Before I go on however, I should probably address the issue of the law and evangelism. After all, here I just stuck a shot at "legalistic" evangelism which stares quite clearly down upon the law. So now I must make myself clear, the law does have a place and relation to you when speaking about evangelism. But it also has an end. These posts are about Christ as the end of the law, and the promises of Christ freeing us to evangelize outside the grasps of those ideas the law conjures up such as success/failure, more/less, enough/insufficient and the programs and methods that have by and large only understood evangelism according to these and other similar pairings.
The reason is simple, if we hear evangelism according to this, the failures (or fear of failures) will cripple us (which I would argue is the predominant situation of the Christian nation) which is what the law does, it reveals shortcomings. The other reason is the places where there is success, will begin to trust in the methods more than the gospel they are seeking to spread. A righteousness other than Christ's will be claimed, the fame of the church/pastor/program will matter more than the cross. But just as in everything else, the gospel of Jesus Christ really does free us from this.
So what is the relation of the law? There is a law here and it says "do this". The role of the law is condemning the indifferent. Any who take the work of Christ and the Spirit to mean one does not need to concern oneself with evangelization will be confronted as one who thinks he need not love because Christ forgives. The Gospel does not silence the law by rendering it void, it only silences the law by speaking a promise over it. As Luther put it "the law says 'do this' and it is never done, the gospel says 'do this' and it is already done". The word "do this" is alive. And the law will reveal when it is not being done while the gospel will reveal what is already done. Put in the context of evangelization, the law also speaks in the "make disciples", it speaks when it points out how you are not doing it, it speaks when this commission is seen as imperative to God and therefore our avoidance and failure to carry it out does not suffice. But the solution is too often to be "God says [do this:] 'make disciples' and so we go and make disciples" instead of "God says [do this:] 'make disciples' thus I need Christ to be enough for me." Can the indifferent couch potato say the same?
That is the heart of the matter, and the answer really is no. That is, just as much as being motivated to solve the issue of making disciples ourselves is destined to fail so also is the promise of Christ's work destined to truly bring out evangelism. This is in part because the gospel works in relation to the law. Though distinct, they are not separate. The Latin text of the Augsburg Confession shows this well: "This whole teaching [on justification by faith] must be referred to that struggle of the terrified conscience, and it cannot be understood apart from that struggle. That is why those who are wicked and without experience judge it badly." You can begin to see that the power of the gospel truly works when one comes to need it. To one who is indifferent to evangelism, the gospel is an abused licence to not give a damn, but to the terrified, those who truly hear the "do this" of the commission but feel the weight of failure, that is, to those who are under the law, this word then comes with all the power to set them free.
The freedom God grants by liberating one with the promise and work of Christ, it is a freedom that those who felt unable to breath in evangelism now take up in its fullest. To those who are awakened to the call, and by the law see the true value of the gospel will then when awakened to the fulfillment it brings to evangelism will gladly be able to evangelize with all the fullness that Christ brings. So what is the purpose of the law here? The same as it has been, to awaken one's passion to the task and prepare one's heart for the cross of Christ. And this is it's task continually. The minute one would "back away" from the gospel the law shall be there to speak.
Returning to the task at hand, this post is then meant for those who are awakened unto God's call to evangelize, but who still hear only the law's whip upon their backs and as the people in Egypt languish for freedom.
The Spirit and the Church
Last post we discussed the Spirit and the Word, that is, the work of the Spirit in using the word to create faith. The Gospel says it is done, and by the Spirit faith is made, not us. Those who share the gospel are not debaters of the age trying to persuade, we are vessels of the Spirit and the Spirit taking the task of creating faith gives us the freedom to proclaim without the task of creating faith being ours. Proclaim freely, not with worries of inadequacy or needs of years of training or amazing speaking skills and logic. Just speak, for how shall they believe if no one speaks (Romans 10.14)?
But the graceful freedom that is ours in the Spirit is even more than just trusting the Spirit to use the words, it is trusting that the church itself rests within the Spirit. Let us go back to the Bo Giertz quote shared last time, there was a phrase towards the end where Giertz wrote: "Christianity is not simply knowing about Jesus and following him. It is something that can be found only where God is at work in the presence and person of the Holy Spirit." Christianity - the Church universal will only be found where the Spirit is at work!
