Take the question seriously, because it is an honest one. A man can have a marriage that works, a job he enjoys, children he is proud of, and no ache in him that religion would fill. He is not pretending. He is not miserable behind the front door. He is happy, and he is telling the truth about it.

So if Christianity is being offered to him as something that will make him happier, he is right to decline. He already has what is being advertised.

That advertisement is the problem, and churches have made it worse. A great deal of modern preaching does offer Christianity as an improvement — something to lift your spirits, brighten your week, take the edge off. Sold on those terms, Christ is an accessory, and an accessory is by definition something you can do without. The New Testament never offers Him that way.

What Scripture actually puts to you is not an offer to improve your life. It is a claim about where you stand with God. And how you feel is not evidence either way.

Think of a man of fifty-eight who has never once been to a doctor. He feels well and he says so, and he is not lying. But feeling well and being well are not the same thing. He has no clean result to show you. He has no result at all. You are doing what that man does. Your happiness tells you how your life feels to you. It tells you nothing about where you stand with God.

Most of us measure ourselves against the people around us. There is always someone worse to stand beside, which is why almost everyone concludes he is doing reasonably well. But that comparison only tells you where you sit among other people who fall short. Jesus named the measure that counts:

Matthew 5:48 (NKJV)

Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Not better than average. Not better than last year. Perfect, and perfect by God's own character — He is not marking against a curve, He is the standard itself. That is why self-improvement cannot solve the problem. Becoming a kinder man changes the distance. It does not change the standard. This is what Paul means when he sweeps everyone into the same verdict:

Romans 3:23 (NKJV)

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

To fall short is not a comment on how badly a man has lived. It is a statement about distance from God's own glory, and at that distance the most decent life in the room and the worst one are on the same side of the line. Neither reaches. That is the situation your happiness has no power to change, because happiness was never what was being measured.

This is where Christianity stops sounding like a product and starts sounding like news. What follows is not advice about how to live. It is a report of what God has already done for people in exactly that position.

Romans 5:8–9 (NKJV)

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

Paul does not say Christ died for people who had cleaned themselves up first. He says it happened “while we were still sinners” — the timing is the whole point. And he names what we are rescued from: wrath, God's settled opposition to sin. That is what makes this rescue rather than encouragement. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul sets out the exchange in a single sentence:

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV)

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Our sin was counted to Christ, who had none of His own. His righteousness is counted to us, who have none of our own. A Christian does not stand before God on a life that finally measured up. He stands on a righteousness that was never his, credited to him by God.

Most people never weigh any of this. They do not reject it after examining it; they never believe there is anything to answer for in the first place. R. C. Sproul put it plainly in Now, That's a Good Question!:

“I think that many people in today's culture don't really believe that God is going to hold them accountable for their lives — that God really does not require righteousness. When we take that view, we don't feel the weight of the threat of judgment. If you're not afraid to deal with God's punishment, then be happy as a clam if you want. I would be living in terrible fear and trembling at the prospect of falling into the hands of a holy God (Hebrews 10:31).”

Mercy is there, and it is not reserved for people who have earned a hearing. It is given to people who ask for it, and a man asks once he sees where he stands. No one works that sight up in himself; God gives it. But He gives it through plain words like these.

Hebrews 10:31 (NKJV)

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.