Yesterday we looked at the Gospel call from God’s side. Today let’s look at it from our side and consider six possible responses to God’s Gospel invitation we find in Matthew 22:
1. Apathy: Some “were not willing to come” (v. 2). No big deal, no furore, no emotion. They just simply decided not to come. It put them neither up nor down. Just, “No thanks!”
2. Amusement: Some “made light of it” (v. 5). Bit of a laugh, really. Snigger, snigger. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
3. Activity: “They went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business” (v. 5). Sloth has killed its thousands; but busyness has killed its tens of millions.
4. Aggression: “The rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them” (v. 6). We can’t kill the message, but we can kill the messengers. And that can be done by razor-sharp tongues as well as by double-edged swords.
5. Act: One man came but rejected the wedding garment provided by the king (v. 11). He wanted to be there on his own terms, felt he was fine just as he was. But the king could see through the act, the pretended love. He unmasked him, and threw him out.
6. Acceptance: “The wedding hall was filled with guests” (v. 10). Both “good” and “bad” were there. These are relative terms for two kinds of sinners – the outwardly upright and the outwardly evil. As someone said, it reminds us “that the good still need the Gospel, and the bad can still have the Gospel.
R.S.V.P.