It is com­mon prac­tice among evan­gel­i­cals (and oth­er sim­i­lar move­ments) to use friend­ships as a means of evan­ge­lism. As appeal­ing as it might sound to want to make accept­ing the gospel eas­i­er for peo­ple, the Chris­t­ian mes­sage is, and will always be, a mes­sage of the cross. That is to say, a mes­sage of self-sac­ri­fice and devo­tion. For many of his lis­ten­ers, Jesus’ mes­sage was an offence. Some sim­ply left him, say­ing “This is a hard teach­ing. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60), oth­ers became abu­sive, even going as far as hav­ing him put to death.

And what was the rea­son for their rejec­tion? Jesus’ assess­ment was that peo­ple love their own lives—that is, their own plans and aims and plea­sures.

In con­trast to Jesus’ mes­sage, friend­ship evan­ge­lism, by neces­si­ty, includes get­ting involved in the myr­i­ad of ways in which peo­ple “love their lives”. It means shar­ing their inter­ests and tak­ing part in their activ­i­ties and dis­trac­tions. If one does the same things they do, how is it pos­si­ble to show them what los­ing one’s life means? If a believ­er lets them­selves be swept away in the same tor­rent of water as those who don’t believe, how can they pull them out? Such a “gospel” might spare a believ­er from being per­se­cut­ed, but it can­not save any­one.

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For every­thing in the world—the crav­ings of sin­ful man, the lust of his eyes and the boast­ing of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever. (1 John 2:15–17)¹

In this arti­cle we take a look at the prob­lems with friend­ship evan­ge­lism and con­trast it with the approach of Jesus, Paul and the apos­tles towards preach­ing the gospel.

Part I The Foundation for Evangelism

1 What Is the Message That Jesus Preached?

Before we think about how to evan­ge­lise, that is, how to help peo­ple under­stand sal­va­tion through Jesus, we first need to be clear on what that sal­va­tion actu­al­ly means. There are many aspects that are cru­cial to salvation—from Jesus’ love shown in his life and death, his divin­i­ty and medi­a­tor­ship and much more.

One aspect which has par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance to the issue of friend­ship evan­ge­lism is repen­tance and what kind of life and devo­tion Jesus called peo­ple to.

1.1 Repentance Means a Complete Change of Life

Repen­tance is the pre­req­ui­site for receiv­ing God’s for­give­ness, and means turn­ing to him with sin­cere regret over the sin­ful way of life one has lived. We can see exam­ples of this in the sto­ry about Zac­cheus and the sin­ful woman:

All the peo­ple saw this and began to mut­ter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sin­ner.” But Zac­cha­eus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my pos­ses­sions to the poor, and if I have cheat­ed any­body out of any­thing, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today sal­va­tion has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abra­ham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:7–10)

Now one of the Phar­isees invit­ed Jesus to have din­ner with him, so he went to the Phar­isee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sin­ful life in that town learned that Jesus was eat­ing at the Phar­isee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of per­fume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weep­ing, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured per­fume on them. (Luke 7:36–38)

Jesus used many words and para­bles to show that real repen­tance means turn­ing away from sin and doing God’s will—that is, turn­ing from a self-willed life to a God-willed life:

“Teacher, which is the great­est com­mand­ment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great­est com­mand­ment. And the sec­ond is like it: ‘Love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two com­mand­ments.” (Matthew 22:36–39)

Then he said to them all: “Who­ev­er wants to be my dis­ci­ple must deny them­selves and take up their cross dai­ly and fol­low me. For who­ev­er wants to save their life will lose it, but who­ev­er los­es their life for me will save it. What good is it for some­one to gain the whole world, and yet lose or for­feit their very self?” (Luke 9:23–25)

So we see that Jesus con­nect­ed becom­ing a Chris­t­ian with giv­ing our whole life to him in such a way that we con­scious­ly strive to do what God wants and not to live for our­selves. This is a mes­sage that many find hard, and cer­tain­ly not one with which you can attract many friends.

1.2 Repentance Comes by Understanding Sin in the Light of God’s Holiness

Repen­tance includes a com­plete change of atti­tude regard­ing the grav­i­ty of sin:

If your right eye caus­es you to stum­ble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is bet­ter for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand caus­es you to stum­ble, cut it off and throw it away. It is bet­ter for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matthew 5:29–30)

The Apos­tle Peter adds:

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is writ­ten: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15–16)

The good news of the gospel is a very joy­ful mes­sage, but it is also a very seri­ous one. The way we com­mu­ni­cate it to peo­ple should reflect this seri­ous­ness, so that they can under­stand that they are being called to stand before the one holy God, and that they need to repent.

