A Crit­ic­al Look at “Friend­ship Evangelism”

Intro­duc­tion

It is com­mon prac­tice among evan­gel­ic­als (and oth­er sim­il­ar move­ments) to use friend­ships as a means of evan­gel­ism. As appeal­ing as it might sound to want to make accept­ing the gos­pel easi­er for people, the Chris­ti­an mes­sage is, and will always be, a mes­sage of the cross. That is to say, a mes­sage of self-sacrifice and devo­tion. For many of his listen­ers, Jesus’ mes­sage was an offence. Some simply left him, say­ing “This is a hard teach­ing. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60), oth­ers became abus­ive, even going as far as hav­ing him put to death.

And what was the reas­on for their rejec­tion? Jesus’ assess­ment was that people love their own lives—that is, their own plans and aims and pleasures.

In con­trast to Jesus’ mes­sage, friend­ship evan­gel­ism, by neces­sity, includes get­ting involved in the myri­ad of ways in which people “love their lives”. It means shar­ing their interests and tak­ing part in their activ­it­ies and dis­trac­tions. If one does the same things they do, how is it pos­sible to show them what los­ing one’s life means? If a believ­er lets them­selves be swept away in the same tor­rent of water as those who don’t believe, how can they pull them out? Such a “gos­pel” might spare a believ­er from being per­se­cuted, but it can­not save anyone.

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, the love of the Fath­er is not in him. For everything in the world—the crav­ings of sin­ful man, the lust of his eyes and the boast­ing of what he has and does—comes not from the Fath­er but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever. (1 John 2:15–17)^[1]

In this art­icle we take a look at the prob­lems with friend­ship evan­gel­ism and con­trast it with the approach of Jesus, Paul and the apostles towards preach­ing the gospel.

Part I The Found­a­tion for Evangelism

1 What Is the Mes­sage That Jesus Preached?

Before we think about how to evan­gel­ise, that is, how to help people under­stand sal­va­tion through Jesus, we first need to be clear on what that sal­va­tion actu­ally means. There are many aspects that are cru­cial to salvation—from Jesus’ love shown in his life and death, his divin­ity and medi­at­or­ship and much more.

One aspect which has par­tic­u­lar rel­ev­ance to the issue of friend­ship evan­gel­ism is repent­ance and what kind of life and devo­tion Jesus called people to.

1.1 Repent­ance Means a Com­plete Change of Life

Repent­ance is the pre­requis­ite for receiv­ing God’s for­give­ness, and means turn­ing to him with sin­cere regret over the sin­ful way of life one has lived. We can see examples of this in the story about Zac­ch­eus and the sin­ful woman:

All the people saw this and began to mut­ter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sin­ner.” But Zac­chaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my pos­ses­sions to the poor, and if I have cheated any­body out of any­thing, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today sal­va­tion has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abra­ham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:7–10)

Now one of the Phar­isees invited Jesus to have din­ner with him, so he went to the Phar­isee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sin­ful life in that town learned that Jesus was eat­ing at the Phar­isee’s house, she brought an ala­baster jar of per­fume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weep­ing, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured per­fume on them. (Luke 7:36–38)

Jesus used many words and par­ables to show that real repent­ance means turn­ing away from sin and doing God’s will—that is, turn­ing from a self-willed life to a God-willed life:

“Teach­er, which is the greatest com­mand­ment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest com­mand­ment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ All the Law and the Proph­ets hang on these two com­mand­ments.” (Mat­thew 22:36–39)

Then he said to them all: “Who­ever wants to be my dis­ciple must deny them­selves and take up their cross daily and fol­low me. For who­ever wants to save their life will lose it, but who­ever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or for­feit their very self?” (Luke 9:23–25)

So we see that Jesus con­nec­ted becom­ing a Chris­ti­an with giv­ing our whole life to him in such a way that we con­sciously strive to do what God wants and not to live for ourselves. This is a mes­sage that many find hard, and cer­tainly not one with which you can attract many friends.

1.2 Repent­ance Comes by Under­stand­ing Sin in the Light of God’s Holiness

Repent­ance includes a com­plete change of atti­tude regard­ing the grav­ity of sin:

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is bet­ter for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.[[/footnote]] And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is bet­ter for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.[[/footnote]] (Mat­thew 5:29–30)

The Apostle Peter adds:

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is writ­ten: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15–16)

The good news of the gos­pel is a very joy­ful mes­sage, but it is also a very ser­i­ous one. The way we com­mu­nic­ate it to people should reflect this ser­i­ous­ness, so that they can under­stand that they are being called to stand before the one holy God, and that they need to repent.

When a per­son under­stands God’s holi­ness they will under­stand how deeply sin­ful their life is. This is the basis for repent­ance and for liv­ing a holy life. If meth­ods of evan­gel­ism are used which do not reflect God’s holi­ness (for example, which treat sin, such as pleasure-seeking, lightly) then they can­not bear testi­mony about him or lead a per­son to rev­er­ent fear and the con­vic­tion of how much their sin sep­ar­ates them from God. Paul urges believ­ers to give this testimony:

There­fore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my pres­ence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your sal­va­tion with fear and trem­bling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to ful­fill his good pur­pose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blame­less and pure, chil­dren of God without fault in a warped and crooked gen­er­a­tion. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. (Phil­ip­pi­ans 2:12–16)

This atti­tude described here is what we mean when we talk of “rev­er­ent fear”: walk­ing in awe of God, liv­ing care­fully and con­sciously, choos­ing to do only what is truly good and holy. Such a life brings glory to God. It bears testi­mony to the strength he gives and how he trans­forms those who sub­mit to him. This is the wit­ness that people need.

1.3 Fol­low­ing Jesus Means Turn­ing Away from a Selfish and Worldly Way of Life

Today many people (includ­ing reli­gious people) use a lot of time for them­selves in a baff­ling vari­ety of leis­ure activ­it­ies and hob­bies. So much unne­ces­sary time, money and effort is spent on the self. By look­ing for ful­fil­ment in such activ­it­ies, people miss the joy that God wants to give and neg­lect the spir­itu­al and prac­tic­al needs of others.

Let’s com­pare this with Jesus’ example:
He loved the Fath­er and people so much that he always dir­ec­ted his atten­tion to how he can serve them. How deep must this wish to serve have been, when in the greatest pain while dying on the cross he spoke words of hope for the rebel beside him and made arrange­ments for the care of his moth­er (Luke 23:39–43, John 19:26–27)? He was simply doing what he had always done, namely, put­ting oth­ers first and for­get­ting himself.

We can­not find examples in the Bible of Jesus hav­ing sought his own pleas­ure or done things that didn’t serve spir­itu­al aims. He lived entirely for oth­ers, turn­ing to them in tire­less devo­tion to teach them what it really means to live by faith. He saw their urgent need to know the Father.

It is this example that he calls us to fol­low. He describes this call in terms such as “hating/losing one’s life” or “dying” or “car­ry­ing the cross” or “lov­ing just like he did” (John 12:25–26, John 15:9–17, John 13:34, Luke 14:25–33,…).

The world asks: “What’s in it for me?”, “What makes me happy / feel good?”

A Chris­ti­an asks: “How can I devote my life com­pletely to God?”, “How can I love my broth­ers and sis­ters in faith, and help oth­er people to find God’s love?”, “How can I grow in faith and reject the desires of this world?”

