#STRask - Why Emphasize Evangelism When the Bible Only Mentions the Great Commission Four Times?

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Questions about why evangelism is emphasized above other commands in the Bible, what to do when speaking the truth in love hurts someone’s feelings, and how to best love and share the gospel with a friend who rejects it because of bad experiences with Christians. Why is it hammered into us that Christians need to go out and evangelize when the Great Commission is mentioned only four times in the Bible and other commands spoken of throughout the Bible (love, servitude, humility, etc.) seem to get less exhortation? How should I deal with someone saying, “You hurt my feelings,” when I’m speaking the truth in love? What do I do when preaching the gospel hurts someone’s feelings because it exposes their sin, and how can I debunk the current worship of feelings? How can I best love a friend who has repeatedly rejected the gospel because of negative experiences she’s had in hostile Christian circles?

Hello, friends. You are listening to Amy Hall and Greg Kokel on the Hashtag STR Ask podcast. Yep. Welcome, Greg. Thank you. So let's start with a question. We'll get right into it there. Let's start with a question from Smarmy Jane. Smarmy Jane. Smarmy Jane. Okay, Smarmy.

Why is it hammered into us for Christians to go out and evangelize when the Great Commission is mentioned only four times in the Bible and other Christian tenets, love, servitude, humility, etc.—spoken of throughout the Bible seemed to get less exhortation. Well, remember the—well, the Great Commission was the last command given to disciples. So this was establishing their marching orders. For three years or so, Jesus spent a lot of time laying a foundation theologically to correct a lot of misunderstanding and to lay out a proper understanding of how the kingdom is to go forward. And having done that gives the Great Commission. I have a suspicion about something that I haven't done a study on, but I think that the concept of the New Testament emphasis on love is often overstated by Christians. For example, the word

love doesn't even show up in the book of Acts. It's not part of the preachment there of the gospel, and it doesn't show up anywhere. Now, obviously, the love of God is manifest there, but it's not mentioned. Jesus, when he tells his disciples to love one another, he precedes it by saying, I give you a new commandment. And this is in the Upper Room Discourse, so it's just before his execution. So I'm not trying to— Are you talking about the love of God or our love for others? Just—well, love for others usually is what I have in mind right now. But I think we have a culture that focuses in on the whole love thing, where Christianity is all about love and we're loving each other.

And, yeah, well, the Great Commission's only mentioned like a couple of times, but love is all over the place. And so that's the thing that we ought to be doing. And I just think that's a distortion. I don't know that that's exactly the way it is. But we also have to think of the progressive revelation, so to speak. Jesus starting out at the beginning, correcting things, and over time, he lays this out, trains his people, and then he sends them out. And the sending out is, of course, the Great Commission, and they call it that for a reason, because Jesus ends

His work with this command. Think about a graduation. You know, you have four years of education, then you have graduation, and generally something like the baccalaureate is given to encourage people now to go out and make a difference with what you've heard and what you learned. There is not an emphasis on any particular things that might have been mentioned over and over and over. It's you take this whole thing that I've given you, now you go out and make a difference in this very particular way in the world.

And I think that's kind of why it has that focus. Plus, you know, why is it hammered into us for Christians to go out and evangelize? Well, it's because once you understand the breadth of the biblical plan and how it unfolds, what is at stake is the eternal destiny of human beings. And the eternal destiny of human—it's not the temporal destiny. It isn't like, go be nice to people, give money to people, be kind, be a good neighbor, all those other things. That's what it's really all about. That's a temporal thing.

Those are good things, but that's temporal. The long-term goal is that people come under the lordship of Christ and into his kingdom. And that's the most—that's the summum bonum, basically, of Christian activity with the world. The summum bonum, the absolute, is the greatest good, is loving God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. But here we're talking about a kind of a Christian commission. Aren't we commissioned really just to—how does the text go—love and—? Love, servitude, humility, etc.

