Read Rom. 12:1-8, Our Objective: Evangelism

Before we move on, we need to make a cautionary statement: Christ is never honored by our works done in the flesh.  The nature of our study on “The Mission of the Church” requires a lot of talk about “doing.”  Those kinds of discussions are often the cause of a lot of fleshly work.  The Bible is clear: the work that pleases God is that work done in the power of His Spirit and by His grace!  We actually never come to the place where we design plans and programs by our own creativity.  Through prayer and the leading of the Spirit our Lord, the Head of the Church, is always the one who is directing us. 

Having said that, one of the things evident in Scripture is that God’s “normal” plan is to use people in the carrying out of His plan.  This is true in making disciples.  Here are a few examples of this from Jesus’ ministry.

·       John 5:7: The lame man by the pool of Bethesda needed someone to help him into the pool.  In the end, what he got was the Man Jesus healing him.

·       Luke 5:18: The paralytic needed four friends to bring him to Christ for forgiveness and healing.

·       John 1:35-51: John the Baptist prepared his disciples.  Then he directed two of his disciples to Jesus, who welcomed them and told them of Himself.  One of those disciples was Andrew who went and told his brother Peter about the Messiah.  Phillip had come to Christ and he told his friend Nathaniel.

·       John 19:35: John wrote the “Gospel of John” to testify of Christ so that others could believe.

How are we to do this work of “evangelism”?  In our study of the NT I believe we see that the proper work of evangelism involves:

THE COMPLETE GOSPEL COMPLETELY PROCLAIMED!

In the NT, the verb evangelize (Grk: euangelizo) means to preach the good news of gospel (“gospel” is euangelion).  If we are to preach the “complete” gospel it means there can be nothing added to nor omitted from that message of good news.

The first thing we must say about the gospel is that it is “good news” because of the reality of “bad news.”  The bad news is that all have sinned (Rom. 3:21) and are destined for death, separated forever from God and eternal life (Rom. 6:23).  Man’s situation is hopeless because he cannot undo the fact that he is a sinner.  Thus he stands in need of grace (unmerited favor) from God (Rom. 5:20-21).  Given man’s desperate situation this grace from God will have to be received by faith (the absence of works or merit) because man cannot measure up. 

The preceding paragraph is quite full, I realize.  But note: it is not the gospel.  It is the context in which the gospel is given and the only proper response to the gospel.  We will share the gospel in our next post.  It’s not hard.  The Bible is clear.