Some reli­gious people go to great lengths to show that Chris­ti­ans are just like unbe­liev­ers in order to attract people to “the gos­pel”. How is this pos­sible, when Jesus’ life was so utterly oppos­ite to the world? How can this be called Christianity?

A sin­ner, who knows he is a sin­ner, is bet­ter off than a reli­gious per­son who does not recog­nise his sin. Sadly, some who once turned away from worldly lives, in which they knew they were sin­ful, are cheated by reli­gious groups into think­ing that you can com­bine a worldly and Chris­ti­an life. This is much harder to recog­nise and repent of because the world­li­ness is giv­en a more or less “spir­itu­al” coat­ing (= justification).

We will look at a few com­mon responses we hear from people when we speak with them about the dif­fer­ence between the atti­tude of Chris­ti­ans and that of unbe­liev­ers later in the sec­tion “Fre­quently Used Excuses”. Firstly how­ever, we would like to con­tin­ue with look­ing at the bib­lic­al example for evan­gel­ism in the life of Jesus and his followers….

2 How Did Jesus Com­mu­nic­ate His Mes­sage to People?

Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man demon­strates very well how he called people:

As Jesus star­ted on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teach­er”, he asked, “what must I do to inher­it etern­al life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the com­mand­ments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not com­mit adul­tery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testi­mony, you shall not defraud, hon­or your fath­er and moth­er.’” “Teach­er”, he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack”, he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treas­ure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his dis­ciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the king­dom of God!” The dis­ciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Chil­dren, how hard it isto enter the king­dom of God! It is easi­er for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the king­dom of God.” (Mark 10:17–25)

Jesus knew that this man needed to hear God’s per­fect stand­ard in order to be saved. Although the man was not ready to repent, this was the greatest dis­play of love that Jesus could show him. Jesus gave him the chance of his life to assess his sins and to devote him­self to God by clearly and dir­ectly explain­ing what was miss­ing in the man’s read­i­ness to serve God. He did not try to win him over by appeal­ing to his par­tic­u­lar hob­bies or interests. He got straight to the point, and when the man did not want to fol­low him, he did not run after him, or try to com­fort him and make the way sound easier.

Like­wise, we owe people this clar­ity about God’s stand­ard if we want to preach the gos­pel to them.

The Samar­it­an woman at the well (John 4) also received a very dir­ect call­ing. Jesus used the fact that she had come to draw water to start talk­ing about him­self (that he is the liv­ing water), and then touched on a very sens­it­ive point in her life that hindered her from being able to receive this liv­ing water (she lived in adul­tery). Her reac­tion, how­ever, was one of great amazement and joy. She saw the love and power of God in his words.

These examples show that the prob­lem is not how quickly or dir­ectly we speak about the gos­pel with people. The atti­tude of the listen­er is what is decis­ive. The par­able of the sower con­tains a descrip­tion of four kinds of ground which rep­res­ent the vari­ous reac­tions to hear­ing the gos­pel (Mat­thew 13:3–8 and 13:18–23). The seed which is sown is good, and the good soil receives it with joy, but the oth­er kinds of ground (= people’s hearts) describe the hard-heartedness of many people towards God. Jesus shows that it is not God’s stand­ard which is the obstacle to repent­ance, but their lack of openness.

Jesus was not afraid of “tread­ing on toes”, that is, of offend­ing people. This was not because he was arrog­ant or insens­it­ive, but because he knew that people des­per­ately needed to hear the truth. He showed his love by chal­len­ging them to the core to stand before God and devote their lives to him. Love means say­ing the truth, and not just being friendly, as here:

As they were walk­ing along the road, a man said to him, “I will fol­low you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to anoth­er man, “Fol­low me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my fath­er.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and pro­claim the king­dom of God.” Still anoth­er said, “I will fol­low you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good­bye to my fam­ily.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for ser­vice in the king­dom of God.” (Luke 9:57–62)

Such strong words are not the excep­tion in Jesus’ min­istry. Even a brief look at the gos­pels reveals that the vast major­ity of his words included some kind of chal­lenge to take on God’s per­spect­ive of life and the world. For more on this point, see our web­site top­ic “Love and Assess­ment”.

How is it pos­sible to recon­cile this dir­ect man­ner of speak­ing, as in the example above, with the people-pleasing approach of friend­ship evangelism?

Of course, if you your­self do not live a holy life, you will not be able to preach God’s stand­ard clearly to oth­ers. For many, the first step in assess­ing this mat­ter of how to evan­gel­ise will first include the read­i­ness to take a crit­ic­al look at their own lives.

Liv­ing right­eously and pro­claim­ing the truth clearly will attract oppos­i­tion, which in Jesus case led to his cru­ci­fix­ion. There can be no clear­er testi­mony against a people-pleasing and com­prom­ised mes­sage. This mes­sage was con­tin­ued by the dis­ciples, as we shall look at in the next section.

3 The Apostles’ Evangelism

3.1 A Mes­sage That Brings Persecution

3.1.1 The Early Church

At Pente­cost, Peter preached openly, finally even con­vict­ing the Jews of hav­ing cru­ci­fied the Messiah.

“…There­fore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you cru­ci­fied, both Lord and Mes­si­ah.” When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the oth­er apostles, “Broth­ers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be bap­tized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the for­give­ness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spir­it. The prom­ise is for you and your chil­dren and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With many oth­er words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this cor­rupt gen­er­a­tion.” Those who accep­ted his mes­sage were bap­tized, and about three thou­sand were added to their num­ber that day. (Acts 2:36–41)

It was the word of God—the testi­mony of God’s act­ing and salvation—that deeply touched the people’s hearts. They were not impressed by any out­ward appear­ances or some kind of show. Peter preached a clear, unadul­ter­ated mes­sage of God’s love and the call to repent­ance. The people who were will­ing to listen were shaken rather than offen­ded, because they let God speak to them and con­vict them through Peter’s words.

Where people are not ready to let God speak to them, even the best tech­niques of per­sua­sion will not move their hearts. Through such tech­niques, it is pos­sible to move someone to become reli­gious, but not to become a Chris­ti­an (here we refer to “reli­gious” in the sense of adapt­ing to reli­gious life without liv­ing in true obed­i­ence to God). When the truth is preached plainly, such people will be offen­ded by the claim that God makes on their lives through the gos­pel. This is unavoidable.

In the begin­ning, the mes­sage of the gos­pel led to Chris­ti­ans being per­se­cuted. Nev­er­the­less, the Apostles did not hold back from preach­ing what they knew was a great offense to many.

The priests and the cap­tain of the temple guard and the Sad­ducees came up to Peter and John while they were speak­ing to the people. They were greatly dis­turbed because the apostles were teach­ing the people and pro­claim­ing in Jesus the resur­rec­tion of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was even­ing, they put them in jail until the next day. (Acts 4:1–3)

The churches were not loved by every­one. As they fol­lowed Jesus’ example and spoke the word of God boldly, they too faced much persecution.

Remem­ber those earli­er days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great con­test in the face of suf­fer­ing. Some­times you were pub­licly exposed to insult and per­se­cu­tion; at oth­er times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sym­path­ised with those in pris­on and joy­fully accep­ted the con­fis­ca­tion of your prop­erty, because you knew that you yourselves had bet­ter and last­ing pos­ses­sions. (Heb 10:32–34)

It was just as Jesus had promised—the dis­ciples were not above their mas­ter, and were per­se­cuted just as he had been (John 15:20).

