The believer’s responsibility in evangelism

In previous posts in this series, I have focused on God's sovereignty in salvation and on God's sovereignty by means of His Word. In this post, I would like to briefly address [as the title above indicates] the believer's responsibility in evangelism.

As ambassadors for Christ [cf. II Cor. 5:20], what are believers to do in order to be faithful to our Lord in regards to evangelism? Two considerations in particular come to mind:

A. We must present all the propositional truths of concerning the Gospel, not holding anything back simply because it may be deemed offensive (i.e., the sinners’ guilt or the blood of Christ).
B. We must serve God with all our heart and soul as well as our mind and strength in evangelism: Acts 20:31

God has appointed not only the what of the Gospel (the facts about the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus according to the Scripture), but He has also appointed the how of the Gospel (the way that we present the Good News of Jesus Christ). So while our presentation of the Gospel must certainly contain the facts of the Gospel and therefore based on objective truth, we must also present the Gospel with what I have termed "total communication;" that is, the Gospel must be reflected in the way that we live our lives, in the seriousness of our demeanor- especially when discussing spiritual matters- and in the passionate urgency by which we call sinners to repentance and faith.

That prince of doctrinally sound Gospel-centered preachers, Charles H. Spurgeon, illustrates this principle of "total communication" wonderfully in his classic work on evangelism, The Soul Winner:

I have heard of a man who was dying, and he sent for the minister to come and see him. When the minister came in, the dying man said to him, "Do you remember a young man walking with you one evening, some years ago, when you were going out to preach?" He said, he did not. "I recollect it very well," replied the other. "Do you not remember preaching at such-and-such a village, from such-and-such a text, and after the service a young man walked home with you?" "Oh, yes, I remember that very well!" "Well, I am the young man who walked home with you that night; I remember your sermon, I shall never forget it." "Thank God for that," said the preacher. "No," answered the dying man, "you will not thank God when you have heard all I have to say. I walked with you to the village, but you did not say much to me on the way there, for you were thinking over your sermon; you deeply impressed me while you were preaching, and I was led to think about giving my heart to Christ. I wanted to speak to you about my soul on the way home; but the moment you got out you cracked a joke, and all the way back you made such fun upon serious subjects, that I could not say anything about what I felt, and it thoroughly disgusted me with religion, and all who professed it, and now I am going to be damned, and my blood will lie at your door, as sure as you are alive:" and so he passed out of the world. One would not like anything of that sort to happen to himself; therefore, take heed, brethren, that you give no occasion for it. There must be a prevailing seriousness about our whole lives, otherwise we cannot hope to lead other men to Christ.

Christians reading this post: We are responsible to speak God's truth holding nothing back either in terms of the Gospel content we proclaim or in terms of our own heart-dedication to the truth of the Gospel. I plead with you to examine yourself in this area, that we may all soberly evaluate ourselves to see if we are faithful to our Lord in evangelism.

B.H. Carroll on the Verbal Inspiration of Scripture

This past week, I've been unable to blog because I've been reading 900 pages for a class I'm taking here at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. These 900 pages came from two lengthy books: The Baptist Reformation by Jerry Sutton and Baptists and the Bible by Russ Bush and Tom Nettles. While reading these in such a short amount of time has been hectic, I have enjoyed the opportunity of being exposed to such a wealth of material on Baptist history and doctrine.

Though both of these books are historically important, I have to give a special place of honor to Baptists and the Bible [and I think that Jerry Sutton would agree with this assessment], which provides a great wealth of primary-source documentation in regards to the beliefs concerning Scripture that Baptists have held throughout history. That Baptists have historically held the highest view of Scripture is obvious, for if they had believed anything other than Scripture as the Word of God having specific and final authority over the conscience, then they certainly wouldn't have been willing to be persecuted for the recovery of immersion of believers as definitional to "baptism" in the first place.

Throughout Church history, controversy over specific doctrines central to the Christian faith have provoked Christians to study the Bible with more diligence and to exercise greater precision in articulating points of doctrine. So in the second century, the Marcionite heresy caused the Church to be more precise in recognizing the canon of Scripture; in the fourth century, the Arian heresy caused the Church to be more precise in recognizing the doctrine of the Trinity; in the early fifth century the Pelagian heresy caused the Church to be more precise in recognizing the doctrine of Grace; and in the mid fifth century the Eutychian and Nestorian heresies caused the Church to be more precise in recognizing the doctrine of the person of Christ.

