Many in the relational-incarnational school suggest a one-to-one relationship between Christ's ability to incarnate the life-changing power and moral character of the gospel and our ability, as His children, to do so. Jesus' very presence is said to have been evangelistic. He did not just bring the word of truth; He was the word of truth. He did not just preach the gospel; He was the gospel and, of course, still is the gospel. Therefore, my presence (life, character and service) could also be termed "evangelistic" since I bear witness of Jesus as I live out a lifestyle that reflects His presence. By implication then, living the Christian life in character, fellowship and service is as valid a form of evangelism as is sharing the gospel. In line with such reasoning, one author wrote, "Perhaps we don't have a big enough definition of evangelism. When I say 'evangelism' I mean not only verbal proclamation but visual proclamation as well: the whole disclosure of God in the world."
Joe Aldrich, an articulate spokesman for this position, has written, "In the truest sense, evangelism is displaying the universals of God's character – His love, His righteousness, His justice and His faithfulness through the particulars of my everyday life. Therefore, evangelism is not a 'special' activity to be undertaken at a prescribed time. It is the constant and spontaneous overflow of our individual and corporate experience of Christ." He concludes that "even more specifically, evangelism is what Christ does through the activity of His children as they are involved in (1) proclamation, (2) fellowship, and (3) service."Thus, true evangelism is seen as not only the communication of the gospel, but also the "fellowship" and "service" of the saints. As we can see, the one-to-one comparison of a person's life to the life of Christ would lead logically to a one-to-one comparison of that life (fellowship and service) to the gospel of Jesus Christ (proclamation). Both are presumed to be efficient conveyors of good news and, therefore, evangelistic in nature. As Aldrich states, "Evangelism, then, is stereophonic. God speaks to His creatures through two channels: the written word and you, His 'living epistle,' His 'good seed.’ ”But what are we to make of such a comparison? I believe that this reasoning errs in two major areas. First, it is grounded in a misunderstanding of the technical, biblical definitions of witness and evangelism which leads to an artificial distinction between those terms. It is reasoned that " as long as a man simply tells another about Jesus, he is a witness. But the moment he tries to get that person to do something with Christ, he leaves the realm of witnessing and enters the province of soul winning, i.e., one who seeks to 'manipulate a prospect into doing anything with Christ.’ ”Thus, "witnessing and soul winning are two different specialities," and the teaching that "evangelism equals soul winning" can lead only to unhealthy evangelistic models to the hurt of the evangelistic enterprise.
I believe that such reasoning misses the point of the New Testament teaching on the nature and activity of the witness and of evangelism. It is technically incorrect to broaden, and therefore dilute, the New Testament meaning of witness by including a nonverbal, nonpersuasive ministry of "being light to the world" and/or a verbal testimony to Christ with no emphasis on the decisive nature of the gospel.
To be a witness, in Luke's terminology, means "to bear witness in the sense of proclaiming Christ" (Acts 4:33; 23:11). Luke 24:48 and Acts 1:8 indicate that the apostles were witnesses, having been "commissioned by the Lord with the proclamation of the message of the kingdom.”In Acts, the verb (to witness) is used in solemnly declaring and attesting the apostolic preaching in order to win a favorable verdict from the hearers (Acts 2:40; 8:25; 20:24).
Thus, Luke uses this word in the sense of giving "the full proclamation of the message of Christ," the "testimony to Jesus as the Christ (Acts 18:5), the proclamation of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), [and] the urgently wooing address of the gospel of Christ.”21
It is not surprising that in this context of bearing witness (Acts 28:23), Paul also saw fit to "convince" or "persuade" nonbelievers to come to Christ. "The term witness suggests something of the atmosphere of a trial, a lawsuit between Christ and the world, in which the apostles are witnesses."
Thus, the role of the biblical witness to Christ and the gospel is (1) to acquaint himself thoroughly with the facts of the case, i.e., the historical gospel information; (2) to deliver the facts faithfully, regardless of the circumstances or unpopularity of the facts, i.e., to be ready to suffer unjustly; and (3) to describe the meaning and significance of the facts to others with a passionate persuasiveness. The concept of a biblical witness is placed firmly in the context of persuasive proclamation of the gospel and is to be identified biblically with soul winning – asking someone to do something with Christ. The apostolic witness was intended to elicit a response. They preached, as Bunyun put it, what they "smartingly did feel." Our witness can do no less.
In looking at the second error of this false comparison, it is plain from our previous discussion on the definition of both "gospel" and "evangelism," that neither of these terms allows for the nonverbal/nonpersuasive "service" and "fellowship" of the saints to be included under the technical definition of evangelism. While the methodology of first-century evangelism was indeed flexible, the definition of what constituted true evangelism was narrow and precise. Evangelism is soul winning. It is the proclamation of the gospel with a view to persuading lost men and women to come to Christ. Anything less is not evangelism.
Mark McCloskey
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