3 Applying The Gospel

3 Applying The Gospel

HOW DARE WE DO IT?

How dare we deal with men in this way? Only for one reason—because Christianity is truth. If we are not functioning in the area that this is absolute truth, such evangelism is cruel beyond measure. But if this is truth, if it is true that this man before me is separated from God and lost now and for eternity, then even though in individual cases men do not accept Christ and are left worse off than when I began, I must nevertheless have the courage so to speak. If there is a thesis, there is an antithesis. If there is that which is true truth, there is that which is error. If there is true Christian salvation (in contrast to the concept of salvation in the new theology), there is lostness.

When I began to approach individuals in this way, some years ago now, my wife said to me, “Are you not afraid that someone will commit suicide one day?” Since then we have had one girl who tried to do this; fortunately she did not die and later on made a profession of faith. But even if she had succeeded, after walking in the mountains and crying before God, I would have begun the same way with the next person who came.

We cannot do this until we have personally faced the question as to whether the Judeo-Christian system is true in the way we have been speaking of truth. When we are certain about this for ourselves, then if we love men we shall have the courage to lift the roof off other people’s lives and expose them to the collapse of their defenses. We ourselves, as we face these people, must have the integrity to continue to live open to the questions: Does God exist? Is the content of the Judeo-Christian system truth?

The more comprehending we are as we take the roof off, the worse the man will feel if he rejects the Christian answer. In a fallen world we must be willing to face the fact that however lovingly we preach the gospel, if a man rejects it he will be miserable. It is dark out there. I think one reason I am able to talk to this kind of twentieth-century person is because I understand something of just how dark it can be. Men must know that with integrity we have faced the reality of the dark path they are treading.

Once at Cambridge University a postgraduate student said to me, in front of a group that had gathered in his room, “Mr. Schaeffer, I heard you speak last year. Since then I have been preparing a paper and I would like to read it to you. I dare read it to you because I think you understand. Sir, I am in horror of great darkness.” There is no romanticism as one seeks to move a man in the direction of honesty. On the basis of his system you are pushing him further and further towards that which is not only totally against God, but also against himself. You are pushing him out of the real universe. Of course it hurts; of course it is dark in the place where a man, in order to be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions, must deny what is there in this life as well as in the next.

Often it takes much more time to press him towards the logical conclusion of his position than it does later take to give him the answer. Luther spoke of the Law and the Gospel; and the Law, the need, must always be adequately clear first. Then one can give the Christian answer because he knows his need for something; and one can tell him what his deadness really is, and the solution in the total structure of truth. But if we do not take sufficient time to take the roof off, the twentieth-century man will not comprehend what we are trying to communicate, either what his death is caused by, or the solution. We must never forget that the first part of the gospel is not “Accept Christ as Savior” but “God is there.” Only then are we ready to hear God’s solution for man’s moral dilemma in the substitutionary work of Christ in history.

When we have reached this point with a man, we discover that however complicated the modern man may be under the line of despair, however sophisticated or cultured or filled with knowledge, when he sees his need the good news is the same as it has always been. The wonderful thing is that at this point not only can the same ideas be given but even the same words used to all men.

I recall a time some years ago when two people professed belief in Christ on the same day. One was a very intelligent doctor and the other a very simple Swiss peasant. In my previous conversations with them, the peasant would have understood little of my talks with the doctor. Yet on this day, when both of them had come to understand their need, as I spoke first to one and then to the other, I was able to use not only the same ideas but exactly the same words in telling each one the answer to the need. There is no point in being complicated once the intelligent or the simple man understands his need; the same ideas and even the same words are all that is needed.

The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to do that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair; rather, it is the problem of how to communicate the gospel so that it is understood.

FAITH IN THE BIBLICAL SENSE

In the first place, Christian faith turns on the reality of God’s existence, his being there. Then it also turns on an acceptance of the fact that man’s dilemma is moral and not metaphysical. Each person must face these two things on his own level as a matter of truth.

The Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” The passage which follows is: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house. And they spake the word of the Lord unto him, with all that were in his house.”

