The Power of the Towel

One of the objections leveled most often at those who hold to the doctrines of grace is that if God has chosen who He's going to save, then why do we bother evangelizing? On the surface, this seems to make some sense, but not only does it not make sense, it's as if they haven't really taken the time to think through the consequences of their own position, and this is where I want to place my attention.

As for the objection itself, God tells us to preach the gospel to every creature, so that should be good enough for us (simply doing it because He told us to). In addition, to paraphrase Spurgeon, if the elect were marked with a yellow stripe on their backs, we'd quit the ministry and go around pulling up shirt tails. Since we don't know who they are, we have to tell everyone. Forgive me for not going into further reasoning or expounding on these, as there is plenty more that can be said. I just want to spend more of my time turning the tables, so to speak.

If I believe that each person has libertarian free will to choose or not choose God (notice, I'm not suggestion people don't make a choice, just not a libertarian one), then isn't my role to convince people who haven't chosen Christ why they need to? And in order to convince others, it means I have to be smarter than they are, so I'll need to have lots of biblical education. If I can't quote the Romans Road by heart, then I shouldn't be evangelizing until I can (and even then I may not know enough, especially if I'm talking to educated scientists or New Atheists, or the like).

And you know, it's really hard to get people to not only acknowledge God exists, but for them to acknowledge Christ died for them. Beyond that, it's harder to get them to understand their need for Christ to die in their place, which means admitting wrong-doing. And even if I get them this far, getting them to repent is nearly impossible! It's just so hard, even for the well-education Christian to do all this, so maybe we will just leave some of that out. In fact, I'll dress it all up so that it looks really good and won't be so hard. It says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." That's all there is to it. It's that easy. We don't need to mention wrath or judgment, just Love.

Does anyone see the slippery slope? There are some real problems that can creep in with this kind of mindset. There are also some biblical issues of evangelism that one would have to work through. How would this person react to reading that Christ would have his true disciples (not just His apostles, but the 70) shake the dust of their feet in protest against a town that didn't return peace to them (Luke 10) or shortly before that where Jesus doesn't get all that excited when a man tells Him that he wants to follow Him. In fact, Jesus let's the man know that's it's not going to be easy, as He doesn't even have a place to lay His head. That doesn't sound like great recruitment technique.

And you realize this plays itself out in real life, don't you? What about that guy who's been asking about spiritual things, and instead of answering him, you don't because you feel inadequate, so you invite him to church with you (that sounds good, right?). But then he asks, "do you sing those boring old songs?" and since you know you do but you're afraid he won't come if you tell him the truth, you're at a loss for words and actually considering lying to the guy just so he won't turn your invitation down. Or what about when you have taken the time to share the gospel with someone and they still reject Him, but you go home and beat yourself up because you think you must have said something wrong or forgot to mention something as if, by having said things better, you would have convinced them. Now they may be on their way to an eternity separated from Him because you screwed up.

This is unbiblical. The doctrines of grace allow us to freely share with whomever without fear or reservation. We need to realize that God is in complete control. We don't have to water down the gospel, or spice it up, or take out the 'offensive' stuff, or worry about being inadequate or having said anything wrong. We can't scare someone off by telling them that it's going to cost them everything, unless of course what they would have professed wasn't really a saving faith anyway. We simply need to go and make disciples, trusting that God will do what He has said He will do, and that is use us (what a privilege!) to bring His chosen to Himself.