God The Evangelist

Last updated on: November 1, 2017 at 9:00 am by Jack Wellman

God The Evangelist 2017-10-31T09:46:41-05:00 Jack Wellman

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We are not really the evangelists…God is the true evangelist, and here’s why.

God Grants Repentance

I take heart in the fact that God is in control of salvation. From beginning to end, it is fully a work of God, but God does use others as a means to accomplish His purpose, and that purpose is sometimes met when God grants them repentance. The Apostle Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (1st Pet 3:9). And God doesn’t use the rich and powerful or even the persuasive of speech. He uses the least regarded and less significant people in the world to share the gospel because He is more glorified in it. For many years I was ashamed of the gospel, stewing as it were…as a pew potato, but when I considered that we are all ministers of Christ, I confessed my negligence to the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8), but what really changed my way of witnessing was to discover the fact that the power is in the message and not the messenger and that God is the evangelist. God adds to the body of Christ – I do not. It is not our responsibility to save anyone – it is their response to His ability, but it is our responsibility to tell them. If the message depended upon us, then nobody would be saved. My converts have all washed out…but God’s converts are here to stay.

The Power in the Gospel

One of the most revealing Scriptures was Romans 1:16 where the Apostle Paul wrote, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” Later, Paul writes that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1st Cor 1:18). Paul acknowledges that “my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1st Cor 2:4-5). The gospel is its own source of power because it’s God’s Word, and God’s Word has power to do what He wills it to do (Isaiah 55:11). Paul writes to the church of Thessalonica that, “our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake” (1st Thess 1:5). This is what this looks like: the Word of God spoken by a person of God with the Spirit of God can make the children of God for the glory of God. It is “God-centered” because it is God-granted. The Apostle John says it was “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13).

God at Work

The Spirit convicts us of our sins and makes us see our need for the Savior, and this makes us run to the cross for forgiveness, and there, we put our trust in Christ. All along, the Father has been drawing us to Christ. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44), so no person can come to Christ unless the Father draws them. The word used for “draw” is the Greek verb “helko” and means, “to draw or drag,” but as a metaphor, it means “to draw by inward power, lead, or impel.” The exact same Greek word was used in Acts 16:19 when Paul and Silas were “dragged” into “the market place before the rulers.” To be sure, if the Spirit of God does not quicken us, or bring us to life in Christ, we are deader than Lazarus who was four-days-dead! We need a resurrection to be raised to eternal life, but the Apostle Paul tells us how this happens, writing that we “were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:1-2), but everything changed for us because “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-7). By Paul saying we are already “seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” he is saying that by grace we were saved and by grace we were raised to new like in Christ (2nd Cor 5:17). That’s why grace is so incredibly amazing. Lazarus could not have resurrected himself. Jesus didn’t ask Lazarus to cooperate and ask him to at least move a toe or blink an eye. Lazarus needed help.

Fear God or Man More?

We can trust the Word of God to do what it is set out to accomplish by God. Prior to His ascension, Jesus told the disciples that “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). There is no way that I’ve got power to go to the ends of the earth, but I can go to the end of my block. God will provide the power of His Spirit to help us know what to say and when to say it, but we had better understand that “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb 4:12-13). The Word does its job and God’s Spirit does the rest, and as the Jewish official said in trying to stop the apostles from preaching the gospel, “if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts 5:39). We have the great privilege of turning the world upside down, being named among those “who have turned the world upside down [and] have come here too” (Acts 17:6b). Since it’s a fallen world, maybe it’s that we turn the world right side up. The world just might not recognize it. The fear of man is a stumbling block for many (Prov 29:25), but who should we rather fear? It is God and so we should fear our being negligent in our carrying out the Great Commission, like for me, it was more like the great omission.

Conclusion

The Bible teaches that it is not God’s will that the wicked die outside of trusting in Christ, and even though God is drawing sinners to Christ, they still must choose to believe. We are responsible for our choices and will reap the consequences of those choices. Jesus gives us only two choices; “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is a writer at Christian Quotes and also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.

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