I met a businessman for whom everything is going very well—or, better stated, almost everything. He has a good job, lots of money, a family, he’s able to travel, etc. He has a very comfortable life. We had just met and while we were eating a meal he began to tell me about his accomplishments and success. In a moment of silence in the conversation, he asked me what I did. I told him I was a pastor. He looked at me for a moment and then he said, “Pastor, I want to share something with you.”
From that moment on he began to talk about a particular sin in his life, and the time that he then talked about his sin was even greater than the amount of time he talked about his success in life. He wanted to leave this sin behind because some psychologists had told him that it was a sickness and that it was not going to get better. “Pastor,” he said, “if this is a sickness, how can I be healed from it?” It was clear that he was afraid that this was something that he could never be freed from and that was going to have irreversible effects.
I responded, “What you have is not a sickness that can’t be cured.” As you might imagine, I began to talk to him about the problem of his sinful heart. I showed him from the Scriptures that this is more than just a psychological sickness, it is sin and will only get worse and worse. His fear should not merely be the temporary effects the sin may have, but rather the eternal condemnation that will result at the hands of a holy God. I read to him from Exodus 20, Romans 1:18-27, and Galatians 5.
At this point, he had set down his fork and was no longer eating. He realized the importance of what he was hearing. I explained the gospel to him, the need to repent and believe in Christ and to live in obedience to the gospel. Although he did not make a profession of faith in the moment, he assured me that he had never heard anything like that before about the moral law of God, the holiness of God, and the gospel. May God work in his life.
