There once lived a man who held firmly to Calvinist theology. He believed the five points were fully biblical and took advantage of every possible opportunity to share Calvinism with the people at his church. He also had a growing conviction that evangelism was not a responsibility of believers. Since salvation is in the hands of God and God is guaranteed to save all those whom he has chosen, that leaves no room for human involvement through evangelism. He thought that evangelism did a disservice to God since in evangelism, the one witnessing claims some of the credit for saving people. Because of his view of evangelism, he always refused to participate in any evangelistic work and he encouraged other church members to adopt the same position. He never went on a mission trip, never gave to missions, never shared the gospel.

I wonder if you have ever met a person like this? Me either. While I know such people have existed and do exist, they are the exception, not the norm. The belief that evangelism is not part of the Christian life is not Calvinism, it is hyper-Calvinism.

(Aside: Some have tried to say that a hyper-Calvinist is anyone who holds to all five points; I assert that a five pointer is nothing more than a Calvinist and anything less than five (or four) points is not Calvinism in a meaningful sense. Hyper-Calvinism has a more definite meaning and relates to human responsibility in the face of God’s sovereignty.)

Why Evangelize?

There are three very simple reasons why believers should do the work of evangelism, and these are reasons which every faithful Calvinist would affirm.

First, we should evangelize because God commands it. At the end of the day, this is all we would need to say. God says it, that settles it. The God who created everything has called on his children to make him known. But even with that, we are not left alone. We have the power of God with us (Jesus’ promise to always be with us in Matthew 28:19-20), the Spirit within us, and the Word before us.

Second, we should evangelize because we love God and want to make him known. You celebrate and talk about that which you love, whether it be a football team or a spouse or a child. Spend enough time with a person and you will learn the sort of things that stir his passion. For believers, what should stir our passion more than Christ? The late Stephen Olford once lamented that people will shout themselves hoarse at a Saturday night football game but will barely utter a sound while worshiping on Sunday. This is a problem with believers of all sorts, Calvinist and otherwise – we are far more inclined to vocally celebrate the people, institutions, and achievements of this world when our greatest celebration should be directed toward God and sharing what he has done for us.

Third, we should evangelize because we love others. Regardless of whether or not people will ever respond to our proclamation, we ought to do what God has done in the universal offer of the gospel: call all men and women to come to Christ, knowing that any who come will be saved. Through Jesus we clearly see the love of God. He did not offer himself to all men out of hatred or spite but out of love for his creation. Can we do less than love that which God has loved? Can we offer them less than that which God has offered them – Christ himself? Lives are being destroyed through sin and darkness. If we care about those lives, those people, then we will share with them the one way they can find true, lasting peace and happiness.

Why Does God Use People?

The question of evangelism’s necessity belongs to every believer, not just Calvinists. After all, we worship a God who commands a host of untold numbers of angels. He can send angelic messengers anywhere throughout creation. He could position angels in the skies all around the earth and have them trumpet out the gospel message. He could send powerful dreams to all people. He could write the gospel out in the clouds for everyone to see. There are a million ways in which God could share his gospel without ever once involving human beings. In fact, of all the ways that God could do it, we are probably one of the most inefficient options.

God doesn’t tell us why he has chosen to use us, but we can point to some possible reasons.

First, God has given us the privilege of work that has eternal significance. All work is noble work if it is done for the glory of God, but it is astonishing to think that God has given us a role in his saving work. He does not need us, and what happens through us to others does not originate from us but from God himself who is at work in us through the Holy Spirit, but we get to be the agents, the conduits of the gospel, sharing words of life with the lost and, when God so ordains, being used to lead new children to the feet of Christ.

Second, we are in a position that gives us a unique perspective on God’s saving work. 1 Peter 1:12 speaks of those things that angels long to see – the gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. We are mortal yet in our short lives we learn more about salvation than angels will ever know. Who is more qualified to sing the praise of firefighters, someone who has an abstract knowledge of their heroic deeds or someone who has been rescued from a burning house by a firefighter who gave his life in the process? We are those who have been rescued and we are more qualified than angels to tell others about the rescuer.

For the sake of length I’ll end there, but there are other possible reasons we could discuss: the glory God receives when his elect make him known; the original plan of God to work through Adam’s descendants to tend the garden of creation; etc. It is enough to know that God is pleased to work through his children to share his gospel. He has called us to make him known. The big question is not “why?” but “will we obey?”

But there is one classic approach that I think still has merit: going door-to-door. Its merit is not through its effectiveness – it is terribly ineffective – but comes from the fact that (1) going door-to-door keeps our people intentional about evangelism; (2) it helps us talk to people we would otherwise never cross paths with; and (3) it helps with the “go and tell” of the great commission – too many of our evangelistic approaches are more along the lines of “come and hear”.

