John Stott
PART II
Keep the Faith and Pass It On
What Is the Evangelical Faith and Why Does It Matter?
John Stott
[John Stott, Chief Architect of the Lausanne Covenant, was Honorary Vice President of the Lausanne Movement. He wrote over fifty books, and was founder of what is now Langham Partnership International, which works to strengthen the Church in the Majority World.]
I. What Is the Evangelical Faith?
First, what is the evangelical faith? At the risk of oversimplification I want to argue that the evangelical faith is nothing other than the historic Christian faith: original, biblical, apostolic Christianity. The evangelical Christian seeks by the grace of God to be faithful to the revelation which God has given of himself in Christ and in Scripture. ‘Evangelical’ is a noble word, with a long and honorable history. We bear it with humility and with thankfulness.
Of course we recognise that we are not the only Christians in the world. There are large numbers of other people who profess to follow Jesus Christ, who call themselves ‘Catholic’ or ‘Orthodox’ or ‘liberal Protestant.’ Insofar as they profess Jesus Christ as God, Lord, and Saviour, we certainly do not deny them the Christian name. To be sure we don’t agree with everything they believe. At some points we find ourselves in sharp disagreement with them. We also remember that not all those who claim to belong to Christ in fact do so, because nominal Christianity is a tragic phenomenon in every church.
At the same time we must learn to distinguish between principles on the one hand and personalities on the other. We can reject a person’s doctrine without rejecting the person, and we must learn to make that distinction. We need to respect people we disagree with, to meet them, love them, talk to them, and listen to them, because we don’t claim to be omniscient or infallible. We can cooperate with them in works of Christian compassion and social justice. It is when we are invited to evangelize with them that we find ourselves in a painful dilemma, for common witness necessitates common faith, and an agreement over the content of the evangel.
What we evangelicals want to be is plain, Bible Christians. This is why our claiming that the evangelical faith is the historic Christian faith is not the arrogant claim it may sound, although it has sometimes been put forward in an arrogant way. If it can be shown that we have misunderstood or distorted the biblical message whether by addition or by subtraction, whether by manipulation or by deviation, then we must be ready and eager immediately to change. Our aim, in humility, is to be loyal to the biblical revelation.
‘Renovators, Not Innovators’
The sixteenth-century reformers who gave currency to the term ‘evangelical’ and to whom we look back with enormous gratitude and admiration, were quite clear that the evangelical faith is the Christian faith in its original and authentic form. The leaders of the Roman Catholic church at that time accused them of inventing and introducing a new faith. On the contrary, they replied, we are recovering the old faith.
Luther wrote: ‘We teach no new thing, but we repeat and establish old things which the apostles and all godly teachers have taught before us.’ Hugh Latimer declared: ‘You say it is a new learning; now I tell you it is the old learning.’ And John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury from 1560, in his great and famous Apology wrote: ‘It is not our doctrine that we bring you this day. We wrote it not out, we are not the inventors of it. We bring you nothing but what the old fathers of the church, what the apostles, what Christ our Saviour himself has brought before us.’ Then Lancelot Andrewes at the beginning of the seventeenth century coined the epigram: ‘We are renovators, not innovators.’
How then shall I summarise the evangelical faith? Many creeds, confessions, and catechisms have been composed through the centuries, for there is no one way to formulate the historic Christian faith. The most widely acceptable has been the Apostles’ Creed. It is given in a Trinitarian structure with paragraphs concerning belief in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I propose to use this as an outline, because evangelical Christians are Trinitarian Christians. At the same time, I will try to fill it out, because some vital doctrines (such as the atonement and the nature of salvation) are not included in it.
Our Trinitarian Faith
We believe in God the Father.
