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The Gospel in 60 Seconds
A clear Gospel message, like the one Peter preached in Acts 2, includes 5 points. First, the Person of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth is more than a mere man. He is God in flesh, the Son of God, the Messiah, the great and final Prophet, Priest, and King. Second, the work of Christ. Jesus died on a cross, was buried, and rose from the dead. In so doing, He exchanged His life for guilty sinners, taking away our sin, giving us His righteousness. Third, according to the Scriptures. All of this was prophesied ahead of time! Fourth, forgiveness of sin and eternal life. These are the good things that Christ won for us. Fifth, repentance and faith. In order to have the good things promised to believers, one must repent of sin and trust completely in the Divine Person and finished work of Christ. Now that’s good news in 60 seconds.
But take time to learn these 5 elements well, so that when the time comes for you to share the Gospel with a lost person, you will have a mental construct to guide you through the conversation:
- The Person of Christ
- The Work of Christ
- According to the Scriptures
- Forgiveness of sin and eternal life
- Repentance and faith
Marx in Sheep’s Clothing
False teaching has entered the Church like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as “Social Justice”, but bearing sharp teeth of division concealed behind puckered up lips. The wolf is intent to tear the Church apart, ripping and pulling wherever it can. It finds especially vulnerable tissue wherever worldly culture has Christians thinking wrongly. Those sensitive places will open up deadly wounds and sharp divides in the Church unless someone kicks the teeth out of the wolf. That’s what pastors need to do. Call us shepherds. This article is one pastor’s attempt to neutralize a wolf that has been wreaking havoc in the evangelical Church recently.
Let’s pull the mask off the wolf and see if we can recognize who’s under there. Who is it that always seeks to steal, kill, and destroy? We know that to be the devil. But what worldly philosophy did Satan use to kill upwards of one hundred million people in the last century? That would be called Marxism.
Marxism is, at the root, an attempt to divide the world between oppressed and oppressor (supposing to make things better for the oppressed), which, ironically, achieves its divisive end when those in power become the most oppressive force the world has ever seen. By God’s grace, America defeated Marxism last century. But Marxism never truly went away. It just stopped trying to overthrow our government from the outside. Now Marxism works its way into American culture to accomplish its ends more slowly. Call that “Cultural Marxism”.
Cultural Marxism “is a revolutionary leftist idea that traditional culture is the source of oppression in the modern world. Cultural Marxism is often linked to an insistence upon political correctness, multiculturalism, and perpetual attacks on the foundations of culture: the nuclear family, marriage, patriotism, traditional morality, law and order, etc.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/cultural-Marxism.html).
To understand Cultural Marxism, one must consider it’s progenitor—Marxism. The Marxist worldview is built upon two presuppositions, both of them wrong. First, Marxists assume that human beings are essentially morally neutral, born “tabula rosa” (blank slate). As Immanuel Kant theorized, bad behavior in humans is culturally conditioned, not innate to the human condition. Marx and his followers picked up on that. Therefore, they reasoned, if we could only transform society, then people would behave well and ultimately thrive, prosper, and be happy under the improved conditions. Second, Marxists assume that society as we know it (that is, Western capitalistic society) is fundamentally a class struggle between the rich oppressors and the poor oppressed. The Bourgeoisie own most of the wealth and means of production. They are the oppressors. The Proletariat lack those privileges. They are the oppressed. From these presuppositions (optimistic anthropology and victimology) rings forth the cry for Revolution.
Cultural Marxism keeps the presuppositions but lays the Marxist solution of Communist Revolution to the side. It still aims for more-evenly distributed economic outcomes. But it doesn’t seek to overthrow society in one fell swoop to make that happen. It is content to work along the edges, moving the boundary between rich and poor a little at a time. But the dichotomy between rich and poor remains. Never mind that wealth is an unbroken spectrum. To the Cultural Marxist, wherever the line between them is to be drawn, there is still a division between rich and poor, which is still characterized as a division between oppressor and oppressed. But the insidious genius of the Cultural Marxists is that they have taken their oppressor/oppressed presupposition outside of the confines of wealth and the means of production and recruited “allies” from across the spectrum of society. Wherever there are differences among people, the Cultural Marxists swoop in with their oppressor/oppressed construct and force that construct upon the differences, casting everything within this narrative of victimization.