When a per­son under­stands God’s holi­ness they will under­stand how deeply sin­ful their life is. This is the basis for repen­tance and for liv­ing a holy life. If meth­ods of evan­ge­lism are used which do not reflect God’s holi­ness (for exam­ple, which treat sin, such as plea­sure-seek­ing, light­ly) then they can­not bear tes­ti­mo­ny about him or lead a per­son to rev­er­ent fear and the con­vic­tion of how much their sin sep­a­rates them from God. Paul urges believ­ers to give this tes­ti­mo­ny:

There­fore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my pres­ence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your sal­va­tion with fear and trem­bling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to ful­fill his good pur­pose. Do every­thing with­out grum­bling or argu­ing, so that you may become blame­less and pure, chil­dren of God with­out fault in a warped and crooked gen­er­a­tion. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firm­ly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. (Philip­pi­ans 2:12–16)

This atti­tude described here is what we mean when we talk of “rev­er­ent fear”: walk­ing in awe of God, liv­ing care­ful­ly and con­scious­ly, choos­ing to do only what is tru­ly good and holy. Such a life brings glo­ry to God. It bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the strength he gives and how he trans­forms those who sub­mit to him. This is the wit­ness that peo­ple need.

1.3 Following Jesus Means Turning Away from a Selfish and Worldly Way of Life

Today many peo­ple (includ­ing reli­gious peo­ple) use a lot of time for them­selves in a baf­fling vari­ety of leisure activ­i­ties and hob­bies. So much unnec­es­sary time, mon­ey and effort is spent on the self. By look­ing for ful­fil­ment in such activ­i­ties, peo­ple miss the joy that God wants to give and neglect the spir­i­tu­al and prac­ti­cal needs of oth­ers.

Let’s com­pare this with Jesus’ exam­ple:
He loved the Father and peo­ple so much that he always direct­ed his atten­tion to how he can serve them. How deep must this wish to serve have been, when in the great­est pain while dying on the cross he spoke words of hope for the rebel beside him and made arrange­ments for the care of his moth­er (Luke 23:39–43, John 19:26–27)? He was sim­ply doing what he had always done, name­ly, putting oth­ers first and for­get­ting him­self.

We can­not find exam­ples in the Bible of Jesus hav­ing sought his own plea­sure or done things that didn’t serve spir­i­tu­al aims. He lived entire­ly for oth­ers, turn­ing to them in tire­less devo­tion to teach them what it real­ly means to live by faith. He saw their urgent need to know the Father.

It is this exam­ple that he calls us to fol­low. He describes this call in terms such as “hating/losing one’s life” or “dying” or “car­ry­ing the cross” or “lov­ing just like he did” (John 12:25–26, John 15:9–17, John 13:34, Luke 14:25–33,…).

The world asks: “What’s in it for me?”, “What makes me hap­py / feel good?”

A Chris­t­ian asks: “How can I devote my life com­plete­ly to God?”, “How can I love my broth­ers and sis­ters in faith, and help oth­er peo­ple to find God’s love?”, “How can I grow in faith and reject the desires of this world?”

Some reli­gious peo­ple go to great lengths to show that Chris­tians are just like unbe­liev­ers in order to attract peo­ple to “the gospel”. How is this pos­si­ble, when Jesus’ life was so utter­ly oppo­site to the world? How can this be called Chris­tian­i­ty?

A sin­ner, who knows he is a sin­ner, is bet­ter off than a reli­gious per­son who does not recog­nise his sin. Sad­ly, some who once turned away from world­ly lives, in which they knew they were sin­ful, are cheat­ed by reli­gious groups into think­ing that you can com­bine a world­ly and Chris­t­ian life. This is much hard­er to recog­nise and repent of because the world­li­ness is giv­en a more or less “spir­i­tu­al” coat­ing (= jus­ti­fi­ca­tion).

We will look at a few com­mon respons­es we hear from peo­ple when we speak with them about the dif­fer­ence between the atti­tude of Chris­tians and that of unbe­liev­ers lat­er in the sec­tion “Fre­quent­ly Used Excus­es”. First­ly how­ev­er, we would like to con­tin­ue with look­ing at the bib­li­cal exam­ple for evan­ge­lism in the life of Jesus and his fol­low­ers….

