My friend Nub Donaldson gave me this small, but incredibly powerful, 135 page paperback and I thank him for thinking of me.
Dr. Packer originally published Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God" in 1961. In the new release Mark Dever's Forward asks, "If God is in control, why should we do anything at all? Why should we work? Why should we pray? And especially, why should we evangelize?"
Why? Packer explains, very bluntly, fairly clear, a bit repetitive, but you won't have any doubt as to the author's intentions.
Here are some bullet points taken directly from the book;
Introduction
Always and everywhere the servants of Christ are under orders to evangelize, and I hope that what I shall say now will act as an incentive to this task. I hope, too, that it will serve a further purpose. There is in Christian circles at the present time much heart-searching and dispute about ways and means of evangelism. I want to speak about the spiritual factors involved in evangelizing, and I hope that what I say may help toward resolving some of the current disagreements and debates. page 13
Evangelism is my proper subject, and I am to speak of it in relation to the sovereignty of God. That means that I shall not be speaking of the sovereignty of God further than is necessary for right thinking about evangelism. page 13
In examining the relationship between God's sovereignty and the Christian's task of evangelism, I have a specific aim in view. There is abroad today a widespread suspicion that a robust faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is bound to undermine any adequate sense of human responsibility. Such a faith is thought to be dangerous to spiritual health, because it breeds a habit of complacent inertia. In particular, it is thought to paralyze evangelism by robbing one both of the motive to evangelize and of the message to evangelize with. The supposition seems to be that you cannot evangelize effectively unless you are prepared to pretend while you are doing it that the doctrine of divine sovereignty is not true. I shall try to make it evident that this is nonsense. I shall try to show further that, so far from inhibiting evangelism, faith in the sovereignty of God's government and grace is the only thing that can sustain it..... page 14
1 Divine Sovereignty
I do not intend to spend any time at all proving to you the general truth that God is sovereign in his world. There is no need; for I know that, if you are a Christian, you believe this already. How do I know that? Because I know, if you are a Christian, you pray; and the recognition of God's sovereignty is the basis of your prayers. page 17
The prayer of a Christian is not an attempt to force God's hand, but a humble acknowledgement of helplessness and dependence. When we are on our knees, we know that it is not we who control the world; it is not in our power, therefore, to supply our needs by our own independent efforts.... page 17-18
The very fact that a Christian prays is thus proof positive that he believes in the lordship of his God. page 18
Nor, again, am I going to spend time that God is sovereign in salvation. For that, too, you believe already. Two facts show this. In the first place, you give God thanks for your conversion...You do not put it down to chance or accident that you came under Christian influence when you did. You do not put it down to chance or accident that you attended a Christian church, that you heard the Christian gospel, that you had Christian friends and, perhaps, a Christian home....You do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom... page 18
In fact, it never occurs to you to suppose that you saved yourself. page 19
You give God all the glory for all that your salvation involved, and you know that it would be blasphemy if you refused to thank him for bringing you to faith. page 19
There is a second way in which you acknowledge that God is sovereign in salvation. You pray for the conversion of others. page 21
When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God's power to bring them to faith. You entreat him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests on the certainty that he is able to do what you ask. page 21-22
In prayer, then (and the Christian is at his sanest and wisest when he prays), you know that it is God who saves men... page 22
There is a long-standing controversy in the church as to whether God is really Lord in relation to human conduct and saving faith or not... page 22
For it is not true that some Christians believe in divine sovereign while others hold an opposite view. What is true is that all Christians believe in divine sovereignty, but some are not aware that they do, and mistakenly imagine and insist that they reject it.....The rood cause is the same as in most cases of error in the church - the intruding of rationalistic speculations, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and to let God be wiser than men, and a consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. page 22
People see that the Bible teaches man's responsibility for his actions; they do not see (man, indeed, cannot see) how this is consistent with the sovereign lordship of God over those actions. They are not content to let the two truths live side by side, as they do in the Scriptures... page 22-23
The irony of the situation, however, is that when we ask how the two sides pray, it becomes apparent that those who profess it deny God's sovereignty really believe in it just as strongly as those who affirm it. page 23