Yeah, stuff like that. Well, that isn't the commission. These are virtues we're supposed to be characterized by in light of the truth, but the commission is to go out and accomplish a particular end. And that entails evangelism. Evangelizing the world is not the end. The end is presenting every man complete in Christ. That's a process of discipleship that must entail, as a logical necessity, evangelism. But once somebody, you know, becomes a Christian, they are regenerated. That's the beginning. It's not the end. And that's where—why Jesus' command and the Great

Commission is to make disciples so important. It's not to evangelize the world. Now, I think in Mark, the end of Mark, it might be part of the long ending, which is suspect. But in any event, he says, you know, preach the gospel to all creatures. Well, that's a certainly important part of what we're doing, preaching the gospel. But the end of the—that is a step to a greater end, which is to make disciples of those who become Christians. Make sense? disciples of those who become Christians. Make sense?

Yeah. I'm actually a little surprised because I think churches are much more likely to be teaching morality than they are to be teaching evangelism. I'm actually a little surprised. If your church is emphasizing the Great Commission, I think that's a great thing. I think it's unusual, actually. In other words, emphasizing discipleship as opposed to evangelism. Yeah, or as opposed to moral instruction. Because I think Christians tend to over-focus on moral instruction. So maybe I'm a little different in that way.

But, yeah, you have to look at the big picture of the Bible. in that way. But yeah, you have to look at the big picture of the Bible. You have to just step back a little bit and see that all of our changing to be like Christ, all of God working all things together for that purpose, is a subset of God gathering people to himself and making for himself a people who love him. A bride for Christ. Yes. You look at, that's the whole ending. That's the whole goal. God is calling people, bringing together a people for his own possession, as it says in 1 Peter, and he is making them like Christ so that he has this bride at the end.

So the big goal is, that's the big goal, as you explained, Greg. And on the way there is where you teach the moral instruction. But even when you look at the letters, look at the letters of Paul, those were, he was going on evangelism trips. He was going around and preaching the gospel. You can see this in Acts. He was going on evangelism trips. He was going around and preaching the gospel. You can see this in Acts. He was going around and telling people about Christ.

And at the same time, he was teaching Christians and he was discipling Christians. So as part of that, he was teaching them about love and servitude and humility and all of these things because his goal is to make them like Christ. And so he's doing both things at once. So all of this disciple-making, you have to have people there in order to disciple them. And we're trying to grow and draw, well, God draws, but we're trying to bring more people into the kingdom by telling them about Jesus. And so all of these things, you can't do one without the other. They're so interconnected.

But it is the great goal. It is the great commission. And I would also say it's not just four times we see that. Again, the whole story is that. That is the story. It's predicated on that idea. How about the blessing to the nations from the Abrahamic covenant from Genesis 12, verse 1 through 3? So that's our launch of this whole program.

But notice the nations are the blessing to the nations is the goal there. That's the telos. Right. Okay, let's go to a question from Carlo. How do you deal with someone saying, you hurt my feelings when speaking the truth in love? What do we do when preaching the gospel hurts someone's feelings because it exposes their sin? How do we debunk the current worship of feelings?

Oh. Well, this is another tricky thing to navigate. I actually had a philosophy professor raise that as the first point of his objection to me when I'd given a talk in Kansas City at a local university there about the problem of evil. Well, what he said was, I'm offended. That was the first words out of his mouth, which really troubled me because would that count in a philosophy class that he taught at the university if he made a case about something and someone says, well, I'm offended?

But it fits perfectly in with the critical theory approach that one's feelings and one's self-identification, what one thinks about oneself and what one feels is the center of the universe. That's the most important thing. You hurt my feelings. That's the biggest crime. You offended me. So that needs to be unpacked, and I guess I'd be inclined to ask some questions about that, which I did in his case, although, you know, I couldn't speak candidly. My candid response was to the long-haired, you know, mid-50s philosophy professor of the university who raises objection to my presentation by starting

with, I'm offended. But came to mind or comes to mind now as I think, gee, I'm sorry to hear that. I thought I was talking to a grownup. But of course, I could never say that. But I am making a point now that that is an infantile, immature response. Why should that matter? Certainly, there was nothing caustic about my presentation. I wasn't being nasty or mean, and he's faulting me for trying to hurt his feelings. It's just that he was offended by what I said. And it turned out that what he was offended by, you know, it was silly. I won't get into details there. He just totally misunderstood the point I was making. I was arguing for the lesser to the greater. And I thought what I said was that Hitler was small potatoes compared to Stalin and Mao and Lenin. And so if you thought

Hitler was bad, man, these guys were really bad. And Hitler was bad. But the fact that I referred to Hitler as small potatoes, making this comparison from the lesser to the greater, which is a philosophical technique, that bothered this philosophy professor. I always sort of ask him, you know, do you understand the point I was making? Anyway, so, but it's frustrating to deal with this. But some questions could be asked. Okay, help me out here. What do you mean? What was it that offended you? Well, you said that I was wrong. Okay, I did. So many words. Are you saying I was wrong for saying that? And if I'm offended by you telling me this, then what is your proper response? Notice that the person who's offended for that reason is doing the very thing that he's complaining about. So this is a suicide tactic, if you will.