So, Cultural Marxism is not limited to financial concerns. It is just as concerned, and probably more concerned, with issues of race, gender, sexuality, and government. The second presupposition of Marxism—the classification of people as either oppressed or oppressor—is now being applied more broadly by Cultural Marxists. The oppression that is keeping good people from utopia is no longer just the unfairness of capitalism whereby those who have wealth and the means of production are able to produce more and more wealth, while the have-nots are forced to work their tails off without the prospect of enjoying very much benefit from their hard work. Now, under Cultural Marxism, oppression is the unfairness of being black in a white world, female in a patriarchal world, an LGBTQ+ minority in a heterosexual world, an “undocumented” immigrant in a xenophobic world. Cultural Marxism marshals allies from a broad spectrum of society, wherever differences, especially minority status, could be called into question and the oppressor/oppressed construct forced upon the difference.
So widespread is the use of the victimization construct that individuals actually begin to categorize the ways (that’s plural) they are victims, ranking them and weighing them against the victimization of others! This concept is called “intersectionality”. The question becomes how the interplay of multiple layers of oppression affect a person. So, white, male, heterosexual, wealthy, American citizens get zero oppression points. Their oppressor ranking is necessarily very high. Conversely, a black, female, gay, poor, immigrant gets off-the-charts oppression points. Her oppression status is a multiplier—victim to the fifth power. She would be an uber-victim, deserving of uber-rights and uber-reparations.
Now, if proponents of intersectionality were rational and sincere, they would realize that there are literally as many ways to divide humanity as there are people on the planet (they would arrive at the individualism upon which Western civilization is based!). The relative privileges of any individual born into this world involves too many factors to calculate. For example, what if our white male above is devastatingly ugly. How will that affect his ability to get jobs, or get married? What if our black female is born with an incredibly high IQ of 190? How will that affect her ability to get jobs, or get married? What if one or the other of them is extremely tall or short? What if one has Bipolar Disorder? What if the other is predisposed to pancreatic cancer? What if one is lactose intolerant? What if one has an abusive father? What if one has a loving father and a loving mother, who spend time with them in the home and who raise them to love the Lord Jesus Christ with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves? How will those factors affect the outcomes of their lives? What we are given, and what we are not, is—in fact—determined by God, who is both just and free.
The problem that our culture and our churches are encountering nowadays in the areas of race, gender, sexuality, wealth, and government are not as the Cultural Marxists presuppose. There is not widespread implicit bias. There are not micro-aggressions constantly being perpetrated by the dominant race, dominant gender, dominant sexuality, dominant financial class, and dominant American citizen.
There are not even two identifiable groupings by race, sexuality, wealth, or nationality. Gender is a God-ordained binary, but the others are not. All of these other classifications involve spectrums, not binaries. For example, contra the assertions of Critical Race Theory, there is no such thing as “black” and “white” people. If there were, then Barak Obama would be as much “white” as he is “black”, since his mom was one and his dad was the other. But to maintain the binary, Critical Race Theory makes the ridiculous assertion that anyone having even one drop of blood with African descent makes a person “black”. And, of course, the Cultural Marxists go on to assert that “whites” are oppressing “blacks”. Such thinking is not biblical. It is Marxist. The problem is not “implicit bias” whereby two groups always exist and the dominant always oppresses the sub-dominant. In truth, the problem is called “Cultural Marxism”, and it has an ugly offspring called “intersectionality”.
It has been sad to watch how successful Cultural Marxism has been in American culture. Sadder still is the reality that it is working its way into the Church. Amazingly, even some of our best teachers don’t seem to recognize it. But listen to their conferences, read their books, hear their sermons, and the sad reality will soon be seen. Well-dressed in sheep’s clothing, a wolf called Marxism has entered our building. Let’s unmask this wolf and clear the Church of it the way Jesus cleared the Temple.
This is a call to all Christians, but especially to the shepherds—commissioned to protect the sheep. Pastors, warn your flock about Cultural Marxism. Take to the pulpit and take up the pen. Kick a tooth out of the Marxist wolf. If enough of us do that, the wolf will lose its bite. If we are silent, then the blood of the sheep is on our hands (Ezekiel 3:17-18). Feed the sheep the good food of God’s Word (Ezekiel 34:1-2). That includes a biblical anthropology (Romans 3:9-20) and a biblical prescription for how to have unity in the Church (Colossians 3:11). It also includes a robust defense of the truth when wolves in sheep’s clothing arrive on the scene (Acts 20:17-28, Hebrews 5:14, Titus 1:9, Matthew 7:15-20). Cultural Marxism is running rampant in the evangelical church. Let’s do what shepherds do.
God’s Order In Our Families
I’ve yet to meet a parent who doesn’t say they want the best for their kids. In twelve years of inner-city mission work, we saw a thousand problems stem from one bad root—the breakdown of the family, yet even so, every parent we met would say they wanted the best for their kids. Suburban parents say the same. Go to a suburban soccer field on a Saturday in the Fall and you’ll see hundreds of involved parents, every one of which would say they want the best for their kids. Go anywhere in the world—Muslim countries, Hindu, wherever—and you’ll hear parents say the same thing. Except for the utterly unrestrained, every parent says they want the best for their kids. But what if what’s best for kids is the very thing that everyone hates?