How, then, do you pray? Do you ask God for your daily bread? Do you thank God for your conversion? Do you pray for the conversion of others? If the answer is "no;" I can only say that I do not think you are yet born again. But if the answer is "yes" - well, that proves that, whatever side you may have taken in debates on this question in the past, in your heart, you believe in the sovereignty of God no less firmly than anyone else. page 23
2 Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
Our aim in the present study is to think out the nature of the Christian's evangelists task in the light of this agreed presupposition that God is sovereign in salvation.....All theological topics contain pitfalls for the unwary, for God's truth is never quite what man would have expected....This is because in thinking it through we have to deal with an antinomy in the biblical revelation, and in such circumstances our finite, fallen minds are more than ordinarily apt to go astray. page 25
For the whole point of an antinomy - in theology, at any rate - is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinoy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable. There are cogent reasons for believing each of the; each rests on clear and solid evidence; but it is a mystery to you how they can be squared with each other. You see that each must be true on its own, but you do not see how they can both be true together. page 26
It appears, therefore, that an antinomy is not the same thing as a paradox. A paradox is a figure of speech, a play on words. It is a form of statement that seems to unite two opposite ideas, or to deny something by the very terms in which it is asserted....The point of a paradox, however, is that what creates the appearance of contradiction is not the facts, but the words. The contradiction is verbal, but not real, and a little thought shows how it can be eliminated and the same idea expressed in nonparadoxical for. In other words a paradox is always dispensable. page 26-27
By contrast, however, an antinomy is neither dispensable nor comprehensible. It is not a figure of speech, but an observed relation between two statements of fact. page 28
What should one do, then, with an antinomy: Accept it for what it is, and learn to live with it. page 28
The particular antinomy which concerns us here is the apparent opposition between divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or (putting it more biblically) between what God does as King and what he does as Judge. page 29
Scripture teaches that, as King, he orders and controls all things, human actions among them, in accordance with his own eternal purpose (see Gen 14:8; 50:20; Prov 16:9; 21:1; Mt 10:29; Acts 9:27-28; Rom 9:20-21; Eph 1:11, etc.). page 29
Scripture also teaches that, as Judge, he holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues (see Mt 25; Rom 2:1-16; Rev 20:11-13, etc.). page 29
Thus, hearers of the gospel are responsible for their reaction; if they reject the good news, they are guilty of unbelief. page 29
God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are taught to us side by side in the same Bible; sometimes, indeed, in the same text. Both are thus guaranteed to us by the same divine authority; both, therefore, are true....This is the revealed antinomy in terms of which we have to do our thinking about evangelism. page 30
We ought not, in any case, to be surprised when we find mysteries of this sort in God's Word. For the Creator is incomprehensible to his creatures. A god whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man's image and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all. page 31-32
For what the God of the Bible says is this: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, / neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. / For as the heavens are higher than the earth, / so are my ways higher than your ways, / and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is 55:8-9). page 32
....recognize that here is a mystery which we cannot expect to solve in this world....This is easily said, but the thing is not easily done. For our minds dislike antinomies. We like to tie up everything....no loose ends hanging out....So it is in the present case. The temptation is to undercut and maim the one truth by the way in which we stress the other; to assert man's responsibility in a way that excludes God from being sovereign, or to affirm God's sovereignty in a way that destroys the responsibility of man. Both mistakes need to be guarded against. page 32
There is, first, the temptation to an exclusive concern with human responsibility.....Man's responsibility to his Maker, is, indeed, the fundamental fact of his life, and it can never be taken too seriously...We live under his law. We must answer to him for our lives. page 33
Man without Christ is a guilty sinner, answerable to God for breaking his law. That is why he needs the gospel. When he hears the gospel, he is responsible for the decision that he makes about it. It sets before him a choice between life and death, the most momentous choice that any man can ever face. page 33
Similarly, we ourselves have a responsibility for making the gospel known...(Mt 28:19)...We are all under orders to devote ourselves to spreading the good news, and to use all our ingenuity and enterprise to bring it to the notice of the whole world. The Christian, therefore, must constantly be searching his conscience, asking himself if he is doing all that he might be doing in this field. page 34
It is necessary, therefore, to take the thought of human responsibility, as it affects both the preacher and the hearer of the gospel, very seriously indeed. But we must not let it drive the thought of divine sovereignty out of our minds. page 34