Those who need the assurance to loose them unto the world can find it in the words many Christians share each week: the Apostles Creed. It is under the article of the Holy Spirit that we confess we believe in "the Holy catholic Church", and in the Nicene Creed we say "we believe in the Holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism..." These phrases remind us that the church is built in the Spirit. This is founded in the same comfort of the Spirit using our words: the Spirit creates and sustains faith using the grace of Jesus Christ. As Paul puts it "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Cor 12.13).
I recently heard a sermon where the pastor asked a specific congregation, "If the future of the church resided completely on your congregation would there be a church in the next generation?" It is an interesting question. And if you ask many churches they might not give an optimistic reply. The sermon text was the great commission (which we examined in part one of this series). What he noted was interesting: that was the situation of the first church. When Jesus spoke those words it was to the only congregation and only generation of disciples of the resurrected Lord. And yet most people feel in utter awe of what the Bible says about the spreading and growth of that early church. And it is no coincidence that such growth was marked by the outpouring of the Spirit. In fact Jesus told them to wait until they received the promised Spirit (Acts 1.4). He said it was with receiving the Spirit that they would be his witnesses (Acts 1.8).
Why is this so important? Because it also reminds us that the breadth of evangelism is entirely under the work of the Spirit. Paul emphasizes many gifts of the Spirit, "So with yourselves; since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church" (1 Cor 14.12). Many may emphasize the "gift" they lack, but here we see all the gifts the Spirit gives are for building up the church. As the Spirit gives them, so then can the Spirit use them. It means one can never simply say they have not the gifts for evangelism, as if their gifts cannot build up others into the church. Trust the Spirit to be able to use you for evangelism. For not only can the Spirit take what we think we are pitiable at (like say sharing the gospel) and use it effectively, but what God has made us strong in - the Spirit uses that as well.
Evangelism not built on Jesus and the Spirit is not faithful evangelism. It is building on a foundation other than God. It is important that we see the building up the church through faith, with the same helplessness or humility that we are called towards our own "individual" spiritual standing before God. Always remember, the Father sent the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That means God loosed the Spirit unto the task of saving people and continuing the ministry of Christ Jesus. Does that mean we do nothing? Only as much as Christ's cross means we do nothing. That is, it is done by Christ alone, but that does not happen to leave us to do nothing it actually frees us to do all things through him. Putting this on the work of the Spirit is not to say do nothing, it is to say go out and trust the Spirit to do everything.
Understanding evangelism according to the working of God reminds us that God's care and work upon our own faith builds up the church. In Matthew 16, Peter makes the great confession of faith about who Jesus is, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" he says. And what does Jesus say to such a person of faith? "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church" (v.16, 18). Jesus is speaking to but one man there, Peter. But he will build his church on that one man and that one faith. Thus evangelism is also more than going from "atheist" to "Christian", it is more than getting in the doors of the church, it is building up faith. Tending to our own faith, through scripture and prayer, confessing our sins, receiving the means of grace regularly - all this is evangelism. It is the work of God to evangelize you! And beyond you, it means the ongoing spiritual care of the brothers and sisters is evangelism. Too many modern evangelism methods see evangelism as ending when you start attending regularly or become an official "member". Evangelism needs to be seen in relation to the working of the Spirit and the Church. All the activity of the Spirit in building and sustaining the church, all the ongoing work of the Spirit on us is evangelism. We still need to be preached to and prayed for, that says it all. We might do well to say we still need to be "converted". Even Peter, who was a disciple for some time before this confession is given these words in this moment. Then of course he is called Satan a few verses later (Matthew 16.23) and even later Jesus says to him "when you have converted, strengthen yours brothers." (Luke 22.32).
Ambassadors for Christ
In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he calls them to the ministry of reconciliation. Listen to what he says of our calling towards evangelism and ministry:
"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." -2 Corinthians 5.18-21
Did you hear it? He calls us "ambassadors for Christ"!
Why does being an ambassador matter? It allows us to speak with the full authority of Jesus. Ambassadors are sent to represent a leader, a country, etc. It bespeaks a purpose, but it also speaks of that purpose in an official capacity. I think sometimes the idea of evangelism falls back to pastors and church workers because of our official capacity. We work for the church, we represent the church, and our mere presence and person can carry the entire weight of the church with it. It seems natural then to look to pastors and church professionals in this way, to expect them to be a little more "churchy" and so forth. Perhaps what holds others back is the idea of not having the same authority or place. If you don't see yourself as a representative of Christ in this world, you might not carry it then.