Beginning in the post-Reformation era [late sixteenth to early seventeenth century], the Church had to exercise greater precision in speaking of the doctrines concerning the nature of Scripture in order to refute Roman Catholic errors and the growing skepticism of certain philosophers. The English Baptist movement, beginning in the seventeenth century, was embroiled in controversy over the nature of Scripture from very early on, in disputes against the errors of the Quaker sect. The doctrines concerning the nature of Scripture began to take center-stage for Baptists [and for all of the Church] in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the growing popularity of "higher criticism." In response to such criticism, Baptists and others began to speak of doctrines such as the "plenary-verbal" inspiration of Scripture and the "inerrancy" of Scripture- words and phrases that were new, but that expressed truths historically affirmed by the Church [both Reformer Martin Luther and Baptist John Smyth wrote of the Bible being "without error"].

Those holding to higher criticism were [and still are] especially allergic to the doctrine of verbal inspiration- that every single word of Scripture [in its original writing] is "God-breathed." Some critics who still claim Christianity attempt to assert that every thought of Scripture is inspired, but that the words of Scripture are the product of Man alone. Taking this critical view, some assert that whereas the Scripture is inspired and therefore true as a whole [which is the doctrine of plenary inspiration], any certain word of phrase might be faulty.

Yet Baptists who have embraced higher criticism's questioning of verbal inspiration have stepped outside the bounds of historic Baptist belief, historic Christian belief, and, indeed, outside the bounds of a reasonable view of Scripture altogether. As B.H. Carroll (1843-1914), founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary pointed out:

It has always been a matter of profound surprise to me that anybody should ever question the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The whole thing had to be written in words. Words are signs of ideas, and if the words are not inspired, then there is no way of getting at anything in connection with inspiration... What is the object of inspirations? It is to put accurately, in human words, ideas from God... When you hear the silly talk that the Bible "contains" the word of God and is not the word of God, you hear a fool's talk. I don't care if he is a Doctor of Divinity, a President of a University covered with medals from the universities of Europe and the United States, it is fool talk. There can be no inspiration of the book without the words of the book. [Quoted in Baptists and the Bible, 281.]

So, studying Baptist history these past few days has helped me to appreciate the legacy of biblical fidelity that we have as Baptists and has better equipped me to give a reasonable [and, following Texan B.H. Carroll, forceful!] defense of my trust in God's Word. I commend similar study [though not, perhaps, at such a pace] to readers of this blog as well.

Bible Reading Like An Apostle: Reading for the Purpose of Argument

In the previous posts of this series, I briefly discussed how we should follow the apostles' example in reading the Bible for the purpose of application, allusion, and allegory. This post will give a brief discussion of reading the Bible, like an apostle, for the purpose of argument.

The word "argument," as it is commonly used, has almost entirely negative connotations in contemporary culture. When one hears that two parties have engaged in an argument, the immediate assumption is that there has been a highly emotional confrontation in which each party was trying to impose his or her selfish will upon the other. This kind of situation is obviously undesirable, and so most people today try to avoid arguments altogether.

But arguments, in the purest sense of the the word, are absolutely necessary for meaningful communication to take place. Patrick J. Hurley's Concise Introduction to Logic defines an argument as follows:

Argument: A group of statements, one or more of which (the premises) are claimed to provide support for, or reason to believe, one of the others (the conclusion).

Consider the following scenario: I may say to my wife, "Dear, we're out of milk and so we need add it to the grocery list." She may reply, "I don't think so, honey- when I looked in the fridge an hour ago we had plenty of milk." Then I may say, "But after you looked, you put some milk in the recipe to bake the cake you're taking to church on Sunday, and I used the rest of the milk to fix us French toast for breakfast, so we need to buy some more." (This is a fairly realistic depiction of what may happen at our house.) Now, we may have been sweet toward each other during that conversation (an outside observer might say 'sickeningly sweet'), and we probably wouldn't say that we'd had an 'argument' that morning- using the popular understanding of the term. But, according to the definition of an argument listed above, we had both offered conclusions, 'we need to buy more milk,' or, 'we don't need to buy more milk,' and gave reasons (premises) for those conclusions.

When we examine the way that the apostles read the Scriptures, we discover that they were consistently arguing for specific conclusions about the person and work of Jesus Christ using premises drawn from what we know as the Old Testament. In this they were following the example set by Jesus Himself who, to mention just one instance among many, cited Psalm 110:1 as a premise in order to lead His hearers to the conclusion that He is greater than King David (see Matt. 22:41-46).

Similarly, the Apostle Paul regularly turned to the Scriptures to argue for the truth of the Gospel, as demonstrated in passages such as Acts 17:2-3:

And according to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining to them and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ." (NASB, Emphases added.)