While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it it God who saves.....Our evangelistic work is the instrument that he uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument; it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument. page 34-35
Their is an opposite temptation that threatens us also; namely, the temptation to an exclusive concern with divine sovereignty. page 37
They are, however, beset by exactly the opposite temptation to that discussed above. In their zeal to glorify God by acknowledging his sovereignty in grace, and by refusing to imagine that their own services are indispensable to him they are tempted to lose sight of the church's responsibility to evangelize. page 40
They are tempted, therefore, to suspect all enterprise in evangelism, whether organized or on the personal level, as if there were something essentially and inescapably man-exalting about it. page 40
They are haunted by the fear of running ahead of God, and feel that there is nothing more urgent than to guard against the possibility of doing this. page 40
Christ's command means that we all should be devoting all our resources of ingenuity and enterprise to the task of making the gospel known in every possible way to every possible person. Unconcern and inaction with regard to evangelism are always, therefore, inexcusable. page 41
In our Lord's parable of the talents (Mt 25:14-30), the "good and faithful" servants ere those who furthered their master's interests by making the most enterprising lawful use that they could of what was entrusted to them.....For what Christ has given us to use must be put to use; it is not enough simply to hide it away....The truth about salvation has been made known to us, not for us simply to preserve (though we must certainly do that), but also, and primarily, for us to spread. The light is not meant to be hidden under the bushel. It is meant to shine; and it is our business to see that it shines. "you are the light of the world," says our Lord (Mt 5:14-16). He who does not devote himself to evangelism in every way that he can is not, therefore, playing the part of a good and faithful servant of Jesus Christ. page 41-42
Her, then, are two opposite pitfalls...Each is the result of partial vision, which means partial blindness...Both unite to warn us not to pit these truths against each other, nor to allow either to obscure or overshadow the other in our minds. Both unite to warn us also against reacting from one extreme of error into the other. page 42
What are we to do, then?...avoid both extremes. How? By making it our business to believe both these doctrines with all our might, and to keep both constantly before us for the guidance and government of our lives. page 43
What the Bible does is to assert both truths side by side in the strongest and most unambiguous terms as two ultimate facts; this, therefore, is the position that we must take in our own thinking. C.H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. "I wouldn't try," he replied; "I never reconcile friends." page 43
That is the point we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies....not uneasy neighbors...not in an endless state of cold war....They are friends, and they work together. page 43
I hope that what I am to say now about evangelism will help to make this clear. page 43
3 Evangelism
We shall now try to answer from Scripture the following four quetions concerning the Christian's evangelistic responsibility. What is evangelism? What is the evangelistic message? What is the motive for evangelizings? By what means and methods should evangelism be practiced? page 45
What is Evangelism?
How, then, should evangelism be defined? The New Testament answer is very simple. According to the New Testament, evangelism is just preaching the gospel, the evangel. It is a work of communication in which Christians make themselves mouthpieces for God's message of mercy to sinners. Anyone who faithfully delivers that message, under whatever circumstances, in a large meeting, in a small metting, from a pulpit, or in a private conversation, is evangelizing. page 49
Second...Again, Paul saw himself as Christ's herald. When he describes himself as "appointed a preacher" of the gospel (2 Time 1:11; 1 Time 2:7), the noun he uses is kerx, which means a herad, a person who makes public announcements on another's behalf. page 51
Third, Paul considered himself Christ's ambassador.....He speaks not in his own name, but on behalf of the ruler whose deputy he is, and his whole duty and responsibility is to interpret that ruler's mind faighfully to those to whom his is sent. page 52
In his evangelism, then, Paul consciously acted as the slave and steward, the mouthpiece and herald, the spokesman and ambassador, of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, on the one hand, his sustained boldness and unshakable sense of authority in the face of ridicule and indifference; hence, on the other hand, his intransigent refusal to modify his message in ordeer to suit circumstances. page 53
DS, note: work in progress getting the highlights of this powerful little book completed.
Dr. Packer originally published Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God" in 1961. In the new release Mark Dever's Forward asks, "If God is in control, why should we do anything at all? Why should we work? Why should we pray? And especially, why should we evangelize?"
Why? Packer explains, very bluntly, fairly clear, a bit repetitive, but you won't have any doubt as to the author's intentions.
