greater impact if he recorded it.
“I felt like I could add something to it that would help people, long after I’m gone hear the importance of the 3:16 message,” said Mr. Lucado, who has sold more than 145 million copies of his books and other publications.
But six-hour daily recording sessions accompanied by copious quantities of Throat Coat herbal tea reinforced his belief that the “pros” who narrate audiobooks are uniquely gifted.
“I admire those people whose full-time career is recording an audiobook,” said Mr. Lucado, 67.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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