The thing that kids need most is God. The place where kids most often find God are in their own families. The way in which God is found in families is through the ordering of the home in accordance with the Scriptures—Christ as the Head, the father under the headship of Christ, the mother under the headship of Christ and her husband, children under the headship of Christ, their father and their mother. A family ordered according to Biblical prescription is what kids need most. But a Biblically-ordered family is the very thing the world hates.
Why is that? There are many reasons, but here are two of the biggest: 1) Biblical ordering of families belies the worldview of those who are not under the authority of the Bible and 2) Biblical ordering of families upholds the authority of the Bible, against which the unregenerate heart is in rebellion. Let’s explore these two reasons why people reject a Biblical ordering of the family, then we’ll demonstrate the value of ordering families according to a Biblical worldview. It’s easy to say that you want the best for your family, but unless you are willing to submit to the Bible’s authority to order your family, you are setting your kids on a path to destruction (Philippians 3:17-21), not toward what is best for them.
First, there will always be a titanic struggle between a cultural view of the world and a Biblical view of the world. This is the greatest world war. It has been raging ever since the Garden of Eden was lost, and it will continue to rage until Christ returns to set up His Kingdom. The components of the cultural worldview will change over time in accordance with culture (superstitions, stoicism, modernity, postmodernity, etc.). The Word of the Lord remains the same (Isaiah 40:8). Although worldly thinking shifts like sand according to philosophy, it is always finding new ways to oppose the thinking of the Bible. The world is always oil to the water of the Word. The two do not mix. The one always displaces the other. The Fall of Man (Genesis 3) was like the Exxon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It emptied toxic sludge into life-giving water. Many fish and birds lost their lives in the oil, and so it is with the children of our culture.
The families of our culture are suffocated by the world in which they live. But, like fish born into the oily water, they don’t know anything different. It is home to them, and feels like home. If they notice they are dying in it, they don’t know the way out. They are at home in this culture that values alien virtues like human autonomy, privatized “truth”, relative morality, “fairness”, gender as a spectrum (rather than a binary), race as a binary (rather than a spectrum), equal outcomes, and more than ever…the indistinguishability of maleness and femaleness. This is the air of today’s culture, or I should say, the oil of the culture, because it gives no oxygen—no life. The worldview of our culture is death to the family, nothing but death. It is lifeless black sludge that suffocates the very kids that every parent claims to love.
Second, parents left to their natural state will hate the Biblical ordering of the family because the natural man is in rebellion against the God who reveals His will in the Bible. At enmity with God, parents hate the idea of ordering their family according to Biblical parameters because they hate the Bible’s authority. They will zig simply because the Bible tells them to zag. The heart of the rebel actually takes pleasure in doing the precise opposite of what the Authority says to do.
So, circling back around, here is the way things stand for the reasons given. Every parent says they want what’s best for their kids, but the vast majority of parents—whether urban parents, where the breakdown of family has become obvious, or suburban parents, where the breakdown of family is often masked by smiles and sunglasses at soccer games—are in abject rebellion against the God of the Bible. As a result, they unwittingly give their kids what’s worst for them. They might give nice Christmas gifts, but rebelling against the Christ, they withhold the only gift that gives life. Moreover, even as they do the stuff that good parents do—teach them to throw a ball, watch them at the school play, pack their lunches, wipe their noses—they model godlessness in the home. Wives boss their husbands around, even yelling obscenities at them. Husbands passively mope about the house, never leading the family to the foot of the cross. Children rebel against the very parents they see in rebellion against God. Yet, the parents convince themselves their children cannot see.
Children see. And the way to show them the path of life is to walk upon it. It is the only way to help them, the only way to love them, the only way to be a truly good parent. If a parent merely mouths the words of Christianity without living according to the precepts of the Word, the words of the parent become an inoculant to the genuine thing. Having seen only a distorted and dead version of Christianity, they become immune to hearing about the real thing. It’s almost better not to speak the words of the Bible if one is unwilling to live by the Bible. At least that way, the kid may grow up to one day regard their parent as a counterexample, and so fully embrace the genuine Way in contradistinction to what they experienced growing up. But hypocritical living (professing Christ without possessing Him) and outright worldly denial of the authority of the Bible both end up in the same place. Children grow to be the center of their own universe, little gods without the ability to create even a spark of life. And so they die in their sins.