What Paul and Silas said in reply to the question was not spoken in a vacuum. Because of the earthquake and the remarkable way Paul and Silas behaved in prison, the jailer had reason to be aware of the existence of a personal God—one who acts in history, answers prayers, and gives men reality in their lives. But this was not all. The whole city had been in an uproar because of all that Paul and Silas had been saying and doing before they were put into prison. Finally, it seems from the preciseness of the jailer’s question and from what we know elsewhere of Paul’s preaching that the jailer had heard the Christian message from Paul himself.

After he had taken them to his house, we read that Paul and Silas spoke to him and his household further of the things of the Lord. Only after this—which we have no reason to think was merely a few minutes’ conversation—did they all believe.

True Christian faith rests on content. It is not a vague thing which takes the place of real understanding, nor is it the strength of belief which is of value. The true basis for faith is not the faith itself but the work which Christ finished on the cross. My believing is not the basis for being saved—the basis is the work of Christ. Christian faith is turned outward to an objective person: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.”

Once the truth of God’s existence is known to us, and we know that we have true moral guilt before a holy God, then we should be glad to know the solution to our dilemma. The solution is from God’s side, not ours.

Now the content of God’s propositional promises begins to be wonderful to us. Paul and Silas made such a propositional promise to the jailer, and in the Bible God gives such propositional promises more generally. For example, John 3:36 reads: “He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” There is a strong antithesis here. The second part of the verse speaks of man’s present and future lostness; the first part of the verse gives God’s solution. The call to Christian believing rests on God’s propositional promises. We are to consider whether these things are true, but then we are faced with a choice—either we believe him, or we call God a liar and walk away, unwilling to bow to him.

As a man is faced with God’s promises, Christian faith means bowing twice: First, he needs to bow in the realm of Being (metaphysically)—that is, to acknowledge that he is a creature before the infinite-personal Creator who is there. Second, he needs to bow in the realm of morals—that is, to acknowledge that he has sinned and therefore that he has true guilt before the God who is there. If he has true moral guilt before an infinite God, he has the problem that he, as finite, has no way to remove such a guilt. Thus what he needs is a nonhumanist solution. Now he is faced with God’s propositional promise, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.”

What remains is the meaning of “believe on the Lord Jesus.” What does it mean to believe on, to cast oneself on, Christ? I would suggest there are four crucial aspects. More detail could be considered, but these are crucial. They are not slogans to be repeated by rote and they do not have to be said in these words, but the individual must have come to a positive conclusion and affirmation concerning them, if he is to believe in the biblical sense:

But note with care that God’s promise, “He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life,” rests upon God’s being there; Christ being the Second Person of the Trinity, whose death therefore has infinite value; my not coming presumptuously in, thinking I can save myself, but casting myself on the finished work of Christ and the written promises of God. My faith is simply the empty hands by which I accept God’s free gift.

John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress has Hopeful say it this way:

He [Faithful] bid me go to him and see. Then I said it was presumption. He said, no, for I was invited to come. Then he gave me a book of Jesus’ inditing, to encourage me the more freely to come; and he said concerning that book, that every jot and tittle thereof stood firmer than heaven and earth. Then I asked him further how I must make my supplication to him; and he said, Go and thou shalt find him upon a mercy-seat, where he sits all year long to give pardon and forgiveness to them that come. I told him that I knew not what to say when I came; and he bid me say to this effect: God be merciful to me a sinner, and make me to know and believe in Jesus Christ; for I see, that if his righteousness had not been, or I have not faith in that righteousness, I am utterly cast away. Lord, I have heard that thou art a merciful God, and hast ordained that thy Son Jesus Christ should be the Saviour of the world; and moreover, that thou art willing to bestow him upon a poor sinner as I am—and I am a sinner indeed. Lord, take therefore this opportunity and magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul through thy Son Jesus Christ.

Bunyan says that Hopeful did not understand at once, but soon he did and said: “From all which, I gathered that I must look for righteousness in his person, and for satisfaction for my sins by his blood; that what he did in obedience to his Father’s law, and in submitting to the penalty thereof, was not for himself but for him that will accept it for his salvation, and be thankful.”

This is what “believing on the Lord Jesus” means. If a man has believed in this way, he has God’s promise that he is a Christian.

Of course, becoming a Christian is just the beginning, but we will think more about that in the last section of this book.

After a person has become a Christian, four things will help him:

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