I will subdivide this belief into three:
The immeasurable blessing of the Bible is that it makes accessible to us (every day and in every place) what God has said and done in Jesus. Without the Bible we should know practically nothing about Jesus. So we could not come to him to put our trust in him, and so we could not be saved. Thank God for the Bible! Its overriding purpose is to bring Jesus to us, and us to Jesus. It bears authoritative witness to him as the Saviour we poor sinners need, the Saviour who died for us and rose again. It unfolds the way of salvation through Christ, how we can be justified, sanctified, and glorified. It invites us to come to him, rely on him, obey him, grow up into maturity in him, work for him on earth, and wait for him from heaven. All these things are found in the Bible which witnesses to Jesus Christ.
We believe in God the Father.
We believe in God the Son.
In particular, we believe in Christ’s absolute uniqueness. I subdivide it again.
Those are the three uniquenesses of Jesus, the one and only God-man, who made the one and only perfect sacrifice for sin, who is the one and only mediator between God and us (1 Timothy 2:5). Nobody else is able to do this. As Peter put it, ‘neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).
We believe in God the Son, and in his three-fold uniqueness.
We believe in God the Holy Spirit.
This time I will subdivide by reference to five of the Holy Spirit’s many titles in the New Testament.
So we see that the evangelical faith—the biblical faith—is an essentially Trinitarian faith. We believe in God the Father, the God of creation, covenant, and revelation. We believe in God the Son, unique in his person, work, and salvation. And we believe in God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life, truth, holiness, love, and glory.
While our Christian creed is Trinitarian, it is also Christological—it focuses on Christ. For the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to him, Jesus, that he is Lord (1 John 4:14; 1 Corinthians 12:3). The major attacks on Christianity down the centuries have not surprisingly been attacks on the person and works of Christ. For this reason it has been vital for evangelical confessions of faith to articulate clearly their tenets of belief about him. It is for this reason also that Scripture’s authority and justification by faith were the two major emphases of the Reformation, and are the two major hallmarks of evangelical Christians today.
Why is this? It is because bound up with the finality of Jesus Christ, with what God has said and done in Christ definitively, evangelicals believe that God, who spoke in many ways and in many parts through ‘the prophets to the fathers, spoke his final word in Christ and in the apostolic witness to Christ. Evangelicals also believe that God, who was active in mighty works throughout the history of Israel, performed his final deed in Christ crucified and risen. Jesus is both God’s last word to the world and God’s last saving deed for the world until he comes again. In other words, God’s revelation and God’s redemption were both finished in Christ; the adverb hapax or ephapax (which means ‘once and for all and for ever’) is applied in the New Testament to both.
So if we start adding our words to the word that God has spoken in Christ, or if we start adding our works to the work that God has finished in Christ, we would be declaring Christ’s word and work to be unsatisfactory, even incomplete. Nothing arouses evangelical indignation more than doctrines which undermine the complete satisfactoriness of what God has done and said in Christ. Nothing is more characteristic of evangelicals than a holy, even a vehement, jealousy for the unique glory of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
II. What Is Our Part, in Our Lifetime?
We come now to explore our personal responsibility to the evangelical faith, and what it means to keep it and to pass it on. For each generation has its own unique responsibility for that; in the family, in the church, and in teaching new Christians in every context. Let me suggest that we have four major duties, set out for us in Scripture.
Believe it and confess it
The evangelical faith is the gospel. It is the good news of salvation from God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. Our first responsibility, therefore, is to embrace it ourselves with all our hearts and minds secretly, and then go on to confess it with our lips publicly. For, as Paul wrote in Romans 10:9, ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you shall be saved.’ Let me add a clarification. We must not separate belief in the evangelical faith from belief in Jesus, or putting our trust in Jesus. For in the New Testament they go together.
It is not possible to trust in Jesus without first defining who this Jesus is in whom we are putting our trust. Nor is it possible to believe the evangelical faith in our intellect and not trust personally in Jesus on whom our faith focuses. True faith is neither an arid assent to the evangelical faith with the mind alone; nor a mindless commitment to an undefined Jesus. Real faith is a conviction about the historic Jesus leading to a commitment to him today. It is our total commitment (mind, heart, will, and life) to the total Christ (who is God, man, Saviour, and Lord). So, let us not be ashamed to confess publicly that this is the Jesus in whom we believe and that our commitment to him is total. Our first responsibility to the evangelical faith is to believe and confess it.
