I have a read a couple of thought provoking articles lately on knowing and loving the lost- here are some highlights.
It is interesting to think about how we view our culture and the unbelievers we know. As we are passionate about the glory of God we should indeed be stirred by the sin we see around us. Yet even as anger rises in us in zeal for our God, compassion and love should simultaneously pour forth. This is not an easy thing but I believe it is to be our goal.
Josh Harris in a post entitled, “Do You Know Them?“ Out of a study on 1 Corinthians 8 and 9 Harris made the following observations:
The gospel advances when we’re more concerned with reaching the lost than protecting our rights.
Paul said that everything he did was for the sake of the gospel (verse 23). He made himself a servant so that he could win more men and women to the gospel (verse 19). Over the next few days, I want to consider three things we learn from Paul’s example about winning the lost. The first is this:
1. To win the lost we need to know them.
Paul knew his audience. For example, in verse 12 he was aware that getting paid for preaching would hinder some people from receiving the gospel, suspecting he was only in it for the money. In verse 20 and following, we learn that he’s keenly aware of the different values and habits of Jews and non-Jews.
Paul not only sought to know God and the unchanging truth of his gospel but, out of love, he also sought to know and understand the lost people he was trying to reach with the gospel.
Who is it that God has called you to reach with the gospel? Who are the unbelieving people in your life? In your family, neighborhood, job or work? Do you know them?
Not just their name and address, do you really know them?
Do you know their fears? Do you know what they trust in? Do you know the values and ideals that they’ve built their life around? Do you know the questions that keep them from faith? And if you don’t know these things are you willing to ask? Are you willing to learn? Are you willing to listen and ask probing questions?
Too often we treat evangelism as a duty we want to get over as quickly as possible. Instead of taking the time to know who we’re talking to, instead of investing in a friendship and truly caring for them, we often just use the same approach, the same tract, the same phrases on every person we come across. In a sense we just “dump” gospel data on them and run away.
But is it really wise or loving to use the same approach to sharing the gospel with people who have radically different worldviews and ideas and backgrounds?
Recently I’ve been studying the writings of Francis Schaeffer, a significant Christian author and apologist of the last century. Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics was based on Christ’s call to love others as we love ourselves–and this involved a willingness to be as he put it, “entirely exposed to the person to whom we are talking.”
In his book about Schaeffer’s apologetics titlted Truth and Love, Bryan Follis writes that, when critics of this method said that he should just preach “the simple gospel,” Schaeffer replied that “you have to preach the simple gospel so that it is simple to the person to whom you are talking or it is no longer simple.”
If we don’t understand and know the person we’re talking to, we can’t be sure that they grasp or understand the “simple gospel.” If words like “salvation” and “sin” have no meaning to them, then our simple statement of the gospel will not make any sense at all.
Motivated by love, we need to know who it is we’re seeking to win.
Speaking of Francis Schaeffer, John Fischer wrote an article on Schaeffer in Christianity Today entitled, “Learning to Cry for the Culture.” Here are a couple of highlights from that article.
He was the closest thing to a “man of sorrows” I have seen.
I grew up with a Christianity that was predisposed against sorrow. To be sad was to deny your faith or your salvation. Jesus had made us happy, and we had an obligation to always show that happiness. Then Francis Schaeffer came along. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost and he knew why. He was the first Christian I found who could embrace faith and the despair of a lost humanity at the same time. Though he had been found, he still knew what it was to be lost.
Schaeffer saw the most brilliant thinkers and artists of his day as trapped under what he called a line of despair—in a lower-story hopelessness without any access to upper-story revelation. Schaeffer taught his followers not to sneer at or dismiss the dissonance in modern art. He showed how these artists were merely expressing the outcome of the presuppositions of the modern era that did away with God and put all conclusions on a strictly human, rational level. Instead of shaking our heads at a depressing, dark, abstract work of art, the true Christian reaction should be to weep for the lost person who created it. Schaeffer was a rare Christian leader who advocated understanding and empathizing with non-Christians instead of taking issue with them.
Francis Schaeffer was not afraid to ask why, and he did not rest until he had an answer. Why are our most brilliant thinkers in despair? Why is our art so dark? Why have abortion and euthanasia become so easy on the conscience of a generation? What process of thinking has led to this ultimate denial of the value of human life? Though some may disagree with his answers, no one can gainsay the passion with which he sought them.
Jesus asked us to love our enemies. Part of loving is learning to understand. Too few Christians today seek to understand why their enemies think in ways that we find abhorrent. Too many of us are too busy bashing feminists, secular humanists, gay activists, and political liberals to consider why they believe what they do. It’s difficult to sympathize with people we see as threats to our children and our neighborhoods. It’s hard to weep over those whom we have declared enemies.
Perhaps a good beginning would be to more fully grasp the depravity of our own souls and the depth to which God’s grace had to go to reach us. I doubt we can cry over the world if we’ve never cried over ourselves.