(For oth­er examples, see: Acts 5:17–42, Acts 6:8–8:3)

3.1.2 Paul—No Compromises

Paul spoke the word boldly by the power of the spir­it wherever he went. Some accep­ted the word joy­fully, but oth­ers imme­di­ately took offense and per­se­cuted him, even try­ing to kill him. This did not influ­ence him, and in each town he con­tin­ued to preach openly and dir­ectly until he was forced to move on.

Now at Iconi­um they entered togeth­er into the Jew­ish syn­agogue and spoke in such a way that a great num­ber of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbe­liev­ing Jews stirred up the Gen­tiles and poisoned their minds against the broth­ers. So they remained for a long time, speak­ing boldly for the Lord, who bore wit­ness to the word of his grace, grant­ing signs and won­ders to be done by their hands. But the people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. When an attempt was made by both Gen­tiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mis­treat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lys­tra and Derbe, cit­ies of Lycao­nia, and to the sur­round­ing coun­try, and there they con­tin­ued to preach the gos­pel. (Acts 14:1–7, ESV)

This pat­tern repeated through­out Paul’s jour­neys. He did not take an easi­er way by try­ing to care­fully make friends with the Jews and win them over through tak­ing part in their lives. When he entered a town, he imme­di­ately entered the syn­agogue and spoke openly about Jesus, includ­ing his cru­ci­fix­ion, which was an espe­cially dif­fi­cult point for Jews to accept (see Acts 13:14–43).

Just as Jesus com­manded, Paul loved all people. His being rejec­ted was not a res­ult of bad beha­viour but was rather a con­sequence of simply hav­ing loved people by speak­ing the truth. He was ready to bear rejec­tion for the sake of the truth—ready to be an “out­sider”.

He proph­esied from per­son­al experience:

In fact, every­one who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be per­se­cuted. (2 Timothy 3:12)

3.2 What Did Paul Him­self Say About How He Evangelised?

There­fore, since through God’s mercy we have this min­istry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shame­ful ways; we do not use decep­tion, nor do we dis­tort the word of God. On the con­trary, by set­ting forth the truth plainly we com­mend ourselves to every man’s con­science in the sight of God. And even if our gos­pel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are per­ish­ing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbe­liev­ers, so that they can­not see the light of the gos­pel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of dark­ness”, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the know­ledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 4:1–6)

Like Jesus, Paul also preached an uncom­prom­ising mes­sage. He was very con­cerned that people be led to true repent­ance and to the per­son of Christ, not to him­self. He did not use meth­ods to lure people to the gos­pel but simply let the word of God touch their hearts, so that they could exper­i­ence God’s power in their lives. He trus­ted that although many found this mes­sage hard, those who really longed for peace with God would under­stand it.

And so it was with me, broth­ers and sis­ters. When I came to you, I did not come with elo­quence or human wis­dom as I pro­claimed to you the testi­mony about God. For I resolved to know noth­ing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him cru­ci­fied. I came to you in weak­ness with great fear and trem­bling. My mes­sage and my preach­ing were not with wise and per­suas­ive words, but with a demon­stra­tion of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wis­dom, but on God’s power. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 2:1–5)

The address­ees of this let­ter were the Chris­ti­ans in Cor­inth. Prob­lems had aris­en in which some of the Chris­ti­ans had shown appre­ci­ation for skilled speakers—an art-form which was highly hon­oured in Greek soci­ety. Rather than try­ing to adapt to their tastes in his preach­ing and thus spark their interest, Paul admon­ishes them for their worldly assess­ments. In the pas­sage above he explains that he came to them sin­cerely, con­sciously choos­ing plain, simple speech. In this way the gos­pel itself should “speak” to them, rather than any attract­ive “pack­aging” (i.e. nice rhetoric).

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as cap­tives in Christ’s tri­umph­al pro­ces­sion and uses us to spread the aroma of the know­ledge of him every­where. For we are to God the pleas­ing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are per­ish­ing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the oth­er, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the con­trary, in Christ we speak before God with sin­cer­ity, as those sent from God. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 2:14–17)

The call giv­en to people is the same, but the way people react to it differs—not essen­tially because of the out­ward cir­cum­stances or the way we approach people, but because of their own hearts.

Paul accep­ted the fact that many people would take offense at the gos­pel. For the sake of those who were thirsty for truth he preached it without com­prom­ise, in the clearest words pos­sible. He knew that this alone can lead people to true repent­ance and a whole-hearted decision for Jesus.

Above all, it was through their tire­less devo­tion, liv­ing out the mes­sage, that Paul and his co-workers gave testi­mony about Jesus:

You know, broth­ers and sis­ters, that our vis­it to you was not without res­ults. We had pre­vi­ously suffered and been treated out­rageously in Phil­ippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gos­pel in the face of strong oppos­i­tion. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we try­ing to trick you. On the con­trary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrus­ted with the gos­pel. We are not try­ing to please people but God, who tests our hearts. You know we nev­er used flat­tery, nor did we put on a mask to cov­er up greed—God is our wit­ness. We were not look­ing for praise from people, not from you or any­one else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asser­ted our author­ity. Instead, we were like young chil­dre­n­among you. Just as a nurs­ing moth­er cares for her chil­dren, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gos­pel of God but our lives as well. Surely you remem­ber, broth­ers and sis­ters, our toil and hard­ship; we worked night and day in order not to be a bur­den to any­one while we preached the gos­pel of God to you. You are wit­nesses, and so is God, of how holy, right­eous and blame­less we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a fath­er deals with his own chil­dren, encour­aging, com­fort­ing and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his king­dom and glory. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 2:1–12)

Any­one who knows how con­sum­ing par­ent­hood is, will be able to under­stand well, what kind of com­mit­ment Paul describes here when he com­pares his care for these young dis­ciples of Christ with that of a moth­er and fath­er. Through his life, he embod­ied the essence of the mes­sage of Jesus, and chal­lenged them to do the same, as expressed in the let­ter to the Corinthians:

Fol­low my example, as I fol­low the example of Christ. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 11:1)

4 How Should We Bear Witness?

Jesus estab­lished the Church as the greatest testi­mony of God’s act­ing to the world—through their love for one anoth­er, and the deep unity among them.

A new com­mand I give you: Love one anoth­er. As I have loved you, so you must love one anoth­er. By this every­one will know that you are my dis­ciples, if you love one anoth­er. (John 13:34–35)

My pray­er is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their mes­sage, that all of them may be one, Fath­er, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have giv­en them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to com­plete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20–23)

By these state­ments, Jesus expressed the import­ance of the Church as a whole giv­ing testi­mony. Chris­ti­an unity and devo­tion can­not be prac­tised alone. That is why Chris­ti­ans can best give testi­mony about the work of God in their lives when they are togeth­er, and togeth­er call people to life with him.