Compare that with the Christian home. “Take note of those who live according to the pattern” (Philippians 3:17). Look at those who order their homes according to the Word of God, who both profess the Kingdom and possess the Kingdom life. “Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7).
I offer this lifeline to every parent who reads this. I see where the two roads diverge in the forest. And I see where each of those roads end. Go with me to the inner city and I’ll show you brokenness, and brokenness that has nothing to do with wealth and poverty. Where worldly thought patterns regarding marriage, sexual morality, victimization and responsibility have informed the parenting of children, the results are most disastrous. And the same train wreck awaits the offspring of the suburbanites who think according to the patterns of the world. There is a way that leads to death. But come with me to church and I’ll show you children raised under the wisdom and admonition of the Lord. Here you will find kids who read their Bibles before bed and watch their parents live according to the precepts of that Book.
Parent, do you want the best for your kids? If so, then place your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sin. Speak the words of Scripture to your kids. And order your home according to the pattern laid out for us in Scripture. Christ is the Head of the Christian home, even as He is the Head of the Church. The husband is to love his wife, praying for her, caring for her, encouraging her with words of life. The wife is to submit to her husband’s lead, praying for him, supporting him, submitting to him as her head. The children are to obey both parents in everything, submitting to them as unto the Lord. The best gift that you—parent—can give your kids is for them to see you living a Biblically-ordered life in the home. Husbands, let your kids never doubt the affection you have for their mother. Wives, let your kids never doubt the respect you have for their father. Every parent says they want what’s best for their kids, but only those who live according to the Scriptures are doing them any good.
A home ordered according to the patterns of the Bible does not guarantee that children will come to Christ. Salvation is a sovereign work of God. But that sovereign God often uses a Biblically-ordered home to bring kids to faith. The opposite home-life (the worldly one) is an instrument of death to the very kids the parents say they love.
Practical Evangelism
All genuine Christians want to be fishers of men, ambassadors for Christ, messengers of the Kingdom, witnesses, heralds of the truth, soul winners, and runners with beautiful feet. We want to be effective evangelists. But there seems to be a bit of a gap between what we desire to be and what we see happening in real life. When we imagine ourselves in the heavenly Kingdom, we want to see ourselves in the midst of a great assembly, many of whom arrived there after hearing the gospel fall from our lips. But when we assess ourselves by looking at our actual performance over the years since becoming Christians, we often lament that, at least so far, we don’t know of many (or any) people that have come to Christ through our invitations.
The gap between our desire to evangelize and our actual practice of the same doesn’t need to be a source of shame or discouragement in our lives. Quite the contrary, according to Hebrews 10:24, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” The most loving thing one person can for another is to tell them the Way to escape the wrath of God. The best “good work” is the harvesting of souls. So, where there is a lack of love—a sloth of evangelistic effort—there is a tremendous opportunity for growth. With a little encouragement, the Christian may step out into a whole new world. Like a young lion’s appetite for killing will awaken and grow to an insatiable rage after the lion tastes the blood of his first kill, so it is that when a Christian tastes the life-giving fruit of leading someone to Christ, he or she will always want more and never say enough (Proverbs 30:15-16).
If that gap between evangelistic desire and evangelistic fruit exists in your Christian life, then recognize that the closing of it can be one of the greatest encouragements you have ever experienced. When you pray persistently (Luke 18:1-8) like this: “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel…that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:19-20), and God answers that prayer, your heart will swell with great joy. Moreover, when other Christians see God accomplish this work in you, they will be spurred on to pray for the same. Imagine the holy ferocity of an entire congregation awakening to the taste of evangelism. It would make that old lion (1 Peter 5:8) and his pack of demons tremble and run for the hills.
Here, then, is my effort to spur us on to the love and good work of evangelism. Drawing from the Scriptures first and from my own experiences second, I think there are two awakenings that need to take place in the lives of Christians in order for us to evangelize effectively. If waking up is too strong an analogy, since it implies that many are sleeping, then please accept the metaphor of obstacle course racing. It seems that there are at least two major obstacles as we run our Hebrews 12:1 race that get Christians hung up. There are open fields ahead, glorious sights along the way, but many Christians are standing at an obstacle, afraid to go over, and stuck, because there is no other way to get running again*.
Obstacle 1: The Fear of Looking the Fool
One of my favorite shows on NBA TV is called Shaq-tin a Fool. The show is essentially a classic blooper reel for the NBA, only it is hosted by Shaquille O’neal, who adds a lot of funny commentary. There are a couple NBA players that are the special victims of Shaq’s jesting. As much as the viewer enjoys laughing at the funny mistakes that are bound to happen from time to time on a basketball court, you also sort of feel bad for the guy you’re laughing at, especially if he is one of Shaq’s special victims.
