Answer With Gentleness AND Reverence
I’m just getting home from Small Group. Tonight we were talking about evangelism. Brother Doug was leading the group and he’s one of those people who God sends sinners to in every imaginable way. Doug was talking about the common story of sharing your faith on an airplane. The person you’re sitting beside is stuck there for the length of the flight. It’s like having a captive audience. Of course everyone always laughs at that point in this commonly told witnessing story. For some reason everyone seems to love to talk about witnessing on airplanes.. I wonder how much of that ACTUALLY goes on?
The focus of the night was preaching “Christ, and Him crucified” instead of some feel good message of self-help and church membership as though that were the Gospel. I was excited actually because most in the group were really “getting it” that only the true Gospel of Christ saves. But you know so often when I’m talking to a sinner about Christ, and Him crucified I perceive Christians getting uncomfortable when I tell the sinner that Christ was crucified for their sins. It’s painful for sinners to examine themselves in the light of God’s Word. It hurts to have your bubble broken and see yourself as you actually are for the first time. Sometimes Christians think it’s rude of me to walk up to someone on the street and after a very short conversation start letting them see that their sins are proof they will spend Eternity in the Lake of Fire unless they are saved by Christ.
I started to think about the person being witnessed to on a plane. Imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have a Christian exposing their sin for an entire two hour flight. Seriously, imagine it. Wouldn’t that suck?
OK now that you’ve imagined what it would be like for them to endure that for a two hour flight, imagine if the Christian kept their mouth shut for those two hours and both of you had a pleasant flight. Maybe you exchanged chit chat about the weather and your families. Sounds much better right? Surely that’s a more loving way to treat people right?
Well, imagine that instead of a nice flight the plane crashed and no one survived. Imagine that instead of having to endure a conversation about their sin for two hours that very same person that you saved from having to endure a sucky last flight instead now must endure condemnation and torment in fire for all Eternity.
In 1st Peter 3:15 we read;
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;
We need to be loving with people, we must give the answers for the hope we have in gentleness. No one should ever enjoy pointing out someone else’s sin. Neither should we ever point out sin without giving the Divine solution provided by Christ through the Gospel. But we can not be so gentle that we treat Christ without reverence. We must remember, and proclaim His death until His return. We have to tell people that He died for our sins, was buried and rose again on the third day to be seen alive by many credible witnesses.
We can’t spare someone a little pain and discomfort at the cost of being irreverent to Our Lord and Savior. And we dare not spare a person inconvenience now so that they can endure unending torture later.
God Bless,
Kev
Tags: The Gospel, Witness, witnessing