Jesus’ call to dis­ciple­ship was embod­ied in the life of the early church—in the devo­tion of the believ­ers to one anoth­er and in the deep unity they shared. See­ing their lives made it very simple for those seek­ing God to under­stand that liv­ing for God really means put­ting him first in everything and liv­ing a life of love and holi­ness. Through this testi­mony, people were able to under­stand the ser­i­ous­ness of God’s call and the real­ity of the com­mand of Jesus “…and any­one who does not take his cross and fol­low me is not worthy of me. Who­ever finds his life will lose it, and who­ever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Mat­thew 10:38–39

Paul expressed that the Church is the ful­fil­ment of God’s plan of sal­va­tion on earth:

…And God placed all things under his feet and appoin­ted him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the full­ness of him who fills everything in every way. (Eph­esians 1:22–23)

The fol­low­ing pas­sage is a clear example of what hap­pens when someone who is look­ing for God meets the Church:

So if the whole church comes togeth­er and every­one speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbe­liev­ers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbe­liev­er or an inquirer comes in while every­one is proph­esy­ing, they are con­victed of sin and are brought under judg­ment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and wor­ship God, exclaim­ing, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor­inthi­ans 14:23–25)^[2]

For more about Church see: “The Vis­ible Church”, “The Unity of All Chris­ti­ans” and “Church structure—Offices or Tasks?”.

One prob­lem with friend­ship evan­gel­ism is that the testi­mony of the indi­vidu­al is emphas­ised, rather than the testi­mony of the work of God in the Church. As Chris­ti­ans, we should not lead people to ourselves so that they are par­tic­u­larly impressed with our own per­son (not even our own “friend­li­ness”) but to Christ. Many people build rela­tion­ships where they make them­selves espe­cially “beloved” to one anoth­er and by doing so, they encour­age oth­ers to attach them­selves to their per­son. Such aims are not self­less and do not have God and the spir­itu­al well-being of oth­ers at heart (for more on this ques­tion see “God Is Love” and “Love and Assess­ment”).

5 How Should We Not Bear Witness?

“I befriend people first, and speak with them about God later, when they trust me more, and can see my love for them….” or “I don’t start talk­ing about God, but I wait for people to ask me why I do things differently….”

Such an approach sounds very appeal­ing at first glance and to be sure, in our daily con­tact with people who do not believe, we are called to be good examples and to show love as far as it depends on us. If, how­ever, we seek rela­tion­ships with them bey­ond the neces­sary con­tact at work or school etc., we cross a bor­der that exists between believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers. This thought might not be so self-evident for every­one. In Part II, we will explain more on this point.

Part II Prob­lems with Friend­ship Evangelism

6 Friend­ship Evan­gel­ism Is Dishonest

Nowhere in the New Test­a­ment can we read of Jesus approach­ing people like this:
“So you’re not really inter­ested in giv­ing your life for God? Don’t worry, just come and join us for some fun…” (i.e. relax­ing togeth­er, listen­ing to music, play­ing sport or some oth­er hobby).
How­ever, in the back of his mind he thinks: “…if they just come to the games night, I can get a chance to slip in a few words about the gospel.”

Jesus respec­ted people’s wish not to live with God, and did not try to influ­ence (manip­u­late) them, not even “for their own good” (i.e. that they might be saved). He knew it doesn’t work that way and that any oth­er approach than a dir­ect one is not hon­est. Appeal­ing to people’s desires in order to influ­ence them is sheer manipulation—just like any worldly mar­ket­ing strategy which tries to push people into buy­ing things they nev­er really wanted. In this way people are treated as objects rather than indi­vidu­als with a free will. In con­trast to this, Chris­ti­an love means tak­ing people ser­i­ously in their beliefs and opin­ions, and not using deceit­ful tac­tics in order to “win them over”. Remem­ber the example of Paul men­tioned in 1 Cor­inthi­ans 2:1–5.

Enti­cing people with things they like also gives a dis­tor­ted pic­ture of Chris­tian­ity because it gives the impres­sion that you can hold on to your life (your pleas­ures). Such an approach makes it seem as if there is little dif­fer­ence between the life of a believ­er and an unbeliever.

7 Friend­ship Evan­gel­ism Encour­ages a Worldly Lifestyle

The prob­lem is that many reli­gious people them­selves see no prob­lem in pur­su­ing their pleas­ures while liv­ing with God. Through their lives (their words may sound dif­fer­ent) they pro­claim that faith is just like anoth­er hobby you can fit along­side your oth­er worldly interests. Faith becomes some­thing to be touched on every now and then, as one feels like it, rather than being some­thing that con­sumes a Christian’s entire life.

Where the wish to give one’s life com­pletely for God is miss­ing, friend­ship evan­gel­ism provides a con­veni­ent excuse to con­tin­ue sin­ning under the guise of remain­ing “relat­able”, or “build­ing a base” to talk about God with oth­ers. This approach is neither hon­est towards one­self, nor towards God or oth­er people.

May I nev­er boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been cru­ci­fied to me, and I to the world. (Gala­tians 6:14)

I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave him­self for me. (Gala­tians 2:20)

Any­one who loves their life will lose it, while any­one who hates their life in this world will keep it for etern­al life. Who­ever serves me must fol­low me; and where I am, my ser­vant also will be. My Fath­er will hon­or the one who serves me. (John 12:25–26)

When friend­ship evan­gel­ism is used to jus­ti­fy doing things that do not please God, there is prac­tic­ally no lim­it to what is pos­sible for a Chris­ti­an to do. Some take a slightly milder approach, only going as far as invit­ing unbe­liev­ers for a games even­ing at home…others take it as far as going to parties or to the disco (or still worse, hold­ing a “Chris­ti­an” disco) in the name of “evan­gel­ism”.

Some reli­gious people even go to great lengths to prove to unbe­liev­ers: “I’m no dif­fer­ent to you…I’m a fan of the same foot­ball team…I listen to the same music…I saw the same movie as you….”

This does not help people to repent because it hinders them in under­stand­ing God’s holi­ness and denies that many such activ­it­ies are in them­selves sinful.

John writes:

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, love for the Father­is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Fath­er but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but who­ever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

8 Chris­ti­ans Can­not Make Friends with the World

It is nor­mal for Chris­ti­ans to seek God’s will in everything they do, as too, is the long­ing to view day to day occur­rences with his eyes. This leads to fun­da­ment­ally dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives on almost everything and to entirely dif­fer­ent pri­or­it­ies and usage of time than for unbe­liev­ers. As a Chris­ti­an strives to live a holy and godly life, they will be con­fron­ted with how incom­pat­ible their life is with that of unbelievers.

This is not a “prob­lem” to be over­come by mak­ing com­prom­ises, but a nat­ur­al, albeit pain­ful, part of being “ali­ens and strangers” in the world that Chris­ti­ans must humbly accept (Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 2:11).

Jesus him­self made no apo­lo­gies for his choice of friends:

You are my friends if you do what I com­mand. (John 15:14)

He did not try to be friends with every­one. He knew that those who reject his mes­sage live in oppos­i­tion to God and that his path was an entirely dif­fer­ent one to theirs.