Obey it and adorn it
In the New Testament, faith and obedience are inseparable twins. Linguistically it is significant that the passive of the verb peitho, meaning ‘to be persuaded,’ is sometimes translated ‘to believe’ (e.g. Acts 17:4; 26:28), and sometimes ‘to obey’ (e.g. Romans 2:8; Galatians 3:1). This is because when we are persuaded, we both believe and obey, and each is impossible without the other. Paul writes twice, at the beginning and end of Romans (1:5; 16:26) of ‘the obedience of faith.’ And in Hebrews 11 we read that ‘by faith Abraham obeyed’ (v. 8). It is inconceivable that we should trust Jesus without obeying him; or that we should commit ourselves to him as Saviour and withhold ourselves from him as Lord; or that we should believe the evangelical faith and it should have no effect upon our lives. No, everywhere in the New Testament God’s truth is something to be done, not something only to be believed. It carries with it demands, duties, obligations. The evangelical faith radically transforms those who believe and embrace it.
Then, whenever we obey the gospel, we thereby adorn it. This expression comes in the letter to Titus (2:10), where Christian slaves in a domestic household are told to be honest, conscientious, submissive, and loyal ‘so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.’ Christian doctrine is salvation doctrine, and is adorned by those whose salvation is obvious in their behaviour. This verb ‘to adorn’ (kosmeo, from which we get our word cosmetic) is used in the New Testament of women adorned with clothing and jewels (1 Timothy 2:9), of a bride adorned for her husband (1 Peter 3:15; Revelation 21:2), and of the temple in Jerusalem adorned with noble stones (Luke 21:5). Adornment enhances the beauty of the person or of the building. Just so, a holy and Christlike life sets the gospel forth in its best light, displays its beauty and nobility, and makes it attractive to the beholder. There is an urgent need for us evangelical Christians to adorn the evangelical faith, or, as Paul put in Philippians 1:27, ‘to live a life that is worthy of the gospel of Christ.’ It’s no use proclaiming the good news if people can’t see it working itself out in your life.
Evangelical Christians, being gospel Christians, need (i) to live gospel lives—simple, consistent, Christlike; (ii) to build gospel homes, in which husband and wife love each other and their children, and in which the children love and honour their parents and are brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord Jesus; and (iii) develop gospel churches, whose worship is real, whose fellowship is caring, and whose outreach is compassionate.
How can we claim to believe the evangelical faith if we do not obey it? What is the point of confessing it with our lips if we do not adorn it in our lives, our homes, and our churches?
Proclaim it and argue it
The evangelical faith is not only to be believed, confessed, obeyed, and adorned; it is also to be actively spread. So every ‘evangelical’ (that is, somebody who believes the evangelical faith) should be an ‘evangelist’ (somebody who propagates it). For ‘evangelism’ means precisely to spread the ‘evangel.’
But evangelism especially in our secularised society is not as easy as we have sometimes made out. We tend to make one of two opposite mistakes. The first mistake is to recite biblical phrases, declaring that people need to be ‘born again,’ or ‘saved,’ or ‘justified by faith,’ or ‘washed in the blood of the lamb,’ or that they must ‘enter the kingdom of God,’ and people wonder what on earth we are talking about. The second and opposite mistake is to struggle so hard to translate the gospel into meaningful modern terms that the end product bears little resemblance to the New Testament. Both mistakes are made from excellent motives: to be faithful to Scripture, and to communicate intelligibly. We have to learn to do both simultaneously; to present the good news in terms that are equally loyal to Scripture and relevant to the contemporary world.
