The evangelist believes that are are times Christians are called to divide and gave the example of the time when Jesus said, “I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword” (Matthew 10:34-36). Those who attempt to belittle or alter the gospel in any way should be called out, Chan continued. “There are times when the Bible is so clearly stating something as sin and it’s, we can’t tolerate that. The Bible labels something as sin, we have to get serious about those things. But outside of that, there also needs to be this deep fear of God.”
“If the Holy Spirit literally dwells in you then I need to be careful how I approach you and not just quickly label you as something. There has to be some sort of fear there,” Chan warned.
The Christian conservative radio host told Chan he agrees that we are to love our enemies and that especially goes for people who call themselves Christians that we might have disagreements with. “I have to talk to them in a way that takes that very seriously,” Metaxas said.
“But at what point? If I’m talking about truth, if I talk about the unborn, if I talk about slavery, if I talk about Nazis or fascists…I have an obligation to truth to speak on that,” the “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” author said. “But there’s some people that it’s almost like they just have a dislike of that tension and so they say, ‘Let’s just talk about the gospel as though you could talk about the gospel, but avoid some of those issues.’ So that’s where I can’t take them seriously. I feel like they’re missing something big.”
There are things we can’t ignore, Chan said, for example human life. “That is the gospel.”
“I hear what they’re saying though, because again, like I said earlier, there’s things that we can get caught up in, and we’re talking about eternity,” the “Crazy Love” author replied. “I mean, we’re talking about a person possibly spending eternity in torment apart from God, or spending eternity forever, not these few years that you and I have left on the earth. We’re talking about forever and ever in the presence of God and perfection, you know, for thousands, tens of thousands and millions of years. And that’s huge! There’s nothing bigger than that.”