But you want to be gentle how you help people see that. You don't want to make it like a gotcha moment. You just want to say, well, this confuses me. And another thing, and I actually built this into a presentation once where I said, look, I could tell you this to make you feel better or I could tell you the truth. And it's not going to do you any good for me to tell you a lie that makes you feel better. It's going to do good to tell you what's true because I care about what's true and I care about you. So here it is. So there's a way that I was going to introduce what might have been an offensive point to people, and just to give it some context. And it could be responded to that way.

Would you rather I said something that wasn't true to you? If a doctor tells you you're dying of a disease and your feelings are hurt, is that the fault of the doctor? Did the doctor do something wrong? So maybe offer these questions, offer these counterexamples by using questions. I think the doctor one is a good one. I'm trying to think, when the gospel hurts someone's feelings because it exposes their sin. One thing that I found is sometimes this is going to sound silly to say sometimes because all the time I think because we are fallen. People have a hard time hearing the point of what you're saying because obviously your point isn't just to reveal their sin. Your point is to say, look at this at this Savior. Look, Jesus saved us from this. This is what I'm pointing you to. You're pointing to this beautiful reality. But people

get stuck on the idea of their sin, and then they just get angry or afraid of God or whatever, and then they can't even hear it. I've seen this happen so many times. But all you can do in this situation is, I think, maybe put yourself in the same boat, for one thing. You know, it exposes your sin, and you could say, isn't that great? I'm so glad I don't have to hide it. I could be open about it. You know how hard it is to hide that from people? And now I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to hide it. I can be open about it. You know how hard it is to hide that from people? And now I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to try to pretend I'm perfect. It's such a relief to not have to pretend you're perfect and to depend on Jesus to save you and to know that

He loves you even though you don't deserve it, that He died for you. That's incredible. And I wouldn't know any of that if I didn't know about my sin. Yeah. And so maybe put yourself into that and step into it a little more. Autobiography kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And say, yeah, you know what?

It's not fun to see it, but it sure is great to know. Yeah. So it did occur to me there's another response that might make things a lot easier. Somebody says, well, what you said offended me. I said, okay, I can see that. That's it. In other words, you don't apologize for it. You just acknowledge.

Now, they're assuming when they do that, there's kind of an assumption that you did something you weren't supposed to do. But if I just say, okay, I get it. I understand that. Now what? What are they going to say in return? Well, they might not say anything, but why can't we just leave it there? Yes, when people are confronted with their sin, and this isn't what I'm not role-playing right now. I'm just saying, when people are confronted with their sin, and that makes them feel bad, that's, as you're pointing out, that's a good thing, even though it emotionally might be hard for them. So why don't we just say, okay?

You know, Jesus, when—think about the times when the Pharisees said, well, what you said offends us. Or you insulted them or whatever. There's a thing. And then Jesus says, oh, okay. And another thing, you know. Okay, I got something to say to you. That's going to offend you too, you know.

Now, Jesus wasn't being offensive for the sake of being offensive. But he wasn't going to shirk the truth because people said it bothered them. You know, and there are a couple of occasions where Jesus responded that way. The apostles, the disciples even said, oh, you know, Jesus said they didn't like that, you know. Well, he didn't apologize for it. Think of the end of the bread of life discourse there in John 6. And he said, drink my blood, eat my flesh, and people go, oh, I can't handle that, and everybody left.