2 How Did Jesus Communicate His Message to People?

Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man demon­strates very well how he called peo­ple:

As Jesus start­ed on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher”, he asked, “what must I do to inher­it eter­nal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the com­mand­ments: ‘You shall not mur­der, you shall not com­mit adul­tery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false tes­ti­mo­ny, you shall not defraud, hon­or your father and moth­er.’” “Teacher”, he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack”, he said. “Go, sell every­thing you have and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his dis­ci­ples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the king­dom of God!” The dis­ci­ples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Chil­dren, how hard it isto enter the king­dom of God! It is eas­i­er for a camel to go through the eye of a nee­dle than for some­one who is rich to enter the king­dom of God.” (Mark 10:17–25)

Jesus knew that this man need­ed to hear God’s per­fect stan­dard in order to be saved. Although the man was not ready to repent, this was the great­est dis­play of love that Jesus could show him. Jesus gave him the chance of his life to assess his sins and to devote him­self to God by clear­ly and direct­ly explain­ing what was miss­ing in the man’s readi­ness to serve God. He did not try to win him over by appeal­ing to his par­tic­u­lar hob­bies or inter­ests. He got straight to the point, and when the man did not want to fol­low him, he did not run after him, or try to com­fort him and make the way sound eas­i­er.

Like­wise, we owe peo­ple this clar­i­ty about God’s stan­dard if we want to preach the gospel to them.

The Samar­i­tan woman at the well (John 4) also received a very direct call­ing. Jesus used the fact that she had come to draw water to start talk­ing about him­self (that he is the liv­ing water), and then touched on a very sen­si­tive point in her life that hin­dered her from being able to receive this liv­ing water (she lived in adul­tery). Her reac­tion, how­ev­er, was one of great amaze­ment and joy. She saw the love and pow­er of God in his words.

These exam­ples show that the prob­lem is not how quick­ly or direct­ly we speak about the gospel with peo­ple. The atti­tude of the lis­ten­er is what is deci­sive. The para­ble of the sow­er con­tains a descrip­tion of four kinds of ground which rep­re­sent the var­i­ous reac­tions to hear­ing the gospel (Matthew 13:3–8 and 13:18–23). The seed which is sown is good, and the good soil receives it with joy, but the oth­er kinds of ground (= peo­ple’s hearts) describe the hard-heart­ed­ness of many peo­ple towards God. Jesus shows that it is not God’s stan­dard which is the obsta­cle to repen­tance, but their lack of open­ness.

Jesus was not afraid of “tread­ing on toes”, that is, of offend­ing peo­ple. This was not because he was arro­gant or insen­si­tive, but because he knew that peo­ple des­per­ate­ly need­ed to hear the truth. He showed his love by chal­leng­ing them to the core to stand before God and devote their lives to him. Love means say­ing the truth, and not just being friend­ly, as here:

As they were walk­ing along the road, a man said to him, “I will fol­low you wher­ev­er you go.” Jesus replied, “Fox­es have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to anoth­er man, “Fol­low me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and pro­claim the king­dom of God.” Still anoth­er said, “I will fol­low you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good­bye to my fam­i­ly.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for ser­vice in the king­dom of God.” (Luke 9:57–62)

Such strong words are not the excep­tion in Jesus’ min­istry. Even a brief look at the gospels reveals that the vast major­i­ty of his words includ­ed some kind of chal­lenge to take on God’s per­spec­tive of life and the world. For more on this point, see our web­site top­ic “Love and Assess­ment”.

How is it pos­si­ble to rec­on­cile this direct man­ner of speak­ing, as in the exam­ple above, with the peo­ple-pleas­ing approach of friend­ship evan­ge­lism?

Of course, if you your­self do not live a holy life, you will not be able to preach God’s stan­dard clear­ly to oth­ers. For many, the first step in assess­ing this mat­ter of how to evan­ge­lise will first include the readi­ness to take a crit­i­cal look at their own lives.

Liv­ing right­eous­ly and pro­claim­ing the truth clear­ly will attract oppo­si­tion, which in Jesus case led to his cru­ci­fix­ion. There can be no clear­er tes­ti­mo­ny against a peo­ple-pleas­ing and com­pro­mised mes­sage. This mes­sage was con­tin­ued by the dis­ci­ples, as we shall look at in the next sec­tion.

3 The Apostles’ Evangelism

3.1 A Message That Brings Persecution

3.1.1 The Early Church

At Pen­te­cost, Peter preached open­ly, final­ly even con­vict­ing the Jews of hav­ing cru­ci­fied the Mes­si­ah.