Here are some bullet points taken directly from the book;
Introduction
Always and everywhere the servants of Christ are under orders to evangelize, and I hope that what I shall say now will act as an incentive to this task. I hope, too, that it will serve a further purpose. There is in Christian circles at the present time much heart-searching and dispute about ways and means of evangelism. I want to speak about the spiritual factors involved in evangelizing, and I hope that what I say may help toward resolving some of the current disagreements and debates. page 13
Evangelism is my proper subject, and I am to speak of it in relation to the sovereignty of God. That means that I shall not be speaking of the sovereignty of God further than is necessary for right thinking about evangelism. page 13
In examining the relationship between God's sovereignty and the Christian's task of evangelism, I have a specific aim in view. There is abroad today a widespread suspicion that a robust faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is bound to undermine any adequate sense of human responsibility. Such a faith is thought to be dangerous to spiritual health, because it breeds a habit of complacent inertia. In particular, it is thought to paralyze evangelism by robbing one both of the motive to evangelize and of the message to evangelize with. The supposition seems to be that you cannot evangelize effectively unless you are prepared to pretend while you are doing it that the doctrine of divine sovereignty is not true. I shall try to make it evident that this is nonsense. I shall try to show further that, so far from inhibiting evangelism, faith in the sovereignty of God's government and grace is the only thing that can sustain it..... page 14
1 Divine Sovereignty
I do not intend to spend any time at all proving to you the general truth that God is sovereign in his world. There is no need; for I know that, if you are a Christian, you believe this already. How do I know that? Because I know, if you are a Christian, you pray; and the recognition of God's sovereignty is the basis of your prayers. page 17
The prayer of a Christian is not an attempt to force God's hand, but a humble acknowledgement of helplessness and dependence. When we are on our knees, we know that it is not we who control the world; it is not in our power, therefore, to supply our needs by our own independent efforts.... page 17-18
The very fact that a Christian prays is thus proof positive that he believes in the lordship of his God. page 18
Nor, again, am I going to spend time that God is sovereign in salvation. For that, too, you believe already. Two facts show this. In the first place, you give God thanks for your conversion...You do not put it down to chance or accident that you came under Christian influence when you did. You do not put it down to chance or accident that you attended a Christian church, that you heard the Christian gospel, that you had Christian friends and, perhaps, a Christian home....You do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom... page 18
In fact, it never occurs to you to suppose that you saved yourself. page 19
You give God all the glory for all that your salvation involved, and you know that it would be blasphemy if you refused to thank him for bringing you to faith. page 19
There is a second way in which you acknowledge that God is sovereign in salvation. You pray for the conversion of others. page 21
When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God's power to bring them to faith. You entreat him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests on the certainty that he is able to do what you ask. page 21-22
In prayer, then (and the Christian is at his sanest and wisest when he prays), you know that it is God who saves men... page 22
There is a long-standing controversy in the church as to whether God is really Lord in relation to human conduct and saving faith or not... page 22
For it is not true that some Christians believe in divine sovereign while others hold an opposite view. What is true is that all Christians believe in divine sovereignty, but some are not aware that they do, and mistakenly imagine and insist that they reject it.....The rood cause is the same as in most cases of error in the church - the intruding of rationalistic speculations, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and to let God be wiser than men, and a consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. page 22
People see that the Bible teaches man's responsibility for his actions; they do not see (man, indeed, cannot see) how this is consistent with the sovereign lordship of God over those actions. They are not content to let the two truths live side by side, as they do in the Scriptures... page 22-23
The irony of the situation, however, is that when we ask how the two sides pray, it becomes apparent that those who profess it deny God's sovereignty really believe in it just as strongly as those who affirm it. page 23
How, then, do you pray? Do you ask God for your daily bread? Do you thank God for your conversion? Do you pray for the conversion of others? If the answer is "no;" I can only say that I do not think you are yet born again. But if the answer is "yes" - well, that proves that, whatever side you may have taken in debates on this question in the past, in your heart, you believe in the sovereignty of God no less firmly than anyone else. page 23
2 Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