As a pastor, when I wear my clerical (pastor shirt), I can tell the difference. Oh others can too, but so can I. I realize that I am wearing the mark of my office. Now other Christians may not have such an easily visible marker to wear. This is especially why baptism is important for every Christian. Baptism is the visible act of the invisible sanction. God there is claiming you, naming you with his very name! The ancients believed in the power of the name, especially among the gods. To be given God's name is to be ordained to the office of its use. God has bestowed upon you in that moment the title of ambassador. Baptism is a rite, a visible and historical way in which we know this to be true. It may not always feel as ever-present as wearing a clerical shirt, but it is, it is moreso. Come to know what it is to confess "one baptism for the forgiveness of sins". Come to know what it is to have that external mark stamped upon you internally for all your life. You don't take your baptism off like a shirt can be.
Knowing we are ambassador's gives us the authority to act, the sanction we need. Let's back up some with a quick review and note why our sanction as ambassadors relates to these:
- Jesus when he commissions his disciples reminds them of how all authority is his so that we see truly no power with a greater voice than his, and face evangelism with no fear of failure for the authority to judge are in the merciful hands of our Savior. But once we see all authority in Christ's hands hear then the blessing of him to let you act with this authority. Evangelism then is none other than speaking and acting with the highest authority, which we may have a hard time believing. Just as many could not see Christ for who he is, we who see him for who he is do not necessarily always see ourselves for who he is. That is an odd statement. You might expect it to say "for who we are", but an ambassador's authority is really rooted in who she represents. You carry the highest authority, even when it seems cloaked and weak in you. This is especially true when we only hear it as us talking, not Christ making his appeal through us.
- Jesus also promised his presence. People will especially know this presence through the ambassadors. We often think of ambassadors as speaking for one who is absent, not one who is there. But it means loads for an ambassador in a hostile world. The promise of his continued presence is the promise of not being forsaken or abandoned. Put into the terms of one entrusted with his message, it means God is not leaving you to this alone and he is not taking this sanction away from you. As a baptized Christian his promise for you cannot be removed. You can abandon it, but he won't remove it. There is a clear difference. This gives us the confidence that Christ is always looking to "make his appeal through us" as Paul puts it.
- The Word of God is the vessel of the Spirit of God. God did not leave you to handle this alone. What this speaks is the value of the spoken word for an ambassador. Not only do you speak for Christ, but in so doing you let the Spirit work. While we can doubt, while others can doubt that you speak for Christ and with his authority, the testimony of the Spirit to work through your appeal is the voice to the contrary. The Spirit blows where it wills, this much is true, but to will to blow through the voice of everyday people like you and I says it is not simply to the professional or extraordinary Christian to be able to speak for Christ, you are able to speak for Christ. Able by the Spirit.
- The Spirit builds the Church. Here again we are reminded in the way God frees us by taking it upon himself so that we can freely evangelize. As we looked at how the Spirit is the source among a whole slew of gifts and the power to use those gifts to build up the church, we are reminded how our whole lives can be utilized by the Spirit to this end. To one who understands that, nothing about you says "Not an ambassador", not when you have been baptized and shared this very Holy Spirit, the Spirit that gifts you and uses your gifts towards the work of the Gospel. We are taken again to baptism as an anointing (if you will) to this task.
Breaking the Sales Pitch
Here now becomes something important to remember; if we are ambassadors we speak for Christ and not ourselves. Likewise, Christ frees us so we don't have to succeed in evangelism. He frees us to trust that God will succeed. This is important, because when we put the emphasis upon ourselves what becomes the temptation? We try to do everything we can do to make it succeed, at all costs.
But evangelism is not about an at all cost connecting to others. Oh there is much to be said about cost and priority. There is much to be said about adiaphora and a willingness at times to shave away or alter the great traditions for the sake of sharing the gospel. But the one cost there must never be is the cost of the gospel itself. You cannot water it down or change it to make it "more relevant" (believe me when I say the gospel has always been relevant), you cannot ignore parts that they might not like, and there are parts people don't like. Remember Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1 "we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."