“…There­fore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you cru­ci­fied, both Lord and Mes­si­ah.” When the peo­ple heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the oth­er apos­tles, “Broth­ers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be bap­tized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the for­give­ness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spir­it. The promise is for you and your chil­dren and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With many oth­er words he warned them; and he plead­ed with them, “Save your­selves from this cor­rupt gen­er­a­tion.” Those who accept­ed his mes­sage were bap­tized, and about three thou­sand were added to their num­ber that day. (Acts 2:36–41)

It was the word of God—the tes­ti­mo­ny of God’s act­ing and salvation—that deeply touched the people’s hearts. They were not impressed by any out­ward appear­ances or some kind of show. Peter preached a clear, unadul­ter­at­ed mes­sage of God’s love and the call to repen­tance. The peo­ple who were will­ing to lis­ten were shak­en rather than offend­ed, because they let God speak to them and con­vict them through Peter’s words.

Where peo­ple are not ready to let God speak to them, even the best tech­niques of per­sua­sion will not move their hearts. Through such tech­niques, it is pos­si­ble to move some­one to become reli­gious, but not to become a Chris­t­ian (here we refer to “reli­gious” in the sense of adapt­ing to reli­gious life with­out liv­ing in true obe­di­ence to God). When the truth is preached plain­ly, such peo­ple will be offend­ed by the claim that God makes on their lives through the gospel. This is unavoid­able.

In the begin­ning, the mes­sage of the gospel led to Chris­tians being per­se­cut­ed. Nev­er­the­less, the Apos­tles did not hold back from preach­ing what they knew was a great offense to many.

The priests and the cap­tain of the tem­ple guard and the Sad­ducees came up to Peter and John while they were speak­ing to the peo­ple. They were great­ly dis­turbed because the apos­tles were teach­ing the peo­ple and pro­claim­ing in Jesus the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. (Acts 4:1–3)

The church­es were not loved by every­one. As they fol­lowed Jesus’ exam­ple and spoke the word of God bold­ly, they too faced much per­se­cu­tion.

Remem­ber those ear­li­er days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great con­test in the face of suf­fer­ing. Some­times you were pub­licly exposed to insult and per­se­cu­tion; at oth­er times you stood side by side with those who were so treat­ed. You sym­pa­thised with those in prison and joy­ful­ly accept­ed the con­fis­ca­tion of your prop­er­ty, because you knew that you your­selves had bet­ter and last­ing pos­ses­sions. (Heb 10:32–34)

It was just as Jesus had promised—the dis­ci­ples were not above their mas­ter, and were per­se­cut­ed just as he had been (John 15:20).

(For oth­er exam­ples, see: Acts 5:17–42, Acts 6:8–8:3)

3.1.2 Paul—No Compromises

Paul spoke the word bold­ly by the pow­er of the spir­it wher­ev­er he went. Some accept­ed the word joy­ful­ly, but oth­ers imme­di­ate­ly took offense and per­se­cut­ed him, even try­ing to kill him. This did not influ­ence him, and in each town he con­tin­ued to preach open­ly and direct­ly until he was forced to move on.

Now at Ico­ni­um they entered togeth­er into the Jew­ish syn­a­gogue and spoke in such a way that a great num­ber of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbe­liev­ing Jews stirred up the Gen­tiles and poi­soned their minds against the broth­ers. So they remained for a long time, speak­ing bold­ly for the Lord, who bore wit­ness to the word of his grace, grant­i­ng signs and won­ders to be done by their hands. But the peo­ple of the city were divid­ed; some sided with the Jews and some with the apos­tles. When an attempt was made by both Gen­tiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mis­treat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycao­nia, and to the sur­round­ing coun­try, and there they con­tin­ued to preach the gospel. (Acts 14:1–7, ESV)

This pat­tern repeat­ed through­out Paul’s jour­neys. He did not take an eas­i­er way by try­ing to care­ful­ly make friends with the Jews and win them over through tak­ing part in their lives. When he entered a town, he imme­di­ate­ly entered the syn­a­gogue and spoke open­ly about Jesus, includ­ing his cru­ci­fix­ion, which was an espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult point for Jews to accept (see Acts 13:14–43).

