Mercy and Truth
Riffs on evangelismAll good Christian evangelism, it would seem to me, is built upon the premise that the truth-claims of Christianity--about God, about sin, about the necessity of Christ's death and resurrection--are not only true, but also obvious. The Bible never stoops to mount an apologetic for God's existence; it is assumed. Paul's letter to the Romans begins with an incredibly brief summary of pagan religious history, in which he more or less assumes that while man was worshiping stars, idols and brute beasts, he was fully aware of what he was doing. Man did not claw his way upward, weaning himself on weak nature religions on the path toward monotheism; he staggered downward at an alarming rate, cast out of Eden but willing in his pride to worship lower beings rather than the God who made him. As a result, God judged the wickedness of man, and his foolish heart was darkened.
This is an important thing to understand about the Bible--and about man, because it changes the nature of how we approach man in our task of evangelism. If man's problem is not only ignorance of the fact that he is loved by God, but also a willful suppression of the truth in unrighteousness (as Scripture so boldly and clearly states); then the solution to man's problem is not to tell him he is loved (he is already prone to believe that), but rather to clear away all the lies he is telling himself about God in order to avoid serving Him. I think this collides head-on with our traditional evangelical approach to evangelism, which has been to tell man that God loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life. Of course, it is true enough that God loves him, but if the fundamental problem we are dealing with is rebellion, mightn't we do better to follow the example of Peter, whose first sermon included these bold statements: "God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" -- "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" -- "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation"?
If we began to preach the Gospel as it really is (salvation from God's wrath as well as God's ultimate act of kindness and love for man) to men as they really are (rebellious as well as beaten down by their ignorance of God's mercy), is it possible that we would see evangelistic results closer to that of the early church? After all, Peter's politically incorrect first sermon in Acts 2, left his listeners "cut to the quick," asking, "What must we do to be saved?"
In my opinion, the problem with most modern-day evangelism is that it does not produce in men the desperation needed to ask this question. Telling man that God loves him is true enough, but the whole truth as Scripture gives it is a bit less palatable: God is going to judge man for his wickedness, and Jesus' blood is the last line of defense between man and God's righteous judgment. Any gospel that does not instill in man this fear and trembling before God, humbling him into a profound appreciation of God's grace, is no gospel at all.
I believe that evangelicals and fundamentalists alike have missed the boat on this issue. Evangelicals are too busy assuaging man with the assurance that God loves him to remind him that God will also judge him if he will not repent; fundamentalists have spent their efforts on frightening man with the prospect of hell, forgetting that unrepentant man does not realize that he deserves hell. It is easy enough to inculcate in man a fear of hell (the fundamentalists and even the Muslims have proven that); it is not nearly as easy to lead him into the fear of God.
If this is true--and it is--then our evangelistic situation is dire, because "The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him" (Ps. 25:14). We who come in the Lord's name might do better to present the Cross as an act of justice as well as mercy, an idea of God's hatred for sin as well as of His love for man, and a standard against which sinful man will be eternally judged if he will not repent and be forgiven.
posted by John Adams @ 4:14 PM
5 Comments:
That's probably the most elaborate bit of comment spam I've ever seen. Holy crap. Ditch the Word Verification and turn on the Comment Moderation feature. It's a Godsend!
Not to oversimplify your excellent post, but a dash of common sense might explain that unless a man gets good and lost, he won't appreciate being found.
It seems you've come full circle on the carousel of beating sheep versus tending them.
Now what?
I'm not sure what you mean by coming full circle or why we would beat sheep when it's the outsiders who need to be evangelized, so I'll answer your last question: Now we preach the whole Bible.
There are more than enough Christians preaching only love, and more than enough preaching only judgment. It saddens me that most of the evangelical church is trying to clean up the mess left in society by fundamentalists who grasp clearly the justice of God, but do not speak the truth in love.
On the other hand, many evangelicals have overreacted and now preach a message that says "God loves you" to a culture that did not believe any differently. I think the solution rests in the cross, where we see the fury and the measure of God's wrath poured out against a dying Christ, but also the depth of God's mercy in this fact: He would bruise His own Son (and His Son would willingly be bruised) to save sinners.
There's a great book I recently read called "Outrageous Mercy," by William Farley. I highly recommend it.
It basically talks about the necessity of bringing the focus of evangelism back to the cross - the meeting place of God's wrath and hatred for sin with his infinite love. Farley suggests that all effective evangelism (where the great revivals have taken place worldwide) have come as a result of people focusing on the entire message of the cross, not just the love aspect. For without realizing the fullness of God's hatred for sin, the appreciation for love can also not be fully realized.
It's as if we are ambassadors of a king who will return to his kingdom in wrath or something.
Truly, people in our society (especially in Portland, OR.) have really no reference or framework with which to understand that "God is love." Too many think that that statement claims that God is merely an abstract thought or a nice ideal. Christians need to do two things: (1) Exemplify that love as a relevant illustration to the rest of society, and (2) explain the Gospel just as you described to give people a context with which to understand the statement.
---Matt Barron
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