Our aim in the present study is to think out the nature of the Christian's evangelists task in the light of this agreed presupposition that God is sovereign in salvation.....All theological topics contain pitfalls for the unwary, for God's truth is never quite what man would have expected....This is because in thinking it through we have to deal with an antinomy in the biblical revelation, and in such circumstances our finite, fallen minds are more than ordinarily apt to go astray. page 25
For the whole point of an antinomy - in theology, at any rate - is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinoy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable. There are cogent reasons for believing each of the; each rests on clear and solid evidence; but it is a mystery to you how they can be squared with each other. You see that each must be true on its own, but you do not see how they can both be true together. page 26
It appears, therefore, that an antinomy is not the same thing as a paradox. A paradox is a figure of speech, a play on words. It is a form of statement that seems to unite two opposite ideas, or to deny something by the very terms in which it is asserted....The point of a paradox, however, is that what creates the appearance of contradiction is not the facts, but the words. The contradiction is verbal, but not real, and a little thought shows how it can be eliminated and the same idea expressed in nonparadoxical for. In other words a paradox is always dispensable. page 26-27
By contrast, however, an antinomy is neither dispensable nor comprehensible. It is not a figure of speech, but an observed relation between two statements of fact. page 28
What should one do, then, with an antinomy: Accept it for what it is, and learn to live with it. page 28
The particular antinomy which concerns us here is the apparent opposition between divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or (putting it more biblically) between what God does as King and what he does as Judge. page 29
Scripture teaches that, as King, he orders and controls all things, human actions among them, in accordance with his own eternal purpose (see Gen 14:8; 50:20; Prov 16:9; 21:1; Mt 10:29; Acts 9:27-28; Rom 9:20-21; Eph 1:11, etc.). page 29
Scripture also teaches that, as Judge, he holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues (see Mt 25; Rom 2:1-16; Rev 20:11-13, etc.). page 29
Thus, hearers of the gospel are responsible for their reaction; if they reject the good news, they are guilty of unbelief. page 29
God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are taught to us side by side in the same Bible; sometimes, indeed, in the same text. Both are thus guaranteed to us by the same divine authority; both, therefore, are true....This is the revealed antinomy in terms of which we have to do our thinking about evangelism. page 30
We ought not, in any case, to be surprised when we find mysteries of this sort in God's Word. For the Creator is incomprehensible to his creatures. A god whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man's image and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all. page 31-32
For what the God of the Bible says is this: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, / neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. / For as the heavens are higher than the earth, / so are my ways higher than your ways, / and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is 55:8-9). page 32
....recognize that here is a mystery which we cannot expect to solve in this world....This is easily said, but the thing is not easily done. For our minds dislike antinomies. We like to tie up everything....no loose ends hanging out....So it is in the present case. The temptation is to undercut and maim the one truth by the way in which we stress the other; to assert man's responsibility in a way that excludes God from being sovereign, or to affirm God's sovereignty in a way that destroys the responsibility of man. Both mistakes need to be guarded against. page 32
There is, first, the temptation to an exclusive concern with human responsibility.....Man's responsibility to his Maker, is, indeed, the fundamental fact of his life, and it can never be taken too seriously...We live under his law. We must answer to him for our lives. page 33
Man without Christ is a guilty sinner, answerable to God for breaking his law. That is why he needs the gospel. When he hears the gospel, he is responsible for the decision that he makes about it. It sets before him a choice between life and death, the most momentous choice that any man can ever face. page 33
Similarly, we ourselves have a responsibility for making the gospel known...(Mt 28:19)...We are all under orders to devote ourselves to spreading the good news, and to use all our ingenuity and enterprise to bring it to the notice of the whole world. The Christian, therefore, must constantly be searching his conscience, asking himself if he is doing all that he might be doing in this field. page 34
It is necessary, therefore, to take the thought of human responsibility, as it affects both the preacher and the hearer of the gospel, very seriously indeed. But we must not let it drive the thought of divine sovereignty out of our minds. page 34
While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it it God who saves.....Our evangelistic work is the instrument that he uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument; it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument. page 34-35
Their is an opposite temptation that threatens us also; namely, the temptation to an exclusive concern with divine sovereignty. page 37