This principle holds good whoever the person is we are longing to win for Jesus. It might be a Marxist student in a British university, or an Arab Muslim or an Israeli Jew in the Middle East, or a Buddhist in Thailand, or a Hindu in India, or a scientific secularist, or a so-called ‘Christian’ whose allegiance to Jesus is purely nominal. In each case, there is a cultural barrier to overcome or a cultural chasm to bridge. In fact, there is a sense in which all authentic evangelism is cross-cultural. In it we are called to follow the model Jesus gave us in the incarnation. The incarnation is the most spectacular cross-cultural event in the history of the world. God’s Son entered our world. He left the culture of heaven and he entered into the culture of the earth. We too have to learn to enter other people’s worlds, both their thought world and the personal world of their pain, alienation, and loneliness. Only then, when we are inside their territory, which is home to them though alien to us, can we share with them the good news in a way that they will understand.
Such proclamation or witness will include argument—not the argument of heated debate, but the argument of ‘reasoning with people out of the Scriptures.’ We cannot proclaim the gospel to people in a dogmatic, take-it-or-leave-it style. We have to be sensitive to people’s hang-ups and misunderstandings. We are called to be advocates as well as heralds. To be sure, no evangelism can ever be successful without the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the chief witness, the chief communicator, the chief evangelist. For he is the Spirit of truth, and without his illumination nobody can come to believe. Therefore Paul, for example, trusted entirely in what he called ‘the demonstration of the Spirit and of power’ (1 Corinthians 2:4); when he visited Thessalonica, the gospel did not come to them in word only but also ‘in power and in the Holy Spirit’ (1 Thessalonians 1:5). Nevertheless Paul also used arguments. Luke describes him in Thessalonica, Ephesus, Corinth, and elsewhere as ‘arguing’ with people out of the Scriptures, and ‘persuading’ them that Jesus was the Christ (e.g. Acts 17:2–4). It did not occur to Paul that argument and the Holy Spirit could be incompatible with one another. For it is through our explanations and our arguments that the Holy Spirit brings people to repentance and faith. So we have to proclaim and argue the evangelical faith, the gospel.
The gospel needs to be made known visually as well as verbally. People have to see as well as hear the good news. I am not now thinking of the way a holy life adorns the gospel, to which I have already referred, but rather of good works of compassion. Words and works went together in the public ministry of Jesus, the former proclaiming and the latter demonstrating the good news of the kingdom of God. So with us. This is the place for both philanthropy (works of mercy) and social action (the quest for justice). They manifest the love of God we preach. They are the good works by which, Jesus said, our light will shine and our heavenly Father be glorified (Matthew 5:16).
Defend it and suffer for it
Having given thanks for the Philippians’ ‘partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,’ Paul describes them as sharing with him ‘in the defence and confirmation of the gospel’ (Philippians 1:7). He also describes himself as ‘put here’ (that is, in prison) ‘for the defence of the gospel’ (v. 16). Twice he uses the Greek word apologia (a defence), and once the word bebaiosis (a confirmation). Then at the end of the chapter, verse 27, he urges them to ‘contend for the faith of the gospel,’ to fight for it, because it is true. If we put all those phrases together our fight for the evangelical faith is to be both negative (defending it against attack) and positive (establishing or confirming its truth).
From the beginning the evangelical faith was ‘spoken against.’ The Jews in Rome used the expression about Paul and what they called the ‘sect’ or ‘party’ to which they understood he belonged. ‘We know,’ they said, ‘that everywhere it is spoken against’ (Acts 28:22). Jesus and his apostles gave the plainest possible warnings of false teachers who would arise, opposing the gospel. They called them ‘wolves’ who would infiltrate their way into God’s flock, savaging, dividing, and even scattering the sheep. So ‘Watch!’ they said. ‘Be on your guard! Keep alert!’ Pastors in particular have to be loyal to apostolic teaching, so that we can encourage people by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it (Titus 1:9).