These pas­sages express the sep­ar­a­tion that exists between a believ­er and an unbeliever:

You adul­ter­ous people, don’t you know that friend­ship with the world means enmity against God? There­fore, any­one who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scrip­ture says without reas­on that he jeal­ously longs for the spir­it he has caused to dwell in us? (James 4:4–5)

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hid­den with Christ in God. When Christ, who is yourlife, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, there­fore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexu­al immor­al­ity, impur­ity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idol­atry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. (Colos­si­ans 3:1–7)

When Jesus sent the dis­ciples out to preach the gos­pel he com­manded them to sep­ar­ate from those who were not open for their message:

Whatever town or vil­lage you enter, search there for some worthy per­son and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greet­ing. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If any­one will not wel­come you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bear­able for Sod­om and Gomor­rah on the day of judg­ment than for that town. (Mat­thew 10:11–15)

Like­wise, Paul expressed how impossible it is for believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers to share in fellowship:

Do not be yoked togeth­er with unbe­liev­ers. For what do right­eous­ness and wicked­ness have in com­mon? Or what fel­low­ship can light have with dark­ness? What har­mony is there between Christ and Beli­al? Or what does a believ­er have in com­mon with an unbe­liev­er? What agree­ment is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the liv­ing God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” There­fore, “Come out from them and be sep­ar­ate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Fath­er to you, and you will be my sons and daugh­ters, says the Lord Almighty.” There­fore, since we have these prom­ises, dear friends, let us puri­fy ourselves from everything that con­tam­in­ates body and spir­it, per­fect­ing holi­ness out of rev­er­ence for God. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 6:14–7:1)

Paul bor­rows this pic­ture from the law: “Do not plough with an ox and a don­key yoked togeth­er” (Deu­ter­o­nomy 22:10). To do so would make plough­ing a straight line near impossible. Sim­il­arly, a believ­er wants to do things which bring glory to God, and an unbe­liev­er does not. In spir­itu­al mat­ters they can­not work togeth­er, and everything in a Christian’s life is to be con­sidered spir­itu­ally. There is no “free time” in which spir­itu­al prin­ciples do not apply. Every situ­ation is a ser­vice to God (“ser­vice” is not a Sunday morn­ing meet­ing, see Romans 12:1–2).

The atti­tude of want­ing to serve God can­not remain a the­or­et­ic­al wish, but neces­sar­ily leads to com­pletely dif­fer­ent activ­it­ies and use of time to unbe­liev­ers. Apart from the daily respons­ib­il­it­ies of work or school etc., we have to con­sider how we use our time and what the pri­or­it­ies are. Unbe­liev­ers often look for their own aims such as how to amuse them­selves, but believ­ers look at how Jesus lived and seek tasks that are not for their own amuse­ment, but which serve God’s kingdom—such as fel­low­ship with oth­er believ­ers, or evan­gel­ism, read­ing the Bible, pray­er etc.

The pas­sage in 2 Cor­inthi­ans 6:14 ff. is often wrongly lim­ited to mar­riage or partnership.

The con­text of verse 14 con­tains no men­tion of mar­riage. Paul uses very strong expres­sions to show the oppos­i­tion between the life of a believ­er and an unbe­liev­er. They have no more agree­ment than Christ with idols! To exclude that this pas­sage refers to friend­ships would be incon­sist­ent with oth­er pas­sages in scrip­ture that speak about sep­ar­a­tion (see Psalm 1, 1 Peter 4:3–5, Mat­thew 10:34–36, Mat­thew 18:15–18, James 4:4–6, Eph­esians 5:3–7, 1 John 1:5–7). It would also be arbit­rary to refer this only to mar­riage and not to friend­ships. If there is such a dif­fer­ence between believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers, how can friend­ship be possible?

Paul did not mean, how­ever, that Chris­ti­ans can­not co-operate with unbe­liev­ers at all, for example in the work­place or at school. At work, the tasks in them­selves are not opposed to God, and a Chris­ti­an can show a good example by work­ing in a way which pleases God. In such con­texts, it is import­ant to be cooper­at­ive, help­ful and con­sid­er­ate. Respect and sub­mis­sion to author­it­ies is also bib­lic­al (Romans 13:1–7). We should only be care­ful not to com­prom­ise our faith. If Chris­ti­ans did not work in nor­mal soci­ety, they would have to leave it entirely—which would be unbib­lic­al (John 17:15).

A strong reas­on for many people to take part in things they know deep down are not pleas­ing to God is the fear of people’s reactions—the fear of los­ing friend­ships and being rejec­ted. Look­ing for accept­ance by unbe­liev­ers leads a per­son very far from God. Con­cern­ing this, Jeremi­ah wrote:

This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That per­son will be like a bush in the waste­lands; they will not see prosper­ity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose con­fid­ence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no wor­ries in a year of drought and nev­er fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremi­ah 17:5–8)

Con­cern­ing the con­sequences of pleas­ing people see also: John 5:44 and 12:42–43, Luke 9:26, Gala­tians 1:10.

9 Friend­ship Evan­gel­ism Is Exclusive

9.1 Favour­ing Some and Not Others

Jesus loved every­one and was ready to give everything in order to lead them to a rela­tion­ship with God. He did not want people to attach them­selves to him personally.

Then Jesus’ moth­er and broth­ers arrived. Stand­ing out­side, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sit­ting around him, and they told him, “Your moth­er and broth­ers are out­side look­ing for you.” “Who are my moth­er and my broth­ers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! Who­ever does God’s will is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Mark 3:31–35)

Jesus was open for every­one who wanted to know God. It was them to whom he devoted his time, and not the many who were not inter­ested in hear­ing what he had to say.

Friend­ship evan­gel­ism on the oth­er hand, leads to befriend­ing a few people in order to “reach” them with the gos­pel. Often these rela­tion­ships are built purely on per­son­al pref­er­ence (who it is that you like or find inter­est­ing, or where there is some com­mon interest—just like people in the world). This kind of friend­ship is based on selfish motives rather than the self­less wish to serve who­ever we can. Such rela­tion­ships are also exclusive—some are pre­ferred, oth­ers are not and remain alone.

Ask your­self: “Who is my real fam­ily? Who do I really have time for? Is God the aim of these relationships?”

By focus­ing on a few unbe­liev­ing friends, who may nev­er decide to fol­low Christ, many are passed by who may well be search­ing for God at this point in time. This is not love. We should be act­ively open for every­one who is look­ing for God right now.

He said to anoth­er man, “Fol­low me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my fath­er.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and pro­claim the king­dom of God.” (Luke 9:59–60)

Jesus calls the man to leave oth­ers to bury his fath­er so that he can preach the good news to people who are search­ing for God. He says that those who are spir­itu­ally “dead” (i.e. who do not want to live with God) can take care of this task. This is of course not a rule against bury­ing someone. It does, how­ever, show that Jesus was ready to cut through social norms in order to put the spir­itu­al pri­or­it­ies first, even if it meant offend­ing oth­ers. If he con­sidered an occa­sion such as a buri­al so sec­ond­ary, that the unbe­liev­ers should deal with it them­selves, then how much less would he have spent vast amounts of time doing unne­ces­sary things with them?

So we see that Jesus did not con­sider it right to spend many months and years “patiently” try­ing to draw people to him­self. Through his words the urgency and pri­or­ity of the mat­ter was made clear and people were faced with the decision to accept or reject God’s call. Hav­ing chosen God, they too should fol­low their mas­ter in show­ing oth­ers what it means to put ser­vice in God’s king­dom first in their lives.

True friend­ships are built not on human pref­er­ence, but on the com­mon wish to serve God. Only then, when the focus is not pleas­ing each oth­er, but pleas­ing God, can deep, free, self­less rela­tion­ships devel­op. Such rela­tion­ships are a testi­mony to the world of the love that God works in those who fol­low him (see John 13:34).

People have many reas­ons for choos­ing who their friends are—often based on com­mon interests, human sym­path­ies, per­son­al pref­er­ences or advantages…and oth­er such aims, which are largely selfish. Chris­ti­ans, on the oth­er hand, are called to love every­one, without bias. This love means invit­ing them to know God and his love. If people reject this love, then we have to accept that we can­not help them.