They are, however, beset by exactly the opposite temptation to that discussed above. In their zeal to glorify God by acknowledging his sovereignty in grace, and by refusing to imagine that their own services are indispensable to him they are tempted to lose sight of the church's responsibility to evangelize. page 40
They are tempted, therefore, to suspect all enterprise in evangelism, whether organized or on the personal level, as if there were something essentially and inescapably man-exalting about it. page 40
They are haunted by the fear of running ahead of God, and feel that there is nothing more urgent than to guard against the possibility of doing this. page 40
Christ's command means that we all should be devoting all our resources of ingenuity and enterprise to the task of making the gospel known in every possible way to every possible person. Unconcern and inaction with regard to evangelism are always, therefore, inexcusable. page 41
In our Lord's parable of the talents (Mt 25:14-30), the "good and faithful" servants ere those who furthered their master's interests by making the most enterprising lawful use that they could of what was entrusted to them.....For what Christ has given us to use must be put to use; it is not enough simply to hide it away....The truth about salvation has been made known to us, not for us simply to preserve (though we must certainly do that), but also, and primarily, for us to spread. The light is not meant to be hidden under the bushel. It is meant to shine; and it is our business to see that it shines. "you are the light of the world," says our Lord (Mt 5:14-16). He who does not devote himself to evangelism in every way that he can is not, therefore, playing the part of a good and faithful servant of Jesus Christ. page 41-42
Her, then, are two opposite pitfalls...Each is the result of partial vision, which means partial blindness...Both unite to warn us not to pit these truths against each other, nor to allow either to obscure or overshadow the other in our minds. Both unite to warn us also against reacting from one extreme of error into the other. page 42
What are we to do, then?...avoid both extremes. How? By making it our business to believe both these doctrines with all our might, and to keep both constantly before us for the guidance and government of our lives. page 43
What the Bible does is to assert both truths side by side in the strongest and most unambiguous terms as two ultimate facts; this, therefore, is the position that we must take in our own thinking. C.H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. "I wouldn't try," he replied; "I never reconcile friends." page 43
That is the point we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies....not uneasy neighbors...not in an endless state of cold war....They are friends, and they work together. page 43
I hope that what I am to say now about evangelism will help to make this clear. page 43
3 Evangelism
We shall now try to answer from Scripture the following four quetions concerning the Christian's evangelistic responsibility. What is evangelism? What is the evangelistic message? What is the motive for evangelizings? By what means and methods should evangelism be practiced? page 45
What is Evangelism?
How, then, should evangelism be defined? The New Testament answer is very simple. According to the New Testament, evangelism is just preaching the gospel, the evangel. It is a work of communication in which Christians make themselves mouthpieces for God's message of mercy to sinners. Anyone who faithfully delivers that message, under whatever circumstances, in a large meeting, in a small metting, from a pulpit, or in a private conversation, is evangelizing. page 49
Since the divine message finds its climax in a plea from the Creator to a rebel world to turn an dput faith in Christ, the delivering of it involvesthe summoning of one's hearers to conversion. page 49-50
But the way to tell whether in fact you are evangelizing is not to ask wheter conversions are known to have resulted fromyour witness. It is to ask wheter you are faighfully making known the gospel message. page 50
For a complete picture of what the New Testament means by evangelism.....Paul's account of the nature of his own evangelistic ministry. There are three points to note about it. page 50
First...Paul evangelized as the commissioned representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Christ...(sent) me...to preach the gospel" (1 Cor 1:17). ...he saw himself as Christ's steward. "This is how one should regard us.." he wrote to the Corinthians, "as servants of Christ, and...stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Cor 4:1). Paul saw himself as a bondslave raised to apostion of high trust... page 50
Second...Again, Paul saw himself as Christ's herald. When he describes himself as "appointed a preacher" of the gospel (2 Time 1:11; 1 Time 2:7), the noun he uses is kerx, which means a herad, a person who makes public announcements on another's behalf. page 51
Third, Paul considered himself Christ's ambassador.....He speaks not in his own name, but on behalf of the ruler whose deputy he is, and his whole duty and responsibility is to interpret that ruler's mind faighfully to those to whom his is sent. page 52
In his evangelism, then, Paul consciously acted as the slave and steward, the mouthpiece and herald, the spokesman and ambassador, of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, on the one hand, his sustained boldness and unshakable sense of authority in the face of ridicule and indifference; hence, on the other hand, his intransigent refusal to modify his message in ordeer to suit circumstances. page 53
DS, note: work in progress getting the highlights of this powerful little book completed.
No comments:
Post a Comment