If anyone desires to fish for men, he must be willing to be a fool for Christ. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him…” (1 Corinthians 2:14). There is no way around this. The message you bring to an unbeliever is powerful and life-giving, but that is not how they will hear it. To them, it will sound silly and life-draining. It is inevitable that they will hear it this way, unless God intervenes by the supernatural working of His Spirit (which sometimes He will).
The hardest part of any evangelism encounter is the awkward first step. If you came to visit your Pastor in his office, then talking about Christ would be a walk in the park. But here is the first obstacle of evangelism. The person you are evangelizing is, by definition, not a believer. That means that what you suspect to be the case is exactly right. You WILL look foolish in their eyes.
When I play basketball in a men’s league, most of my teammates like me (especially when the threes are falling…even if not so much when I go the rim). But this much I know…before the season is over, not one of them will think I’m cool. I won’t be the first guy invited over for beers and a game. Now, you say, my looks and awkward manner accounts for this. And you might be right. But, if I’m in the league for the right reason, then I know I am going to make a fool of myself in front of each of my teammates (hopefully it won’t be for something that deserves to be on Shaq-tin a Fool). I’m going to make an awkward statement or ask an awkward question. I am going to make a guy uncomfortable and make myself look strange. And this is precisely God’s desire.
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-22)
“Are you a good person?” Recently, hanging out after a game, I’ve taken to asking guys this question. You can imagine their surprise. I can see the wheels turning as the person thinks “that’s a weird question to ask…I wonder where he’s going with this.” The guy will usually answer affirmatively, with several little caveats, and generally try not to say too much (hoping, I think, that the conversation will end quickly). But then I hit them with follow up questions about lying, stealing, adultery, and murder. Before long, we are in a fully engaged gospel conversation.
Sometimes I notice that other guys around the gym are noticing that I have another guy on the line. Perhaps they have been there themselves. Or perhaps guys are talking.
Because we also talk about other stuff, and because we play ball together, guys don’t seem to mind too much. But I do think that when I go into the gym, my reputation precedes me, and that…not in a good way.
In the summer of 1999, I sat at a table having lunch with some guys. We met in real estate school. We were all taking the 10-day course to get a Salesperson license. When 12:00 hit, we had an hour off to go to Taco Bell. That lunch was one of the first times that the Lord gave me the boldness to ask that awkward first question. To my surprise and great joy, I got to taste fruit that day. A young man named Keith accepted Christ after school that day. After tasting fruit that first day, I have never really worried much about what people think of me when I witness to them. I am perfectly happy to be a fool for Christ.
Is this the obstacle that is tripping you up? Do you want to climb over, but there is something of your reputation that you want to take with you? You are going to have to leave your reputation behind and accept a new one. Be branded with Christ, marked with the foolishness of the cross, and the foolishness of preaching. Persistently ask God for the boldness it will take to accept disapproval, or perhaps worse, even mocking, ridicule, or abuse.
Obstacle 2: The Discouragement of Having to Wait
My kids recently discovered the amazingly-unproductive and profoundly-annoying invention known as the rock tumbler. What does it do? It tumbles rocks. You put rocks in. It tumbles them…for days…and days…and days. And what comes out? Rocks. The process is the definition of frustration.
So it often is with evangelism. And the analogy isn’t altogether bad, because like a rock, sinners born in Adam are lifeless. And no matter how much we tumble them, adding whatever grit we may, a polished rock is still a rock…lifeless, hard, unfeeling.
The second great obstacle that hinders evangelism is the discouragement that sets in when evangelistic effort appears to produce no fruit. If we stop and think about it, we recognize that if it takes years for a seed to grow into a tree and finally bear fruit in season, then the gospel seeds we sow might be at work in the dark soil of a heart, even when there seems to be no fruit to show for it. Maybe many of the seeds we planted are growing behind the scenes. But the longer we go without seeing fruit, the more prone we are to discouragement. That’s just part of our human nature.
Our theological minds tell us different. We know the parable of the sower (Matthew 13). So, we should expect that even many of the people we thought had become Christians are only false converts. Moreover, we should expect that there will be plenty of people with hard hearts that have no room for the gospel. With this knowledge, we should count our success by the faithfulness of what and how we sow, not by the degree to which we see the fruits. Let the angels separate wheat from weeds in the age to come. Let’s not concern ourselves with what we can or cannot see now. There is good counsel here.