There are many who argue that we should not do door-to-door evangelism because of its ineffectiveness in the 21st century. I am tempted to join them, but thus far have resisted for the reasons mentioned above.

You have probably heard the (apocryphal?) story about D. L. Moody. One day following a service a lady came up to him and told him that she did not like the way he practiced evangelism. “Well, what’s your way?” he asked the lady. “I don’t have a method,” she responded. Moody concluded, “Then I like my way better than yours.” It is fine to dislike various methods of doing evangelism, but make sure you have an alternative to propose.

What are some other ways you do evangelism? How do you build relationships with non-Christians? What non-gimmicky approaches do you use to start conversations? How do you go about fulfilling the great commission?

The work of the local church, however, is a bit more broad. While true that churches exist to facilitate the missions and outreach work of individuals within the church, this is not all that churches do. At a bare minimum we must speak of at least two functions of the local church: going forth to tell, and drawing together to grow. Both functions together serve one purpose: glorifying God. Thus the functions are not ends in themselves but ways of working for God’s glory.

The first function is the function of missions. We go throughout our neighborhoods and towns and countries and world sharing with others the bad news about sin and the good news about the grace, love, and mercy of God through Jesus Christ, praying that God might use us to lead others to himself.

The second function is the function of discipleship. We work to grow and ground believers in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Recognizing that it is not enough to get someone to profess faith in Christ, we then lead believers in the process of growing more like Christ each day.

The distinction in these functions is important. More and more I am hearing voices within the SBC speak as though the first function were the only real work of the church. For example, take the following snippet from the Great Commission Resurgence proposal:

[The Southern Baptist missional vision should be] As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.

In and of itself, that would be fine. As a missional statement it gets across what missions is intended to do: spread the gospel around the world. But the proposal goes on to say:

This missional vision must drive everything that Southern Baptists do, and reset every priority of the local church and denomination.

Here we should see the problem. The problem isn’t just in the GCR proposal. I’ve heard it from pastors, read it on SBC blogs, and seen it in denominational publications. The problem is that this kind of focus leads us to ignore or at least downplay one of the two functions of the church. We become so focused on expanding the walls of the city that we ignore the condition of the things inside the city. We are so focused on reaching unbelievers that we neglect discipleship and have a denomination full of superficial faith.

It is striking to me that the majority of the Bible is written for those already claiming to be the people of God. The majority of the Bible calls God’s people to greater knowledge, to deeper faith, to more faithful obedience. In the New Testament, the passages calling believers to share the gospel make up just a small subset of the passages calling for holiness, for obedience, for knowledge and understanding, for lives of prayer and studying the things of God.

We must go and tell. We must share the gospel. We are right to stress the importance and necessity of evangelism. If we do not share the gospel, we are sinning. But sharing the gospel is the fruit of a life focused on Christ. The more we grow in our love for God, the more we walk in obedience to God, the more we live in the righteousness of God, the more we will delight to tell others about God. The reason so much of our evangelism sounds so superficial is because it is. We have trained our people to tell others God loves them but we have not trained our people to love God.

I think the best concise definition of evangelism is, “Loving God enough to make him known.” There are several things that makes this a good definition, but for our purposes this definition shows that the one telling the gospel must first be growing in his love for God, something that can only happen through discipleship, through walking in holiness, through growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. The more believers walk with God, the greater our love grows. The more our love grows, the greater our desire to share him with others.

Thus we cannot say that a missional vision should drive everything we do. Getting back to the distinction between the local church and the Southern Baptist Convention, we can and should define the SBC in missional terms since that is why it exists. But the work of the local church goes beyond the work of the convention. Drawing together the two functions of the church and its one great purpose, something like the following might be a better vision for the local church: “Seeking the glory of God by helping believers grow in their love of God and faithfulness to God and by helping believers share the love of Christ throughout the world.”

This doctrine [what sin is], therefore, is absolutely vital in determining our conception of true evangelism. Three is no true evangelism without the doctrine of sin, and without an understanding of what sin is. I do not want to be unfair, but I say that a gospel which merely says, ‘Come to Jesus,’ and offers Him as a Friend, and offers a marvelous new life, without convicting of sin, is not New Testament evangelism. The essence of evangelism is to start by preaching the law; and it is because the law has not been preached that we have had so much superficial evangelism. Go through the ministry of our Lord Himself and you cannot but get the impression that at times, far from pressing people to follow Him and to decide for Him, He put great obstacles in their way. He said in effect: ‘Do you realize what you are doing? Have you counted the cost? Do you realize where it may lead you? Do you know that it means denying yourself, taking up your cross daily and following Me?’ True evangelism, I say, because of this doctrine of sin, must always start by preaching the law. This means that we must explain that mankind is confronted by the holiness of God, by His demands, and also by the consequences of sin. It is the Son of God Himself who speaks about being cast into hell. If you do not like the doctrine of hell you are just disagreeing with Jesus Christ. He, the Son of God, believed in hell; and it is in His exposure to the true nature of sin that He teaches that sin ultimately lands men in hell. So evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, the punishment meted out by the law, and the eternal consequences of evil and wrongdoing. It is only the man who is brought to see his guilt in this way who flies to Christ for deliverance and redemption. Any belief in the Lord Jesus Christ which is not based on that is not a true belief in Him. You can have a psychological belief even in the Lord Jesus Christ; but a true belief sees in Him one who delivers us from the curse of the law. True evangelism starts like that, and obviously is primarily a call to repentance, ‘repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Why does God use human beings to carry out any part of his plan? We are sinful, lazy, obstinate, bad at following directions, inefficient creatures. It seems that God could accomplish far more if he kept us from being the workers of his will.