To put it simply, you don't have to sell Jesus. And you don't need to succeed. Perhaps the greatest impediment to evangelism is ourselves. We either try to do it ourselves (and in our efforts hinder the gospel) or we don't do it at all for fear of cultural reprisal for publicly declaring our faith or for fear of failure. Nevertheless, when we are free of all that (remember all authority is not in the culture's hand but Christ's) we need not try to sell Jesus. We need not worry if someone says no.
All we've talked about is the place of God himself in the work of evangelism through his vessels. Why that is important is that we his vessels otherwise write God out of the equation in which case the entire event is totally different.
One day a couple walked into my church. They were looking for a church to get married in and a church they could bring their family to. I walked around, showed them the place, took them to the other church in the parish, bragged and bloated the image. Then at some point it occurred to me I was trying to sell my church to them. And dare I say many of us do this. I didn't consciously think "I'm gonna make a sales pitch" but I did consciously want them to be a part of my church desperately. A large young family to be (multiple children involved) would make a difference to the people on Sunday morning.
But neither I nor my church needed them. And likewise, they didn't need my sales pitch, which while informative in many ways got in the way of the substance of what our church is: the body of Christ by the Spirit of God and the grace of Jesus Christ. What really stands out to me as I look at that encounter was they never did come. Yet the church still stands. I failed, yet maybe there was a seed planted. I think of Paul when he says "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." (1 Cor 3.6). The words are a striking hope. There is the blazing trust that even in our "failure" God has victories, God grows faith. When a pastor sees someone in faith, they are often only seeing what is above the soil, All the work to plant and nurture that seed happened long before. In that encounter I put too much into my success, our appeal, their coming. I put too little in Christ. In what he may be doing that I and my church will never witness, what he does in and for my church every Sunday with the people who are there, what our future is.
Trusting in God in evangelism lets us trust that he is working where we do not see it. It lets us trust that the church endures even when it seems shrinking. In 1 Kings 19 the prophet Elijah flees to Mt. Horeb. There he confesses to God how he, the last prophet of the LORD, is now seeing his life threatened. God responds to Elijah by having him anoint two kings and a prophet, but also he speaks this word to him:
"Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."
Listen to what is there. As Elijah feels he is alone, here he sees how much faithfulness God has maintained; 7000! But it also indicates the ability for Israel to remain if only by a remnant. Paul himself interestingly turns to this passage in Romans as he wrestles with the disbelief of Israel (Romans 11.1-6) regarding Jesus. When he is faced with what seems to be a failure to get his own people to believe, he sees again what it is to trust that God is preserving a remnant (v.5).
Trusting in the remnant; both that it is greater than we think (because God has done far more in evangelism than we can ever realize) and that even a shrinking church is still a church preserved by God (built by his Spirit) we then can dump the sales pitch. Stop trying to be who we think people want us or the gospel to be. Dare I say such unauthentic working is not rooted in the faithfulness to the power of the gospel not only for us, but for others.
Where am I going with this? Well simply put, evangelism when bound and not free becomes like every other work people do when it is not in the freedom of faith but the false understanding of merit and works; it becomes for our own sake. Think of what a sales pitch is - it's an exchange. When evangelism is a sales pitch it means we are trying to get something back. This can be our own sense of worth or accomplishment, the survival of our church, the diversification of our church, or even to the most extremes our duty to earn salvation; it does not matter. As long as you need that person you are not freely evangelizing.
The other sad part about not freely evangelizing is this: we hinder our evangelism. Because to put it simply, once you start speaking or acting for yourself you have stopped speaking and acting for Christ. An ambassador who comes to bring her own agenda to a meeting rather than the person who sent her has abandoned her role as an ambassador, or at the very least hindered it. This is what it means for us to recognize we can get in the way of evangelism. While it is true the Spirit uses our words and the Spirit has given us gifts of many varieties, it is also true that the Spirit has no promise to act in them for our purposes. In fact God very well may not (or will withhold how he is working from your eyes) to humble you. Yes, sometimes God can work at cross purposes with his people - the story of Jonah reflects this - but one would be amiss to take such a story as a tale to mean anything other than stop working at cross purposes with God. Surrender your sales pitch! Surrender your profit! Surrender whatever you hope to achieve from someone else's faith!
And as you are called to let it go, you are free to do so with the knowledge you can. That is, while with one voice God is crying for you to surrender your pitch, with another he is assuring you that you can. This is the voice of the gospel raising up a faith that is free enough to share the gospel freely.
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