Just as Jesus com­mand­ed, Paul loved all peo­ple. His being reject­ed was not a result of bad behav­iour but was rather a con­se­quence of sim­ply hav­ing loved peo­ple by speak­ing the truth. He was ready to bear rejec­tion for the sake of the truth—ready to be an “out­sider”.

He proph­e­sied from per­son­al expe­ri­ence:

In fact, every­one who wants to live a god­ly life in Christ Jesus will be per­se­cut­ed. (2 Tim­o­thy 3:12)

3.2 What Did Paul Himself Say About How He Evangelised?

There­fore, since through God’s mer­cy we have this min­istry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shame­ful ways; we do not use decep­tion, nor do we dis­tort the word of God. On the con­trary, by set­ting forth the truth plain­ly we com­mend our­selves to every man’s con­science in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are per­ish­ing. The god of this age has blind­ed the minds of unbe­liev­ers, so that they can­not see the light of the gospel of the glo­ry of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach our­selves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and our­selves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of dark­ness”, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowl­edge of the glo­ry of God in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthi­ans 4:1–6)

Like Jesus, Paul also preached an uncom­pro­mis­ing mes­sage. He was very con­cerned that peo­ple be led to true repen­tance and to the per­son of Christ, not to him­self. He did not use meth­ods to lure peo­ple to the gospel but sim­ply let the word of God touch their hearts, so that they could expe­ri­ence God’s pow­er in their lives. He trust­ed that although many found this mes­sage hard, those who real­ly longed for peace with God would under­stand it.

And so it was with me, broth­ers and sis­ters. When I came to you, I did not come with elo­quence or human wis­dom as I pro­claimed to you the tes­ti­mo­ny about God. For I resolved to know noth­ing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him cru­ci­fied. I came to you in weak­ness with great fear and trem­bling. My mes­sage and my preach­ing were not with wise and per­sua­sive words, but with a demon­stra­tion of the Spirit’s pow­er, so that your faith might not rest on human wis­dom, but on God’s pow­er. (1 Corinthi­ans 2:1–5)

The addressees of this let­ter were the Chris­tians in Corinth. Prob­lems had arisen in which some of the Chris­tians had shown appre­ci­a­tion for skilled speakers—an art-form which was high­ly hon­oured in Greek soci­ety. Rather than try­ing to adapt to their tastes in his preach­ing and thus spark their inter­est, Paul admon­ish­es them for their world­ly assess­ments. In the pas­sage above he explains that he came to them sin­cere­ly, con­scious­ly choos­ing plain, sim­ple speech. In this way the gospel itself should “speak” to them, rather than any attrac­tive “pack­ag­ing” (i.e. nice rhetoric).

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as cap­tives in Christ’s tri­umphal pro­ces­sion and uses us to spread the aro­ma of the knowl­edge of him every­where. For we are to God the pleas­ing aro­ma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are per­ish­ing. To the one we are an aro­ma that brings death; to the oth­er, an aro­ma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not ped­dle the word of God for prof­it. On the con­trary, in Christ we speak before God with sin­cer­i­ty, as those sent from God. (2 Corinthi­ans 2:14–17)

The call giv­en to peo­ple is the same, but the way peo­ple react to it differs—not essen­tial­ly because of the out­ward cir­cum­stances or the way we approach peo­ple, but because of their own hearts.

Paul accept­ed the fact that many peo­ple would take offense at the gospel. For the sake of those who were thirsty for truth he preached it with­out com­pro­mise, in the clear­est words pos­si­ble. He knew that this alone can lead peo­ple to true repen­tance and a whole-heart­ed deci­sion for Jesus.

Above all, it was through their tire­less devo­tion, liv­ing out the mes­sage, that Paul and his co-work­ers gave tes­ti­mo­ny about Jesus:

You know, broth­ers and sis­ters, that our vis­it to you was not with­out results. We had pre­vi­ous­ly suf­fered and been treat­ed out­ra­geous­ly in Philip­pi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong oppo­si­tion. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we try­ing to trick you. On the con­trary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrust­ed with the gospel. We are not try­ing to please peo­ple but God, who tests our hearts. You know we nev­er used flat­tery, nor did we put on a mask to cov­er up greed—God is our wit­ness. We were not look­ing for praise from peo­ple, not from you or any­one else, even though as apos­tles of Christ we could have assert­ed our author­i­ty. Instead, we were like young chil­dren­a­mong you. Just as a nurs­ing moth­er cares for her chil­dren, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delight­ed to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. Sure­ly you remem­ber, broth­ers and sis­ters, our toil and hard­ship; we worked night and day in order not to be a bur­den to any­one while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are wit­ness­es, and so is God, of how holy, right­eous and blame­less we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own chil­dren, encour­ag­ing, com­fort­ing and urg­ing you to live lives wor­thy of God, who calls you into his king­dom and glo­ry. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 2:1–12)