But emotionally, it is hard to keep sowing when we hardly see anything that looks like wheat. If the ground always looks like a cart path, or a rocky place, or a thorny place, it is hard to keep on sowing. When there is so much weed that you can’t see any wheat, discouragement sets in.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12a). Many potential evangelists are home in bed, suffering from a sickness that keeps them off the mission field. But “desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12b). See even one soul come to Christ and it will be life to your bones.
If you have grown discouraged because it seems to take too long to see people come to Christ, let this be your call to not give up hope. Perhaps you need to stop looking at that one patch of ground that seems never to produce any fruit (It might actually do better if it doesn’t have to grow in your shadow). Move along and sow more seed—lots of seed. Scatter it everywhere. Don’t lose heart. Don’t give up hope. Expect the wait. But if you have hundreds of seeds in many different soils, you will be sure to see something come up, if you continue to pray and do not lose heart.
The stone of stumbling, over which most people fall, is Jesus Christ our Cornerstone. But that Rock of Offense is able to do something amazing, something a rock tumbler could never do. Jesus Christ is able to make “living stones” (1 Peter 2:4-8)! The process through which he takes people in order to save them varies greatly. Some come quickly. Others slowly. But in the end, let’s remember that it is He alone that is able to work the miracle of regeneration. Let’s sow seeds in what appears to be hard, rocky and thorny places, as well as into the soil that looks good for seed, because, let’s be honest, none of us can tell the difference. Take courage and sow liberally. Your hope will not be deferred forever. Soon, he will let you see fruit, and you will become a tree of life. Just keep praying, and sowing, and hoping.
Conclusion
There are many reasons why Christians don’t evangelize. None of them are good. Most commonly, we fear man. We worry about what others will think of us if we ask awkward questions that make people uncomfortable. We know what people will think when they find out we’re Jesus freaks. So, we don’t evangelize. Or perhaps there is another hangup. When we have tried our hands at evangelism, we haven’t seen much fruit. So, we got discouraged, and we haven’t waded back into those cold waters very often. Fishing isn’t any fun if you never catch a fish.
Brothers and sisters, let me remind you that the Father gave His Son to die for us who believe. If He is that passionate, don’t you think He cares whether or not we speak up and tell the world about what He has done? If He was a passive God, then maybe we could justify our lack of interest in evangelism. But if He is so passionate, if the message we bring says anything to us about the kind of God He is, if the Object of the gospel is the reason why we preach, then a voiceless Christian is a sad contradiction. Let’s overcome the obstacles (He overcame the cross). Let’s speak with tongues ablaze, because He is more than willing to give His Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13).
*Not that evangelism is the sum total of the Christian life (as if someone who isn’t evangelizing has necessarily stopped running), but here again is evidence that every analogy falls short of the thing it seeks to signify. I only mean to say that in the area of evangelism, many Christians get hung up and may even grind to a halt.
Prayer and God’s Decree
Why do Christians pray? If God is sovereign, and He is executing His plan according to His Kingly freedom, then why does it matter if we pray?
After all, God’s ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8), so it’s not as if He needs us to instruct Him as to what He should do. When we pray, we are bringing our tiny perspective to a God that knows everything about every inch of the Universe (Job 38). If I’m praying that my kid will win his basketball game and a Christian parent in the opposite bleacher is praying the same for his kid on the opposing team, then are the prayers we send to heaven competing like our kids compete on the court?
If you really think about it, whenever people pray, could you say that they are actually competing with God? When Christians pray, are we trying to convince an all-wise King to do something that He hadn’t already planned to do without us to advise Him? Is our will in a given situation competing with God’s will? Why ask things of a God who already knows what to do better than we do?
The question becomes sharper when we consider that God is already (and always) more loving than we are. Goodness and love are at the core of His being, so it is not as if He needs us to convince Him to be better than He is. In prayer, we bring our limited goodness to a God who defines the very meaning of love (1 John 4:8). Wouldn’t we do better to simply be quiet and watch Him unfurl the events of this world, including everything that impacts each of our lives?
In view of God’s sovereignty, why pray? Before answering, let us establish the premise of the question, namely, that God is absolutely sovereign over all things.
There are systems of philosophy that do not begin with this premise. In fact, most do not. Because we all experience ourselves making choices, choices that have consequences and for which we are responsible, many philosophers assume that our creaturely will is truly free. God has not decreed everything that comes to pass. Man is master of his own destiny. This view that asserts the autonomous will of man, not the autonomous will of God, is actually a bedrock of almost every religious or philosophical system on earth. There is, accordingly, a strong tradition within Christianity that vigorously upholds the free will of man. This Christian free-will tradition often goes by the name of Arminianism, named after a Dutch professor of theology who died in 1609, but it goes as far back as the early church fathers.