9.2 Cling­ing to People Endangers Spir­itu­al Life

For many, the wish that loved ones will be saved is a great hindrance to clearly assess­ing their lack of open­ness. This, in turn, leads to mak­ing com­prom­ises con­cern­ing mat­ters of obed­i­ence to God because of the expect­a­tions of friends and rel­at­ives, and to los­ing the clear spir­itu­al assess­ment of how import­ant it is to look for God’s will in everything. By this the stand­ard for Chris­ti­an life, that is, the truth, is changed.

Jesus knew that cling­ing to people will hold many back from enter­ing the King­dom of God. He loved people more than any­one. He was aware that love means not com­prom­ising the mes­sage, or try­ing to make the nar­row way broad­er, and that it is not pos­sible to live with God without tak­ing up the cross.

Enter through the nar­row gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruc­tion, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and nar­row the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Mat­thew 7:13–14)

Those who attempt to make the nar­row way broad­er so that those they love are included, depart from the mes­sage of Jesus. They can­not then lead oth­er people to God and will lose the way to life them­selves. This is not love—even if it might look and feel like love to live up to the expect­a­tions of others.

It was for good reas­on that to those fol­low­ing him, Jesus said:

Any­one who loves their fath­er or moth­er more than me is not worthy of me; any­one who loves their son or daugh­ter more than me is not worthy of me. Who­ever does not take up their cross and fol­low me is not worthy of me. Who­ever finds their life will lose it, and who­ever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Mat­thew 10:37–39)

10 Friend­ship Evan­gel­ism Hinders Deep­er Com­munity Life

In order to main­tain rela­tion­ships with unbe­liev­ers you have to spend (much) time with them. If all believ­ers do that, then they can­not really share deep com­mit­ted rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er, because each of them does dif­fer­ent things dur­ing the week. They have trouble find­ing time to come togeth­er: one per­son has vol­ley­ball on Mondays, the oth­er has art club on Tues­days, anoth­er arranged to see a film with work col­leagues on Wednesday…and so the list con­tin­ues. There is simply not the time any­more to meet togeth­er each day to read the Bible and share their lives. This is not the pat­tern of life we can read of in the New Test­a­ment. Of the Jer­u­s­alem com­munity we know:

They devoted them­selves to the apostles’ teach­ing and to fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and to pray­er. Every­one was filled with awe at the many won­ders and signs per­formed by the apostles. All the believ­ers were togeth­er and had everything in com­mon. They sold prop­erty and pos­ses­sions to give to any­one who had need. Every day they con­tin­ued to meet togeth­er in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate togeth­er with glad and sin­cere hearts, prais­ing God and enjoy­ing the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their num­ber daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42–47)

Here we see that the Chris­ti­ans devoted their lives to each oth­er. They invited oth­ers to share this with them. Their com­mon life was by no means a hindrance in hav­ing enough time to call unbe­liev­ers to life with God. We have much evid­ence of how they worked togeth­er to call people (instead of each one car­ry­ing out their own per­son­al “mis­sion”). Through shar­ing they were able to sup­port one anoth­er and free up more capa­city for evan­gel­ism and for fel­low­ship. Their love for each oth­er and the unity among them was the testi­mony to the change of life that sal­va­tion brings and demon­strated very vis­ibly what it means to give one’s whole life to Christ.

See to it, broth­ers and sis­ters, that none of you has a sin­ful, unbe­liev­ing heart that turns away from the liv­ing God. But encour­age one anoth­er daily, as long as it is called “Today”, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceit­ful­ness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our ori­gin­al con­vic­tion firmly to the very end. (Hebrews 3:12–14)

The writer of Hebrews encour­ages the Chris­ti­ans in this pas­sage to show care and con­cern for each other’s spir­itu­al lives every day. Fur­ther­more, he con­nects this with a strong warn­ing to ensure that every­one receives the help they need to over­come sin. The fight for holi­ness leads nat­ur­ally to the recog­ni­tion that we are weak, and need much strength­en­ing in our Chris­ti­an walk.

Part III Fre­quently Used Excuses

11 “Paul Said He Is a Jew to a Jew and a Greek to a Greek…So We Should Also Adapt to Where People Are at”

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to every­one, to win as many as pos­sible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not hav­ing the law I became like one not hav­ing the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not hav­ing the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all pos­sible means I might save some. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 9:19–22)

It is clear that we are called to be sens­it­ive to people—to under­stand where they are com­ing from, and, where pos­sible, avoid things that might be an offense to them…but it is a grave mis­take to use this pas­sage as a license to jus­ti­fy sin in the name of “reach­ing out” to people. There is no indic­a­tion in the New Test­a­ment that Chris­ti­ans took part in pagan activ­it­ies in order to be “relat­able” to them. His­tory sup­ports this. They were known for not par­tak­ing in the cir­cus events, theatre or sports.^[3]

In the pas­sage above, the men­tion of “those under the law” (= Jews) and “those not hav­ing the law” (= Gen­tiles) shows that Paul was refer­ring to people’s cultural/religious back­ground, not to indi­vidu­al life­styles. In his evan­gel­ism, he was sens­it­ive and respect­ful as far as his faith per­mit­ted, in order not to give offense unnecessarily.

One example of this respect con­cerned the Jew­ish law. The law was a par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive area for Jews, and under­stand­ably so, as it had been giv­en by God. Utmost care was required of the apostles to lead the Jews to under­stand that it is no longer neces­sary to keep the form­al aspects of the law. Romans chapter 14 describes how Paul became “weak”. He calls Jew­ish Chris­ti­ans who only eat veget­ables (per­haps because the meat which was avail­able was not kosh­er) “weak” in faith. Paul knew that he has the free­dom in Christ to eat non-kosher meat, but for the sake of the Jew­ish Chris­ti­ans, whose con­science was weak in this point, he ate veget­ables with them (Romans 14:20–21).

Toward Gen­tiles on the oth­er hand, Paul showed that he, even as a Jew, is free to eat with them, des­pite their non-kosher food (1 Cor­inthi­ans 10:27–30). He did not, how­ever, take part in pagan rituals in order to be able to preach to them.

Paul became “all things to all men” for their sal­va­tion. He did everything pos­sible to over­come cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers, or bar­ri­ers due to dif­fer­ing ways of think­ing, but in doing so, he was care­ful not to make any com­prom­ises. Com­prom­ises would have led to a dis­tor­ted pic­ture of Chris­ti­an free­dom, and hindered people from under­stand­ing how rad­ic­ally they must repent of their sin­ful lives in order to be saved.