Attacks against the Christian faith will always change with the times. As well as those who declare that Jesus was no more than a good man, or that all religions lead to God, we now have the rise of Islam in political and religious terms, as well as all the avenues into which postmodernity has led us: the New Atheism in its diverse forms, particularly in the West and in academia; a sense that anything is possible for mankind to achieve with sophisticated advances in technology; a widespread confounding of the biblical view of sexuality; and insidiously, a denial that words carry an intended meaning. We could go on.
Over against such threats, we are called to defend the faith, and to be ready at all times to ‘give an answer’ (apologia, again a defence) ‘to everyone who asks us the reason for the hope’ that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). So we have to read and think and discuss. Further, we must pray that God will raise up more gifted apologists, who will out-think the opponents of the Christian faith, and re-establish it as the faith of the church.
Some evangelicals seem to want all their fellow Christians to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ of their own particular belief. This is neither wise nor possible this side of heaven. So ‘within the family,’ among those who are committed to Christ and seemingly anxious to understand and follow the Bible, we must allow one another a certain liberty of interpretation, e.g. over the precise volume of water that is necessary to validate a baptism, or which spiritual gifts are more important than others, or how prophecy is to be applied today, etc. These are family discussions, debates within the family.
But when some fundamental of the evangelical faith is under attack, we cannot remain indifferent or silent. The apostle John called ‘antichrist’ those teachers who denied the divine-human person of Jesus (1 John 2:18–25). The apostle Paul called down God’s judgment on any teacher who contradicted the gospel of his free grace in Christ (Galatians 1:6–9). The apostle Paul opposed the apostle Peter in public when Peter, by his actions, denied the truth of the gospel (Galatians 1:11–16). Very painful and embarrassing confrontations are sometimes necessary today if a vital doctrine is at stake.
We cannot defend the gospel without suffering for it, but we should never court opposition. Yet we must be ready to suffer for the evangelical faith in which we believe. For ‘it has been given to us,’ Paul wrote in Philippians 1:29, ‘not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for his sake.’ Many of our brothers and sisters are suffering physical persecution for their faithfulness in the world today. Fanatical opponents of the gospel, whether Hindu or Muslim or Marxist, are beating them up, burning churches, confiscating Bibles, putting them in prison or labour camps, even liquidating them. We in the West are less likely to suffer physical attack than ridicule and social ostracism for the name of Jesus. That can be very painful too. But since Jesus did not hesitate to endure for us the shame and pain of the cross, we should not be surprised (if we are called upon to suffer), as though some strange thing were happening to us. Still less should we wallow in self-pity. We should rejoice that we are given the privilege of sharing in the sufferings of Christ (Acts 5:41; 1 Peter 4:12–14).
To conclude, we have seen that the evangelical faith is neither more nor less than the historic Christian faith. It is the Trinitarian faith, in all its balanced fulness. It is the original, biblical, apostolic faith about God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We have also seen that our responsibility is to believe and confess it, to obey and adorn it, to proclaim and argue it, and to defend and (if necessary) suffer for it.
May God give us wisdom and courage in these diverse ways to keep the faith in our own generation, preserved for us so wonderfully by the Reformers, and to pass it on.
Notes
. Commentary on the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Chapter 1:4a).
. He continued strikingly: ‘Ye say it is old heresy, new scoured. Nay, I tell you it is old truth, long rusted with your canker, and now made bright and scoured.’ (In The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England by Peter Lake and Steven Pincus).
. Apology of the Church of England, 1562.
. Scholar and Bishop of Chichester, Ely, then Winchester, who oversaw the translation of the King James Version (also known as the Authorized Version) of the Bible.
. Genesis 12:2, 3.
. See the Westminster Confession of Faith, completed in 1647, for the fullest exposition of evangelical belief following the Reformation. It opens with a finely crafted ten-clause section laying out the nature of Scripture; its supreme authority and sufficiency for all matters of belief and life.