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“Getting people lost is much harder than getting them saved. People don’t think they need to be saved. It doesn’t mean anything to them. So why talk so much about it? Four reasons:

Because we are by nature corrupt. We don’t just sin, we are sinful. Our nature is bent, corrupted, depraved. We are selfish to the core. We are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-3).

We have all acted on this nature relentlessly all our lives and piled up a huge debt of guilt. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In fact, since Paul says, ‘Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,’ and Hebrews says, ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’ (Hebrews 11:6), all that we do apart from faith in Christ is sin—no matter how virtuous it is.

Because of this sinful nature and these mounting sins, we are under the just sentence of condemnation. The judge of the universe pronounces a sentence of guilt over us. And this is impeccable justice.

The punishment following this sentence of condemnation is everlasting torment in hell. Matthew 25:41: ‘Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’’

The Remedy—Grace for the Guilty

[We are] unapologetic about being rigorously doctrinal in his evangelistic preaching, because the remedy for each of these four conditions from which we need to be saved involves profound biblical doctrine.

1) The remedy for our corruption and our sinful nature is regeneration. That is, we must be born again. And this is a gift and miracle of sovereign grace. You can’t make yourself to be born again any more than you made yourself be born. Jesus said in John 3:7-8, ‘Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ This is the work of God. If you have not been born again, ask God to do this miracle and give you spiritual life.

2) The remedy for the guilt of sin and the mounting up of sins day after day is the redemption in Christ Jesus, the forgiveness of our sins, because he bore them for us. Colossians 2:13-14: He has “forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). 

3) The remedy for the sentence of condemnation that hangs over us because of our depravity and our sins is justification. This is the declaration in the courtroom of heaven that those who are in Christ Jesus are not only forgiven, but also counted perfectly righteous as though they had fulfilled every demand of the law. How can this be? How can I, a sinner, be counted righteous before God? Romans 5:19: “As by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.” 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The remedy for our condemnation is that because of Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

4) And the remedy for the curse and the penalty of hell and the wrath of God that hangs over us because of our depravity and sins and condemnation is propitiation. When you propitiate someone, you remove his anger. That is what Christ did when he died (Romans 3:25). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). First Thessalonians 5:9-10: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” This is not because there was no wrath, but because Christ suffered in our place not only to cover our sins but to remove the wrath of God.

[The Bible says], “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), because everyone is sinful, guilty, condemned, and hell-bound, and because Christ is a great Savior. Everything hangs on whether you are united to Christ. In Christ we are forgiven, justified, and free from wrath. And union with Christ comes by one means: being born again through faith in him.

Safe

And when you are united to Christ by faith, you are safe. Forever. Not because the rest of your life doesn’t matter—as though you can live your life as though other things in your life are more precious than Christ. This is the great misunderstanding of eternal security in so many churches, which cause so much false Christianity…

The safety of a Christian does not lie in the fact that I once prayed to ask Jesus into my heart and now I can know I am saved even if he has no central place in my life. The safety of a Christian lies in the biblical fact that those who embrace Christ as their Savior and Lord and Treasure, God preserves. That is, God comes after us again and again to make himself central in our lives. Jeremiah 32:40 is one of the greatest statements of the new covenant that Christ bought with his blood: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”

Our safety rests on God’s promise that because of Christ he will not let us minimize him without convicting us and causing us again to pursue him. In other words, the mark of a Christian is not perfection—we often stumble and yield to temptation to put other things ahead of Christ in our affections. But the mark of a Christian is that we grieve over this. We hate this about ourselves. And again and again we renounce our love for other things more than Christ and pursue him as our highest Treasure. That is what God promises to do for all who are justified by faith alone. “Those whom he justified he glorified” (Romans 8:30). It is as good as done. It is sure. The justified are safe.

Do we coast because we are safe? Do we love what the world loves because Christ died for us that we might love him above all things? No. That is not the heart of a Christian. Rather, we do what Paul says in Philippians 3:12: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Because we are safe—Jesus made us his own—we press on to make it our own…

...How often I have quoted C. S. Lewis that people who prefer the world—even the innocent world—to Christ are like children making mud pies in the slums because they cannot imagine what a holiday at the sea is like. My father put it like this: “I have often seen a cow stick her head through a barbed wire fence to chew the stubby grass bordering a highway, when behind her lay a whole pasture of grass” (A Good Time and How to Have It, p. 48).

(John Piper, Funeral Message for William S.H. Piper, March 9, 2007)