For example, why doesn’t God surround the world with angels? From every part of the earth angels could proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. They saw the cross. They stand before God in Heaven. They would be visible evidence of the existence of God. But they would still preserve choice. Angels would not be able to force anyone to believe so they would not cause a conflict with those who believe salvation comes entirely through a free choice of human beings able to accept or reject the gospel.

Why doesn’t God use angels? Why does God use humans to carry out one of the most important tasks in his creation?

It is enough to say that God uses people because that is his will. We do not have to know the reason. God commanded us to go and tell, we go and tell. But we also know that God is glorified when he is proclaimed by those whom he has saved. When his praise is on the tongues of his people his holiness is magnified. Who better to demonstrate the value of his saving grace than those who have received it?

Whether Calvinist or not, I think we can (and should) agree that the role of humans in salvation has nothing to do with persuasion or the free choice of man. God uses us because he is pleased to do so and because by our proclamation he is glorified.

Some see evangelism as a burden but it is one of our most precious gifts. God has given us the opportunity to do something of eternal significance. This is part of having a life that is not wasted. While obeying God’s command to go make disciples we find that it is not a labor, a chore, but a tremendous joy and privilege to share with people the great grace God has lavished on us in his saving mercy. This is something the angels could never do.

So why are you still reading? Go and tell!

God created man to live in relationship with him. We stood with him, walked with him. Then Adam and Eve sinned and caused a great void to open up between man and God. There was no way we could cross that void. It was a deep canyon with God on one side and man on the other.

Jesus gave the solution by crossing the canyon, something we could not do. He came among us and lived and died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins. The cross then became the bridge between God and man, giving us the means to cross the canyon and reach God. Through the cross we can find God and salvation.

Let me suggest an alternate picture.

God created man to live in relationship with him. We stood with him, walked with him. Then Adam and Eve sinned and all creation fell as though down a huge cliff. We stood at the bottom of that cliff with God at the top. Nothing we do would enable us to climb the cliff.

Jesus presented the solution by descending the cliff. He stepped down from high above and lived among fallen humanity. He died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins. Through the cross he draws us to himself. Jesus then ascends back to God at the top of the cliff, taking us with him.

The difference in these two illustrations is enormous. In both of them God is the one who makes salvation possible. Man is helpless to make a way to God. But in the first God only makes salvation possible, not certain – and only in a world different from our own. In the first illustration Jesus creates a bridge we must walk across to be saved, but this ignores man’s inability to walk toward God. Dead in our sins, we neither have the desire nor the ability to approach God. We are enemies in rebellion against him. The first illustration is truly semi-Pelagian in imagining some ability remains in man so that he can walk to God. Perhaps some who present this illustration would include the Arminian notion of prevenient grace, the belief that God has enabled people to respond to him. This would take the illustration out of the realm of Pelagian heresy but it still leaves the person with an ability the Bible says we simply do not have.

The second illustration does a better job of presenting the biblical picture. It is not perfect, no illustration can contain everything, but it shows that man is not capable of any of the work to reach God.

God brings us to himself. He descends the cliff, does what is necessary to bring us into righteousness, then wraps his arms around us and carries us with him back into Heaven. This is what it means to be saved, to be found in the arms of Christ when he has returned to his heavenly home. “But wait!” you say “He was raised 2,000 years ago! I was not there, I could not have been risen with him!” Ahh but you were, dear saint. Thus we are told a few times in the New Testament, as at Ephesians 2:6, that God has raised us up with him and ​seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In an event that is both very real and very mysterious, all the saints of God were raised with Jesus Christ. He carried us from the fallen world to the throne of his Father. This is the only way our salvation could take place.

Perhaps I should make some tracts.

And while on the subject of evangelism, never promise people that if they follow a particular method it will result in a definite conversion. Salvation is in God’s hands, not ours, and he has made no guarantees.