Do not try the following when you are discouraged by the
lack of spiritual progress among those in your ministry setting. In other words, if you have been experiencing
disappointment with the spiritual condition of those in your discipleship
group, Bible class, or church, wait awhile before you attempt the experiment I
suggest. For if you aren’t discouraged
before you try this little quiz, you almost certainly will be afterward.
Distribute pens and paper to all who are present. Then ask, “How many times do you think you
have heard the gospel?” Some listeners,
especially those who have been Christians for many years or who have attended
Bible-preaching churches since childhood, may roll their eyes and say,
“Thousands of times.” Others will nod,
affirming their repeated exposure to the Gospel.
“Good!” you reply.
“And since most of you profess to be Christians, you certainly had to
not only hear the Gospel, but understand it well enough to believe it and be
saved, right?”
Again, you’ll see relaxed, confident affirmations all
around.
“Great! Since you’re
all so familiar with the Gospel, I’m sure you won’t have any problems with this
simple exercise. Please take that sheet
of paper and write down the Gospel. In a
paragraph or so, write the message people must hear, understand, and believe in
order to be right with God and go to Heaven.”
Watch people freeze.
“Please, go ahead now and write a paragraph declaring the
Gospel which you say you have heard perhaps thousands of times and which you
understood and believed when you were saved.”
Now, in an increasingly uncomfortable silence, people will
begin shifting in their seats, shuffling their feet, and staring at the sheet
of paper. Many will not know what to
write. The only thing more discouraging
than these empty sheets will be some of the things people actually do write.
What will likely become depressingly apparent in this pop
quiz is that an alarming number of those in your group are unclear on the most
basic and important message of the Bible.
Despite the fact that by their own admission they have read or heard
countless presentations of the Gospel and claim to have experienced new life in
Christ through its power, they are unable to convey even the ABCs of the
message of salvation.
What are the implications of this inability to articulate
the Gospel? For some, it surely reveals
the reality that they aren’t Christians at all.
If you maintain—as I hope you do—that no one is saved apart from
believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is rather hard to argue that a person
has savingly believed the Gospel if they cannot convey—in their own words and
at their own level of understanding—the message they claim to have believed.
For those who are genuine Christians, but for whatever
reason are unable to articulate the Gospel there’s another implication: their efforts at personal evangelism are
likely to be seldom and shallow. If
someone cannot communicate the Gospel in the loving environment of a gathering
of Christians, how can they possibly do so with unbelievers out in the
world? No amount of pulpit encouragement
or shame about evangelism will motivate them to speak words under pressure that
they cannot express in the best of circumstances.
Still another implication for true Christians who are
unclear on the Gospel—and the one most relevant to this book—is that a weak
grasp of the Gospel is a hindrance to holiness.
Or to put it positively, those who know the Gospel best are those most likely
to become closest to Christ and most like Christ. Brian Hedges understands that
the pursuit of “the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews
12:14) requires a clear understanding the Gospel. For it is in the Gospel that we see Christ in
His glory most clearly. And the better
we understand and feast our souls on the Gospel of Christ, the more intimate
with and like Jesus we become. This,
writes the author of the book in your hands, is the message of 2 Corinthians
3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are
being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Or as Hedges puts it, “God changes us by
giving us a vision of his glory revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Turn the page now, and in the lines that follow, may you
more clearly see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Donald S. Whitney
Associate Professor
of Biblical Spirituality
The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary
Louisville, KY
Author of Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
www.BiblicalSpirituality.org
