“For the preacher, clarity is a moral matter,” insists Haddon Robinson in his book Biblical Preaching. “If what we preach either draws people to God or keeps them away from Him, then for God’s sake and the people’s sake we must be clear.”
Does that sound like an overstatement? Clarity in preaching is nice, sure, but a moral matter? The profundities of the Bible often require in-depth and detailed explanations, after all. What God has made complicated, do not merely make clear.
There is truth to this. Simplicity should not surrender to oversimplification; clarity cannot come at the cost of faithfulness. When he asserted that, “There was a time when the Son was not,” Arius was disturbingly crystalline.
Yet, I believe Robinson is on to something. The more years I preach, and the more that I listen to preaching, the greater my appreciation for clarity grows, even as my commitment to depth endures. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
Thus, I have come to share the prayer request Saint Paul makes of the Colossians: “Pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak” (Colossians 4:3-4). Clarity is a moral matter. It is how we as preachers “ought to speak.” So, how can we help the message be less muddled?