The contrasting view, called Calvinism, named after the man who (along with Luther) was a primary leader of the Protestant Reformation, also goes back to the early church fathers (like Augustine) and, I would argue, the Apostles and Prophets themselves. Calvinism is known for its assertion that God (not man) elected a particular people before the foundation of the world, predestining them to receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life. But this view of how God saves according to His sovereign choice is only part and parcel of a larger assertion, namely, that all things happen according to God’s sovereign decree. So, whether it be in the salvation of a sinner—our most pressing concern, or any other matter whatsoever, Calvinism asserts that God has decreed everything that will come to pass.
Is Calvinism biblical? Is it true? The answer to these two questions is necessarily the same. And yes, the Bible teaches that God has a sovereign Decree.
“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11). The certainty of God’s plans are juxtaposed in the preceding verse to the plans of the hearts of man, which are far from certain, far from autonomous. “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples” (Psalm 33:10). There is only room for one absolutely free will in the Universe, and according to the Scriptures, it does not belong to us.
Even the most wicked scheme that humankind has seen through to completion was not outside the foreordained plan of God. According to the willful decisions of Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Jews, and the Romans (each one operating according to the individual desires of their own hearts), the only innocent, the infinitely valuable, the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, was hung to die upon a cross. Although they had creaturely wills that chose according to their desires, they did “whatever
The Westminster Confession adequately summarizes the Bible’s teaching. “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
If this view of God’s sovereignty is allowed, established by Psalm 33:10 and Acts 4:28, as it could be by Genesis 50:20, Isaiah 10, and a host of other passages, then it raises questions about prayer, to which we now return. If God already has a sovereign decree, then why pray?
First, It is important to realize that God ordains prayer. That is to say, He commands and prescribes it. The so-called “phone-number of God (33-3)”, taken from that famous verse, Jeremiah 33:3, is a simple and direct command to pray, notwithstanding the complexities of our theological understanding. “Call to me and I will answer you.” The command is clear. What’s more, the prescription is accompanied by a promise. We are to pray, and here is what He will do: answer. So, communication between the Holy One and His creatures is not only allowed, not only encouraged, but even commanded, and rewarded.
As we move into the New Testament, we find that the promises related to God answering prayer not only remain, but even seem to be intensified. Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). And, “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). And, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). And, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). These are amazing promises indeed. All the more reason to simply obey His command. God has ordained that we should pray.
Second, God ordains means as well as ends. When our minds try to reconcile the above promises of Jesus with the aforementioned teaching on God’s sovereign decree, it won’t be long before we feel like our minds are getting twisted in knots. Since I cannot fully untangle the knot for myself, let alone for anyone else, allow me to stop trying after suggesting one key point that has helped me at many turns. That is, God ordains the means as well as the ends.
It shouldn’t surprise us that God already knew everything that we would pray even before we ask. After all, He exists outside of time. And, as hundreds of predictive prophecies recorded in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament indicate, He knows the future as certainly as He knows the past. By contrast, we are time-bound creatures. So, we live in a cause-and-effect continuum whereby certain choices we make result in certain outcomes. But for God, what we see as means (often things in our present) and what we see as ends (often things in the future) are simply settled knowledge in His mind, known by Him because He has ordained them both. So, from our perspective, we pray and see a desired outcome unfold. But for God, He knew what we would pray (no matter what it is) and how He would answer. Both the means and the ends have been ordained.
Third, and finally, God deals with us according to His prescriptive will, not His secret will. This point is crucial, because although we are told that God has a secret will (a decree that governs the Universe), we are not told what that decree is. To us it is a secret. We are not accountable to it. We are not judged by it. We are not expected to live by it. Rather, we are called to live according to His revealed (prescriptive) will.
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Recall that Peter spoke of two wills in God, one prescriptive and the other secret. “For this is the will of God” (Peter speaks prescriptively) “that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” (1 Peter 2:15). “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will” (Peter speaks of God’s secret will) “than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:17). Peter understood that God has two wills, or two kinds of willing.
One will of God is prescribed for us. That is what we have revealed to us in the Bible in the form of commands. God commands, for example, all men everywhere to repent of sin (Acts 17:30) and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16). This is the will of God by which we must live. And it includes the prescription to pray. The other will of God, like a larger circle that holds the prescriptive will of God like a circle within it, is secret. By definition, we cannot know it. So, we are not to live as if we can know it. So, for example, we are to broadcast the gospel far and wide, and indiscriminately. Why? Because we do not know the identity of the elect.
