Over the decades of serving the Lord, and desiring souls to be saved, I have watched our society change. Things that the average person considered to be sin 30 years ago is no longer thought of as sin. One such thing would be living with an intimate partner without being married. We would say the couple was living together, or “shacking up.” God calls it fornication. Today, many couples see no need or benefit from being married. The result of this is that this average person does not even think what they are doing is sin. Not because God changed, but society, and the definition of sin according to society, have both changed.
The impact of this makes soul winning a bit more challenging because the average person today has no concept of sin, especially in the same manner that God thinks of sin. When Scripture says, “the wages of sin is death,” these folks do not see that they are sinners. The next phrase is then not a contrast for them. “The gift of God is eternal life.”
This means that, assuming we can get them to the point where they want what Christ has, and they accept Christ, we have another task ahead of us. Given the lack of teaching they have had regarding the definition of sin, our desire should be to convince them of the need to search the Scriptures, preferably daily. We should help to find that “readiness of mind.” Acts 17:11 “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
This leads to the point. Do we have readiness of mind in our own lives? Do we search the Scriptures daily? Do we want to know whether these things are so? Readiness of mind has to start somewhere. I was saved for about 3 years before I had a real clue about the how big a difference of opinion there was between God and I regarding the definition of sin. Let us, in our own lives, determine to live in readiness of mind and be open to what God has to teach us through His Word. We may find that what God thinks and what we thinks are two different things. Let’s then have the readiness of mind to receive His Word and live it out, just as they did in Berea.