Since all Christians are Christ's ambassadors (see II Cor. 5:20), we must follow the Apostle's example, as the Apostle Peter also instructs us in I Peter 3:15:

... sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to give a defense [a word that can be translated "argument," as the NASB notes] to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; (NASB)

From this passage, we see that we are actually commanded to be ready to give an argument, and we also are commanded as to what attitude we are to have when arguing. While not shrinking away from giving an argument- or "reasoned defense"- for the Faith, we are not to be "argumentative" in the worldly sense. We are to, as much as possible from our end, live at peace with all people (see Rom. 12:18). When arguing to defend our faith or proclaim the Gospel, our goal is not to belittle others to make ourselves look good so that others think, "What smart people those Christians are!" Rather, our goal is to glorify God alone by persuading others to trust in Christ and submit to Him. The content of our argument must be from the Scriptures, as the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy in II Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (NASB, Emphasis added.)

We're having a boy!

Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.
(Psalm 127:3 NIV)

When I called my Grandma (that is, my mother's mother) back in March to tell her that Abby and I are having a baby, she asked, "Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?" Well, I tried to do the good thing and respond that I have no preference as long as the baby's healthy, but as I tried to get the words out of my mouth I realized how unconvincing I sounded, so I finally blurted out, "I want a son!" Subsequent to that conversation, as Abby and I talked about preparing for the baby, I realized that I really would be equally happy if the baby were a girl... but yesterday the ultrasound confirmed that we are having a baby boy!

We plan to name our son Christian Amadeus Lindsey.
"Christian" means "Christ-like" and "Amadeus" means "loved by God." These names reflect our hopes and prayers for our child.
"Lindsey" (which we have little control over) is, as far as I can tell, some Old English geographic reference concerning the place where my family was known to live at some point in the forgotten past.

God’s sovereignty by means of His Word

In a recent post, I began to explore the Bible teaching concerning God’s sovereignty in salvation. In this post, I would like to specifically explore God’s chief means of exercising His sovereignty, namely, His Word.

In our cultural context today, when we speak of God working in His world by His Word it is important to stress that God’s Word is a communication of propositional truth. The Princeton online dictionary defines “propositional truth” as “a statement that affirms or denies something and is either true or false.” Pastor John MacArthur, in his new book, The Truth War, speaks of “propositional truth” as a clear, inflexible establishment of something as reality. We can see how the idea of God’s Word as propositional truth is vitally important in a culture that tends to deny truth claims altogether in favor of pragmatic or emotional considerations. In other words, people today, when evaluating a belief system, do not ask themselves, “Is it true?” as much as, “Does it work?” or, “How does it make me feel?” People that cling to pragmatism or emotionalism in religion and reject the idea of God operating in His world by propositional truth claims fail to understand the importance of God speaking understandable words in Scripture. For when one speaks an understandable word or phrase, that act of speech (if communication is to be effective) serves to eliminate all ideas not associated with the chosen word or words. So, the Bible does not express God’s omnipotence by presenting Him as merely thinking the universe into existence, but instead He speaks everything into being. And God does not merely say, “Hocus Pocus, abracadabra, or ala kazaam,” but He uses understandable, verifiable language.

We must see, however, that in employing propositional truth, God does not just give purely intellectual statements of fact– He is not a computer or a Mr. Spock in the sky. When God speaks, He communicates with His entire being– His heart as well as His mind. This is why, for example, prophetic statements concerning God’s future judgment of people and nations are full of such angry emotional language. This is also why His promises of future blessings for His people are full of such loving, fatherly metaphors.

God’s “total communication” is perfectly seen in the earthly ministry of Jesus. In Christ, we see the Word of God in sadness and anger bringing judgment to those rejecting true worship (Luke 19:41-46). In Christ, we see the Word of God in compassion bringing life to God’s friends: John 11:18-45

The physical presence of Jesus is no longer with us, being ascended to the right hand of the Father in glory, but the Church, as the body of Christ, is now God’s means for spreading His Word throughout the world. We must follow our Lord’s example, giving the clear propositional truth of the Gospel, refusing to do so in any kind of emotionally detached way, but rather with anger against and grief over sin, in love and compassion for those who are lost.

In my next post on this subject, I hope to more fully explore what the Bible has to say concerning the responsibility of the believer in evangelism.

Together for the Gospel 2008 Conference Registration Now Open

Mark Dever
Ligon Duncan
C.J. Mahaney
Al Mohler

John MacArthur
John Piper
R.C. Sproul

Near the end of 2005, when my friend Jorge Ponce first told me about the then-upcoming 2006 Together for the Gospel conference (the conference was held about this time last year), I was certain he must be mistaken. I honestly thought that he had just seen a list of the most excellent preachers currently speaking in America today and somehow had become confused, thinking that they were all speaking at the same place. (Sorry, Jorge!) Once I found out Jorge's information was accurate, I finally registered to go.

Having been tremendously blessed by the event in 2006, I was extremely excited to hear that another T4G conference would take place in 2008. Registration for this conference recently opened, and just after I registered myself, I began writing this post. I would strongly encourage any minister reading this to consider attending. All of the men of God listed above are scheduled to return, as well as Thabiti Anyabwile.

A video concerning the 2008 T4G conference can be seen HERE.