And he didn't say, oh, don't leave, just joking. Anyway, he just let people respond. And sometimes maybe that's an appropriate thing for us to do. Now, it takes a little ego strength on our part to be able to do that. an appropriate thing for us to do. Now, it takes a little ego strength on our part to be able to do that. But, you know, the gospel is offensive. It's a stone of stumbling. It's a rock of offense. So we shouldn't be surprised when people are offended by it, but that shouldn't shake us up either and say, well, that offends me. Okay. Here's a related question that we can kind of piggyback on that. Yeah.

How can I best love a friend who has repeatedly rejected the gospel because of negative experiences she's had in hostile Christian circles? How can I continue to share the gospel without making her think that I'm only going to be her friend if she converts? Well, I guess the simple answer there is you continue to be her friend regardless, you know, and it seems to me that's the dynamic here. I don't know if—I mean, when my younger brother became a Christian a couple years before I did, Mark, every time we got together, it seemed like he was talking about Jesus. But I didn't have any sense that, well, if I don't become a Christian, he's going to stop being my brother. I had a sense that he really was convinced about his convictions, and he knew that there were consequences regarding this decision,

and he wanted me safe. Okay? So if a person continually rejects, I guess it's the nature of the rejection. If they want to stay in the conversation, then you can continue conversing with them. You know, some people remember Nabeel Qureshi, who wrote the book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, and going from being a Muslim to a Christian. But maybe they don't know that it was David Wood, who was the principal individual in his life that continued to press forward. But they had a two-year intense conversation. I mean, they were on a debate team together, traveling together, debating other issues, but they spent time together talking about this, and so some nuts are harder to crack. But David Wood is actually in a very significant and influential ministry to Muslims. And the reason is he learned about Islam because he had to deal with Nabil.

And then he realized when Nabil finally converted through a number of circumstances, it's all in his book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Nabeel passed away in 2017 or 2018, but nevertheless, he really made an impact. And what David Wood said is, I realized that former Muslims make really good Christians. And his point was to go from a committed Muslim life to Christianity, you have to count the cost, and then you have to pay the price. And that makes them very solid, not frivolous Christians, which Nabil was a very solid Christian and took, you know, he had a lot of difficulty with his family as a result of his decision. But then David would then realize that

he just went full-time into Christian work regarding Islam, Christianity and Islam. So sometimes these things don't happen overnight. Sometimes they happen over a longer period of time, a longer discussion. And our questioner, is it Carlo? This is Rutabaga's iPad. Oh, Rutabaga. Okay, then, you know, Rutabaga's going to maybe be in this conversation if the other person allows it to take place for a long time. And that's just the nature of some of these conversations.

That was true in my case with my brother, Mark. I think in particular, the first question from Carlo was about, you know, you hurt my feelings. The second question is negative experiences she's had in hostile Christian circles. So that's a lot of people hurting her feelings. So it's a very similar question. I think they both, both answers will apply to these two questions. But one thing I would say is it's hard to know if she saw her situation accurately, just because

as we just saw in Carlo's question, sometimes the truth hurts your feelings and you interpret that as being hostile rejection of some kind. I'm not saying it wasn't hostile rejection. It might have been. But I don't think we always know exactly what somebody's situation was. So I think what I would answer is the same thing I said for Carlo, and I think lean into the idea that we're sinners. So, you know, you could say something like, well, I'm not surprised at all that you found sinners in church. Because if we weren't sinners, we would not need Jesus. We actually need him, and that's why we're there.

And so we have to—no matter where you are in life, you're going to have to deal with fallen people. It doesn't matter if you're in a church or you're in a school or wherever you are. Well, people say there's so many hypocrites in the church. They say, hey, there's a lot worse than that in churches, because that's where they need to be to deal with their problems. Yeah. So I think I would lean into the idea that we are there because we have sin and we've admitted it. And so you'll also find in church people asking forgiveness. You'll find people giving forgiveness. And again, you'll find people open about their sin and not trying to hide it and pretending to be perfect. Hopefully. Now,

obviously, there are some people who don't get the gospel and they don't do that, and they can't get legalistic. And certainly all those things happen. But if you can just describe what church is for and our acknowledgement of our sin, and you can be open about your sin and be very aware of asking for forgiveness. If you do something wrong and being open about it and being grateful that you're forgiven for it, I think the more you can live that out in front of her, the better you'll be. All right, Greg, we're out of time. And we thank you all for your questions. We love hearing from you and we hope you'll send us your questions soon. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.