Above all, Paul approached people “on their level” through his devo­tion. He sac­ri­ficed his time—indeed his whole life—in order to preach the word, often endan­ger­ing his life in doing so, just as Christ did. By this he demon­strated that Chris­ti­an life is not a life of fol­low­ing whatever leis­ure activ­it­ies one fan­cies, but a life of self-sacrifice and devo­tion. In the fol­low­ing verses Paul expresses to what kind of life he called people:

Do you not know that in a race all the run­ners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Every­one who com­petes in the games goes into strict train­ing. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. There­fore I do not run like someone run­ning aim­lessly; I do not fight like a box­er beat­ing the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to oth­ers, I myself will not be dis­qual­i­fied for the prize. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 9:24–27)

Are they ser­vants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in pris­on more fre­quently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pel­ted with stones, three times I was ship­wrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been con­stantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from ban­dits, in danger from my fel­low Jews, in danger from Gen­tiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the coun­try, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believ­ers. I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hun­ger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pres­sure of my con­cern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weak­ness. The God and Fath­er of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised for ever, knows that I am not lying. In Dam­as­cus the gov­ernor under King Aretas had the city of the Dam­as­cenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a bas­ket from a win­dow in the wall and slipped through his hands. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 11:23–33)

…Not a “take it easy” life, but a life of seek­ing God’s will! Should Paul and his co-workers have joined people in their leis­ure activ­it­ies, they would not have been able to show that life with Christ means renoun­cing such enter­tain­ment and dying to one­self in order to serve Christ. What could the world pos­sibly give them that they did not have in Christ? How could Paul have borne such suf­fer­ing for oth­ers, if he had giv­en any place in his heart for selfish ambi­tions, let alone expens­ive, time-consuming and dis­tract­ing hobbies?

Christ made him­self noth­ing (Phil­ip­pi­ans 2:1–11). Paul fol­lowed his example. They both call us to do likewise—and by doing so, to become “all things to all men”.

12 “No-one Would Come to Our Meet­ings If We Only Spoke About God!”

This state­ment begs the ques­tion: “Have you your­self really under­stood who God is, and what he calls you to?”

If we are aware that God is the author of life, cre­at­or of the uni­verse, source of love, hope, and all fulfilment…how can it be a prob­lem to speak “too much” about him? …And if we can­not speak too much about him, why should we act towards out­siders as though we could? They should see through our example which import­ance God and his word has in our lives.

Many people get to know God’s word as a dry and life­less book because they do not see it being put into prac­tice. It thereby remains for them an ancient text which is impossible to really under­stand and largely irrel­ev­ant for mod­ern life.

It is the task of Chris­ti­ans to open up the word of God to people. As they live by it, they con­nect its aged words with mod­ern, prac­tic­al life. Sud­denly, what was dif­fi­cult to under­stand becomes a daily liv­able real­ity, and the Bible is revealed as a fathom­less source of strength and encour­age­ment, cor­rec­tion and wisdom.

Why should we mix preach­ing God’s word with appeal­ing to people’s tastes and wishes—providing dis­trac­tions and enter­tain­ment, as if it lacked some­thing? Such prac­tices only com­mu­nic­ate to people that the Bible is actu­ally not as free­ing, ful­filling and life-giving as it claims to be.

On the con­trary, God’s word is the real “food”. If we truly appre­ci­ate it and live by it ourselves, then we will not see it as “bor­ing”, but will know how deeply sat­is­fy­ing it is, and will be able to help oth­ers to see it.

The Spir­it gives life; the flesh counts for noth­ing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spir­it and life. (John 6:63)

God’s word alone is life and freedom:

Very truly I tell you, a time is com­ing and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. (John 5:25)

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teach­ing, you are really my dis­ciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s des­cend­ants and have nev­er been slaves of any­one. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, every­one who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no per­man­ent place in the fam­ily, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31–36)

It is the work of God, that people who earli­er had little or no interest in God can turn and repent. That is why we need not be afraid that the gos­pel can be “too much” for someone to hear. It is truly the “Good News” that saves people from their sins. Those who are open for God deserve to have the chance to hear the gos­pel in all its full­ness so that they can repent. Preach­ing a “gos­pel” mixed with worldly attrac­tions might draw more people, but it can­not lead them to real repentance.

Jesus showed that we should not expect that many people will be open for the gos­pel. We should not feel obliged, there­fore, to adapt to the expect­a­tions of the masses.

Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the nar­row door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” (Luke 13:23–24)

13 “We Should Be in the ‘World’…”

…but not of it! Unfor­tu­nately, the first part of this say­ing (it is not a dir­ect quote from the Bible) is often emphas­ised, and the second part is giv­en little atten­tion. This say­ing is used as an excuse to par­take in worldly activ­it­ies, in the name of “evan­gel­ism”.

This is how Jesus speaks about the dis­ciples being “in the world”:

I have giv­en them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My pray­er is not that you take them out of the world but that you pro­tect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanc­ti­fy them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. (John 17:14–18)

Jesus called his dis­ciples to be a light to the world—that is, to be where people are, and to call them to repent­ance. He knew that when they speak the truth as he did they will face persecution—but they should not for that reas­on leave the world. If how­ever, they make com­prom­ises with the world they will be like salt which has lost its salt­i­ness and is good for noth­ing. They can no longer help oth­ers to repent, nor attain sal­va­tion them­selves. As pre­vi­ously cited, John expresses it like this:

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, love for the Fath­er is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Fath­er but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but who­ever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

14 “Jesus Went to Sin­ners (= Pubs/Parties…)”

This cliché can often be heard as an argu­ment why Chris­ti­ans should attend parties held by unbe­liev­ers and go with them to pubs in order to speak with them about God. Youth pas­tors seem to have an espe­cial fond­ness of this argu­ment. Where do they take it from? There are no examples of Jesus tak­ing part in the equi­val­ent of worldly parties today—with immor­al music and drunkenness.

If you count Zac­chaeus, the tax col­lect­or who wel­comed Jesus into his house and was so touched by what Jesus said that he repen­ted of his greed…then yes, Jesus went to “sinners”—and in this sense, we should too.

A closer look at pas­sages in the gos­pels which refer to such “sin­ners” reveals that it was often they who came to him, because they heard what he said and were con­victed of the need to repent.

Now the tax col­lect­ors and sin­ners were all gath­er­ing around to hear Jesus. But the Phar­isees and the teach­ers of the law muttered, “This man wel­comes sin­ners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1–2)

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sit­ting at the tax collector’s booth. “Fol­low me”, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and fol­lowed him. While Jesus was hav­ing din­ner at Levi’s house, many tax col­lect­ors and sin­ners were eat­ing with him and his dis­ciples, for there were many who fol­lowed him. (Mark 2:13–15)

These “sin­ners” had listened to John the Baptist preach that the mes­si­an­ic king­dom was near. They saw clearly that they were not in right stand­ing with God and that they needed to repent. Hav­ing repen­ted and been bap­tised by John, they were ready and wait­ing for the Mes­si­ah. When they heard Jesus speak, they were hungry for his message—in con­trast to the Phar­isees, to whom Jesus said:

Truly I tell you, the tax col­lect­ors and the pros­ti­tutes are enter­ing the king­dom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of right­eous­ness, and you did not believe him, but the tax col­lect­ors and the pros­ti­tutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Mat­thew 21:31–32)

Jesus expec­ted the people to have listened to John—a lone proph­et, call­ing out in the desert, wear­ing camels hair. Obvi­ously out­ward appear­ances, and adapt­ing to people’s tastes was not some­thing Jesus saw as neces­sary in order to call people to repent­ance. Jesus was not com­pelled to sink to the level of seek­ing his own fun or good times in party­ing, and then to slip in a few words about believ­ing in him. He spoke openly and dir­ectly, turn­ing to people with a clear mes­sage to repent of their self-willed lives to serve God.

