Friends?
Principle: My willingness to speak about Jesus arises from my delight in Jesus.
Consider this
Sarah met up with her old college friends from time to time. Although she’d been a Christian when she was a student, she’d never got stuck into a local church and had spent most of her time with non-Christians. Having graduated a number of years ago, the very opposite now seemed to be true. Sarah knew that the best way to love her university friends was to tell them about Jesus, but now they didn’t see each other. She often struggled to know how best to fit her old friends into this new life of hers.
Biblical background: read Colossians 1.13-20.
Read all about it
Evangelism is like an extreme sport for most of us: it sounds a great idea, but we don’t really have the stomach for it. We admire gifted evangelists, but their abilities make us seem inadequate. Exhortations to evangelise just leave us feeling useless.
* Love Jesus
But enthusiasm for evangelism doesn’t begin with evangelism at all. It begins with an enthusiasm for Jesus. My willingness to speak of Jesus arises from my delight in Jesus. People love talking about the thing they’re into. When we’re ‘into’ Jesus, an infectious passion for Jesus bubbles out of us. To get going on evangelism, we need to rewind to some of our earlier principles — back to God and his glory, back to God’s work of change in our lives, back to the welcome and grace of the cross, back to future glory. We need to get excited all over again with Jesus.
* Love people
Some people love the idea of ministry. They like the idea of being a minister or missionary. But they don’t really love people. They don’t make good evangelists! Step one in evangelism is being passionate about Jesus. Step two is being passionate about people. Not just seeing them as evangelistic fodder or targets for gospel salvos. But friends. People to love. Love will care for all their needs — physical, social, emotional. But gospel love also recognises our greatest need — to know God through Christ. And so true love will always want to introduce people to our greatest friend, Jesus.
* Love one another
The church is not a meeting you attend or a place you enter, but a network of relationships. A community of friends. That perspective opens up exciting possibilities. Evangelism switches from ‘me doing the gospel thing with my mates’ to ‘us doing the gospel thing with our mates’. It’s a simple transition, but it makes a world of difference. Understanding evangelism like this means I introduce my friend who’s not a Christian to my friends who are Christians. My friend gets to see us loving one another, laughing and crying together, forgiving and serving, just hanging out. He sees the gospel in action and he hears the gospel as we apply it to one another. Evangelism is going on all the time and all I’ve done is bring my friend into a community of friends where he’s going to be exposed to the gospel. ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13.35).
* Loved by Jesus
‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you’ (John 15.12-15).
In Jesus, we have the truest of friends: the friend who laid down his life for his friends. In his life and death, I see true friendship — friendship that draws and entices, friendship that humbles and excites. I also see a friendship that calls me into the friendship with God for which I was made. Yet for me to enjoy that friendship, a terrible price had to be paid. At the cross, the friendship that existed between Father and Son was ruptured so that our friendship could be restored. The cross turns me from my self-obsession and self-worship. The Holy Spirit comes alongside as a friend and faithfully helps me become the friend I was made to be.
So the Christian community is the context for evangelism and the gospel is its content. The more I understand Jesus as the best of all friends, the more I’ll want to introduce him to my other friends. The more my friendship with him deepens, the more I’ll speak of him to others.
Questions for reflection
Do you delight in Jesus? Are you known as someone who delights in Jesus?
The Gospel-centred Life is published at £3.00 by The Good Book Company: http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk
