I’ve often heard Christians say that when witnessing Christians should “just share the love of God,” meaning: don’t talk about hell or judgment. In this context I have also heard things like, “you can’t draw flies without honey” and “I don’t want to scare people into heaven; I want to love them in.” This sounds nice and loving.
But it’s not.
This approach to evangelism fails to understand the proper distinction between law and Gospel. The Reformers understood that when law and Gospel are properly distinguished, law is preached only to secure sinners and the Gospel (or grace) is preached only to insecure sinners. What they meant is this. You don’t just tell people who are secure in their sin that God loves them. Why? Because that only emboldens them in their sin. Those who are righteous in their own eyes don’t need a large dose of hearing about God’s grace. Instead what they need to hear about is judgment and the wrath of God. Secure sinners need to be made into insecure sinners (of course, this can’t be done without the work of the Holy Spirit). Once they become insecure sinners, then, and only then, do we preach to them the Gospel of Grace.
This is what Jesus did.
Notice carefully how Jesus preached. To those who were secure in their sin and righteous in their own eyes, such as the Pharisees, Jesus pointed out their sin and warned of wrath and judgment. To those who were insecure in their sin, such as prostitutes and tax collectors, Jesus preached about the grace and love of God. Thus, when the Pharisees asked Jesus why he ate with tax collectors and “sinners,” Jesus replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). By this Jesus didn’t mean that there were any healthy, righteous people that He didn’t come to call. No. For Jesus there are no healthy, righteous people. Rather, what Jesus meant was that only those who recognize that they are sick sinners are ready to hear the Gospel of Grace.
This is also true for secure sinners who consider themselves Christians. One example should suffice. In the early 1980s, I was a young associate pastor at a large church (this was just before anyone had heard about AIDS) and a young woman came up to me and said (I’m not making this up), “Clay, I’m picking up men at bars and having sex with them and I’m having the time of my life.” I replied that if Jesus were to return that night, she would probably be lost. The next Sunday she went up to my wife and said, “What Clay said really got to me and I’ve stopped doing that!”
This is the proper distinction between law and Gospel. Law is preached to secure sinners (whether they consider themselves Christians or not) with the hope that they will become insecure about their sin and so repent and receive God’s forgiveness.
Therefore Christians need to muster the courage to tell secure sinners the truth: they are in eternal danger. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in Life Together, “Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”
James 5:19-20: “My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.”
Amen.
Amen, Clay.
Dr. Jones,
What about those who claim Christ and deny the existence of hell? They might live a life that ignores the Bible’s commands regarding holiness and still believe that they will not reap the consequences of their actions. How do we speak the truth to them while coming across as loving and not judgmental?
Hi Stephen,
They surely are confused to deny the existence of hell! As for not coming accross as unloving or judgmental–just patiently and kindly stick to the arguments as you have the opportunity.
Clay
I love what you’ve written Clay! I”m convicted in a serious way about certain areas we are failing in the church with regard to purity and sexual sin (removing every hint Eph 5:3) and people in the church are cautioning me on how I should share so as not to push anyone away. They say “Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but you can’t say that or you’ll push people away.” If they claim Christ as their Lord and savior, should I be worried about stepping on toes and offending them by preaching the word of God? I think not. THAT is why much of the church in America today is weak. We have to be “culturally relevant” even to the point of not preaching what the word of God says about obeying him so we don’t push someone away. Certainly, out of love and being careful of those who are new to the faith and don’t understand, but we go so far out of our way to keep from offending people that the church today doesn’t preach anything about obeying God in the issues like sex, our language, course joking and foolish/obscene talk which are all clearly laid out as sin. Thanks for your article!!!
Hi Seth,
Thanks for the encouragement!
Indeed, what you bring up about Eph. 5:3 is a major issue for the church today. How easy it is to be swept up in the torrent of sexually explicit images and jokes. As Jesus said, “if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me.”
Clay
Clay.
I wonder when Christians decided they could pick and choose between God’s truth and God’s love. It seems to me the most unloving thing that we can do is to avoid telling others the truth. It also seems a lie for us to say we love people when we allow our fear of what they will think to keep us from telling them the truth.
“Speak the truth in love…”
Clay,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Until a person understands how his or her sin is rebellion against God, the sovereign King, then the gospel message of redemption and reestablished relationship with God and entrance into his kingdom will make no sense whatsoever. What would the gospel mean to that person? It might sound like nice platitudes, but it wouldn’t bring the necessary response of repentance and trust to which Jesus calls us. I’m enjoying your blog posts.
Paul
Clay,
I also enjoyed your post. I am going through the Ray Comfort book “God has a wonderful plan for your life: The failure of modern evangelism” with an adult Sunday School class. This book is not exactly theologically challenging for the evangelical church. It is our bread and butter. This really is a basic book on sharing Christ with unbelievers. Except that is not the case in my church. This is new and challenging. In fact this information is proving to be very threatening. Telling those without Christ that they are sinners is beyond the pale for many. It really comes down to the fact that they are afraid to face a sovereign God. They want a God of love and forgiveness and chose to deny that he is also a God of wrath and justice. The idea that He chose some for himself, but in the same way predestined some for destruction doesn’t sit well in our modern evangelical mindset. So when Christians share God’s love and only his love they are never made to face his wrath and justice, and that suits them just fine. What a sad commentary of where we are as ‘evangelicals’.
David, Paul, and Philip,
I’m honestly thankful to hear there are like-minded Christians out there!
Clay