This was not Jesus’ testi­mony: “I go out with my friends who drink, and show them a good example by not get­ting drunk / not drink­ing”; as can often be heard among reli­gious youth. Such beha­viour might be a “testi­mony” of a cer­tain kind of mod­er­a­tion, but it misses the point of being a wit­ness to the truth entirely. Jesus taught people openly that life with him means self-denial (for the sake of love) and not self-indulgence and pleasure-seeking, how­ever “mod­er­ate”.

Should we call those who are escap­ing from the world to a milder ver­sion of the same pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence? If this is the res­ult, then they are twice as lost as before—and we along with them.

15 “Jesus Even Made Water to Wine…He Enjoyed a Good Party”

The wed­ding at Cana (John 2:1–11) is often used as an example of Jesus going to “parties”. Regard­ing this opin­ion, sev­er­al ques­tions should be considered:

• Did Jesus want to con­done excess­ive alco­hol consumption?
• What kind of wed­ding was it?
• Why did Jesus per­form this miracle?
• What do oth­er Bible pas­sages say about tak­ing part in worldly activities?

We trust that with even a basic know­ledge of Jesus, the first ques­tion can be answered with a con­fid­ent “no”. Had the wed­ding guests truly have been “already drunk” (as people often inter­pret the state­ment of the mas­ter of the ban­quet in verse 10), Jesus would have sup­por­ted them in alco­hol abuse. An impossible pre­sump­tion! Like­wise, Mary’s request of Jesus, “They have no more wine”, was not to help the guests get drunk either. She was a very obed­i­ent believ­er and knew bet­ter than to ask her son, whose holi­ness she exper­i­enced closer than any­one, to sup­port drunkenness.

On the con­trary, this was a wed­ding of believ­ers for whom God was the focus of their lives. Jesus along with his freshly appoin­ted dis­ciples had been invited—devout Jews. They were not togeth­er to indulge in their pleasures—unlike worldly parties among unbe­liev­ers. They were togeth­er in order to share their joy that two people had decided to join in the bond of holy mat­ri­mony and start a family.

This pas­sage con­cludes with the words:

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his dis­ciples believed in him. (John 2:11)

God’s glory was being revealed. The time of the mes­si­ah had begun with an abund­ance of new wine—a poignant Old Test­a­ment sym­bol of God’s bless­ing (Isai­ah 25:6–8, Amos 9:11–15). The mes­sage con­tained in Jesus actions was not mis­taken with an offer of “free beer”.

Parties do not have the aim to focus people’s atten­tion on God but are purely for pleas­ure. They encour­age super­fi­cial behaviour—though more often than not the behaviour/conversations of the people is far worse than just super­fi­cial. Peter con­trasts the new lives of Chris­ti­ans with their former lives:

For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauch­ery, lust, drunk­en­ness, orgies, carous­ing and detest­able idol­atry. They are sur­prised that you do not join them in their reck­less, wild liv­ing, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the liv­ing and the dead. (1 Peter 4:3–5)

Some reli­gious people think that as long as they do not drink excess­ively at parties they are being good Chris­ti­an examples. They fail to assess that it is not only the alco­hol that is the prob­lem. Here Paul describes what liv­ing a holy life includes:

Fol­low God’s example, there­fore, as dearly loved chil­dren and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us as a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexu­al immor­al­ity, or of any kind of impur­ity, or of greed, because these are improp­er for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscen­ity, fool­ish talk or coarse jok­ing, which are out of place, but rather thanks­giv­ing. For of this you can be sure: No immor­al, impure or greedy person—such a per­son is an idolater—has any inher­it­ance in the king­dom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are dis­obedi­ent. There­fore do not be part­ners with them. (Eph­esians 5:1–7)

It is impossible to be togeth­er with people seek­ing their own pleasure—especially where there is alcohol—and not com­prom­ise this stand­ard described by Paul. The jokes, super­fi­ci­al­ity, mater­i­al­ist­ic, earthly-minded or plainly immor­al con­ver­sa­tions, not to men­tion the immor­al beha­viour of people, all these make it impossible for a Chris­ti­an to take part in such a gath­er­ing. We can only be a real testi­mony for God when we strive to reflect his holi­ness and pur­ity in every area of our lives—which includes sep­ar­at­ing from bad influ­ences of this like:

Do not be misled: “Bad com­pany cor­rupts good char­ac­ter.” (1 Cor­inthi­ans 15:33)

Those who look for excuses to take part in worldly activ­it­ies such as parties should test them­selves as to wheth­er they actu­ally like the world­li­ness. Per­haps this is the reas­on why they are so select­ive in which Bible pas­sages they refer to for their stand­ard for Chris­ti­an life?

Finally, when all oth­er attempts to defend friend­ship evan­gel­ism fail, we often hear:

16 “What’s the Prob­lem? God Wants Us to Have Fun!”

The word “fun” does not appear once in the entire Bible. This state­ment comes rather from the wish to cling to worldly pleas­ures. Jesus prom­ised some­thing far deep­er and more fulfilling:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)

And on the night before his death, Jesus said to his disciples:

As the Fath­er has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my com­mands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s com­mands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be com­plete. (John 15:9–11)

Do you truly believe this?

For many reli­gious people today, the real­ity of this joy and ful­fil­ment is hid­den, because they prefer to seek their own enter­tain­ment in the world—to such an extent that they ima­gine life without this enter­tain­ment to be “bor­ing”. In such cases it is most vis­ible that the true reas­on for tak­ing part in such enter­tain­ment with unbe­liev­ers is not evan­gel­ism, but their own wishes. “Relat­ab­il­ity” is just an excuse.

*****

17 Clos­ing Thoughts

The one holy God, author of life and ruler of all, hon­ours us by for­giv­ing us and seek­ing a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with us. The smal­lest and only fit­ting act of thank­ful­ness we can offer is to give our life back to him, wholly. Jesus enables his body (the Church) to live as he did—offering up a holy sac­ri­fice of love, so that “in this world we are like him” (1 John 4:17). Through the love and unity of believ­ers, God’s holi­ness, good­ness and love are reflec­ted, so that people are con­fron­ted with who God is and what it really means to acknow­ledge him in their lives. In this way people can under­stand what liv­ing in God’s pres­ence means. Des­pite this testi­mony, for many this mes­sage will be a stum­bling block—especially for reli­gious people.

When someone pro­fesses to believe, but fails to live in awe of God (i.e. because of worldly activ­it­ies and interests) their lives com­mu­nic­ate a dis­tor­ted pic­ture of God, namely, that you can hold onto your own life and pleas­ures and please God at the same time. Through their lives, they deny that God him­self and par­tak­ing in his ser­vice is the greatest source of joy in life and is incom­par­able with any worldly “joys”.

Com­bin­ing “faith” with worldly activ­it­ies in order to attract people is dis­hon­est because it uses people’s desires in order to make them more “receptive”—just as any manip­u­lat­ive mar­ket­ing strategy. Like­wise, build­ing friend­ships with the back­ground motive of influ­en­cing people to start believ­ing is dis­hon­est and an infringe­ment of their freedom.

Faith means being faith­ful to Jesus words in our life and our mes­sage even in the face of mock­ery or per­se­cu­tion, just as Jesus him­self remained faith­ful to the truth to the end. We can only help people to be saved (and indeed be saved ourselves) if we do not com­prom­ise the message.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its salt­i­ness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for any­thing, except to be thrown out and trampled under­foot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill can­not be hid­den. (Mat­thew 5:13–14)