When it comes to prayer, then, we are to pray according to the prescriptive will of God. We should call on God for certain things because He commands us to ask for them. And we should fashion our prayers according to what the Bible reveals of His character and concern. For example, we should ask for things that are in keeping with the compassion and mission of Jesus Christ, as He is revealed to us on the pages of Scripture. Our job is not to try and figure out the secret will of God, but rather, to pray according to biblical concerns.
In conclusion, there is no contradiction between God’s having a sovereign decree and our responsibility to go before Him in prayer. If in our minds we allow Him to be who He is (the sovereign Ruler of the universe), we will find ourselves in no way restrained from offering meaningful prayers to Him. We will do so because we are told to do so. We will do so because we have a category whereby He is able to actually answer them while at the same time remaining sovereign and unchanged by them. Simply allow the Bible to define its own categories and live according to the jurisdiction which we have been given. He runs the Universe. We are called to pray.
Prayer is one of the most important aspects of our walk with Jesus. Even as we hear from Him in His Word, we need to take time to talk to Him from our hearts. Our theology should be God-centered enough that we avoid the trap of thinking that He needs our prayers to accomplish His plans. Yet our walk with Christ should be child-like enough that we avoid the trap of thinking we know more than we do. Is anyone sick? Let’s pray for healing. Are some lost? Let’s pray God brings them to Himself. Is there a church that wants to be used mightily by the Sovereign King? Let us join together and call upon His name in fervent prayer, asking that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The Meat of Our Gospel
I took a class on evangelism in Seminary in which the Professor—Dr. Doug Cecil—used a helpful analogy to describe the gospel that we are to preach. He likened the gospel to a hamburger, which, he said, has 3 essential elements. According to the analogy, the bottom bun of the gospel is sin, because unless people come to know their problem of sin, they cannot know their need for the Savior. Says Dr. Cecil, you cannot preach the gospel without the bottom bun of sin. The top bun is faith, because that is what justifies. The gospel brings people to repentant believing, or else it does not save. If we do not call for faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, our preaching is missing the top bun. Now, there are many other condiments and toppings that rightly belong in the gospel, but one more thing is necessary to actually have a hamburger. You have to have the meat. The meat of the gospel, according to Dr. Doug Cecil (and I agree with him) is substitutionary atonement.
Substitutionary atonement includes the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, but focuses especially on the meaning of His death. To be sure, we must declare that Jesus is the Son of God, and by that mean that He is God in flesh. We must declare the facts of His having been crucified and buried, and that He rose from the dead. But unless we declare the meaning of His death, our gospel is missing the meat, or the substance, that makes it what it is.
Substitutionary atonement is a theological term that simply means that Christ died as a substitute for believers, taking the penalty that we deserve upon His shoulders. He bears the wrath of God against our sin, not against His own, for He, in fact, had none. He substitutes for us—the Bridegroom for His bride, the Shepherd for His sheep, the King for His subjects, the God-man for the fallen children of Adam who are made by this one sacrifice to be the children of God.
The Scriptures clearly teach that substitutionary atonement is the core of the gospel.
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4, emphasis mine)”
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18, emphasis mine)
“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 5:21, emphasis mine)
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6)
Substitutionary atonement is the core of the gospel and has been regarded as such throughout the ages by the true Church, but we live in a day of rampant apostasy. Even supposedly evangelical churches, like the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, are hosting conferences and purveying teachings that present the God who substitutes His Son to propitiate His own wrath against sinners as a “Monster God” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdYMO2ZBboc). False teachers (like Brian Zahnd in this “Monster God debate”) decry the very meat of the gospel under the cover of supposedly evangelical leaders like Mike Bickle (pastor of IHOP). Although, in the debate, Dr. Michael Brown was also given a voice to herald the truth, the witnesses to the spectacle were divided in their assessment of who spoke the truth. And so it goes with deception. It tickles the ears and appears right to undiscerning minds who think according to the flesh rather than according to the Spirit.
The problem of apostasy in the church and unbelief among the peoples of earth is something that we cannot fix. Only God can change a heart of stone to a heart of flesh that is able to receive the teaching of the gospel. Nevertheless, God has ordained that the gospel would go forward and convert sinners by means of preaching. And it is our job to communicate the meat of gospel with clarity.
So then, armed with a clear understanding of the gospel—sin, substitutionary atonement, faith—let us go forth preaching this message to the ends of the earth. With Paul, let’s “pray that I will proclaim this message as clearly as I should” (Colossians 4:4). With Dr. Doug Cecil, let’s go out preaching with a hamburger on our brains. The top bun is sin. The bottom bun is faith. And the meat is substitutionary atonement. Our thinking about the gospel sharpened by this analogy, let us call sinners to faith in the loving God (Romans 8:32) who did not spare His one and only Son, but gave Him up for us all.