A command, not a suggestion: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded of you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)
John Piper tweeted today that Christians [should] care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering, else they have a defective heart or a flameless hell.
Right love will aim toward the greatest good of its recipient. That is why God is not unloving to be jealous for our love, demanding that we satisfy ourselves in him and not other things, broken cisterns, lifeless idols. Christ is our greatest good. Joy in Christ is supremely greater than joy in other things, and so God's love, as demonstrated decisively in the cross, is calculated to break our affections for these other things and reseat them in Christ. In that way God is glorified and we are satisfied. Our good and his glory come together at the cross.
This breaking of the affections, for our good and His glory, to reseat them in Christ does not mean that we will not have affections for other things, but that they will be in right proportion. We will be able to enjoy other things properly, as gifts of God, but when our greatest affection is in Christ, there is nothing that we hold back, should he require it of us. This is the way, I think, to understand the commands to hate our family members, as well as some other hard sayings. We do not literally hate, but if we were to weigh affections, God wins by a land slide.
I said in the previous post that sharing the Gospel is at least using words, and it should be backed by a lifestyle of Christ-like love that proves the words we use. Many would like to opt out of the sharing of the Gospel and replace that responsibility with simply doing nice things. "I will just love people," we sometimes say. I disagree with this ideologically, but I must admit that my lifestyle often places me in this category de facto. Pray for me.
Sharing the Gospel without words - which I think is an oxymoron - is kind of like trying to fly an airplane with one wing. Just as this sharing should not be done without words, we should neither go at it brute force with a megaphone, lacking a compassionate heart expressed through acts of love.
If we truly love people, we will care deeply about their eternal destiny (as Jesus does), and we should hope God gives us the opportunity to tell them the truth. To refrain from speaking the words of truth is far from loving. I suspect that the root hesitancy here is not a Spirit-led consideration of our spiritual gifts and evangelistic efforts, but rather fear and cowardice in the face of our world's relativism. I do not want to be a coward. God takes cowardice seriously. It is the first on the list here in Revelation 21:8 - "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."
All this to say, the dichotomy between acts of love and sharing the Gospel with words is a false dichotomy. To speak words of truth from the Father, by the Spirit, about the Son, is itself a supreme act of love. And we will never pay as great a price for speaking the truth about Jesus as he himself paid on the cross. May his grace toward us in sacrifice embolden us as we take the treasure of his Word to the nations, to our neighbors, to our families.
I too have been guilty of trying to use love to present the Gospel rather than God's Word. There was somehow an underlying belief in me that God' Word was a thing for "ripe fruit," and that until they reach that stage, I should just shower them with love (the social Gospel).
ReplyDeleteIt was not until I discussed with a friend that was a new believer the process of his conversion. Day after day his friend would present the gospel to him with straight Scripture. As he told me this, tears began to overwhelm my eyes, and conviction overwhelmed my heart. The verse "God's Word will not return void" rang in my head. If I believed this promise, why did I not act in its power?
I am now in a process of boldly sharing God's Word, even to those that I do not consider "ripe." This has not diminished my amount of love for the lost, but it has increased the power that I attribute to God's Word.