Any­one who knows how con­sum­ing par­ent­hood is, will be able to under­stand well, what kind of com­mit­ment Paul describes here when he com­pares his care for these young dis­ci­ples of Christ with that of a moth­er and father. Through his life, he embod­ied the essence of the mes­sage of Jesus, and chal­lenged them to do the same, as expressed in the let­ter to the Corinthi­ans:

Fol­low my exam­ple, as I fol­low the exam­ple of Christ. (1 Corinthi­ans 11:1)

4 How Should We Bear Witness?

Jesus estab­lished the Church as the great­est tes­ti­mo­ny of God’s act­ing to the world—through their love for one anoth­er, and the deep uni­ty among them.

A new com­mand I give you: Love one anoth­er. As I have loved you, so you must love one anoth­er. By this every­one will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you love one anoth­er. (John 13:34–35)

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their mes­sage, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have giv­en them the glo­ry that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to com­plete uni­ty. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20–23)

By these state­ments, Jesus expressed the impor­tance of the Church as a whole giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny. Chris­t­ian uni­ty and devo­tion can­not be prac­tised alone. That is why Chris­tians can best give tes­ti­mo­ny about the work of God in their lives when they are togeth­er, and togeth­er call peo­ple to life with him.

Jesus’ call to dis­ci­ple­ship was embod­ied in the life of the ear­ly church—in the devo­tion of the believ­ers to one anoth­er and in the deep uni­ty they shared. See­ing their lives made it very sim­ple for those seek­ing God to under­stand that liv­ing for God real­ly means putting him first in every­thing and liv­ing a life of love and holi­ness. Through this tes­ti­mo­ny, peo­ple were able to under­stand the seri­ous­ness of God’s call and the real­i­ty of the com­mand of Jesus “…and any­one who does not take his cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me. Who­ev­er finds his life will lose it, and who­ev­er los­es his life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:38–39

Paul expressed that the Church is the ful­fil­ment of God’s plan of sal­va­tion on earth:

…And God placed all things under his feet and appoint­ed him to be head over every­thing for the church, which is his body, the full­ness of him who fills every­thing in every way. (Eph­esians 1:22–23)

The fol­low­ing pas­sage is a clear exam­ple of what hap­pens when some­one who is look­ing for God meets the Church:

So if the whole church comes togeth­er and every­one speaks in tongues, and inquir­ers or unbe­liev­ers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbe­liev­er or an inquir­er comes in while every­one is proph­esy­ing, they are con­vict­ed of sin and are brought under judg­ment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and wor­ship God, exclaim­ing, “God is real­ly among you!” (1 Corinthi­ans 14:23–25)²

For more about Church see: “The Vis­i­ble Church”, “The Uni­ty of All Chris­tians” and “Church structure—Offices or Tasks?”.

One prob­lem with friend­ship evan­ge­lism is that the tes­ti­mo­ny of the indi­vid­ual is empha­sised, rather than the tes­ti­mo­ny of the work of God in the Church. As Chris­tians, we should not lead peo­ple to our­selves so that they are par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with our own per­son (not even our own “friend­li­ness”) but to Christ. Many peo­ple build rela­tion­ships where they make them­selves espe­cial­ly “beloved” to one anoth­er and by doing so, they encour­age oth­ers to attach them­selves to their per­son. Such aims are not self­less and do not have God and the spir­i­tu­al well-being of oth­ers at heart (for more on this ques­tion see “God Is Love” and “Love and Assess­ment”).

5 How Should We Not Bear Witness?

“I befriend peo­ple first, and speak with them about God lat­er, when they trust me more, and can see my love for them….” or “I don’t start talk­ing about God, but I wait for peo­ple to ask me why I do things dif­fer­ent­ly….”

Such an approach sounds very appeal­ing at first glance and to be sure, in our dai­ly con­tact with peo­ple who do not believe, we are called to be good exam­ples and to show love as far as it depends on us. If, how­ev­er, we seek rela­tion­ships with them beyond the nec­es­sary con­tact at work or school etc., we cross a bor­der that exists between believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers. This thought might not be so self-evi­dent for every­one. In Part II, we will explain more on this point.

Part II Problems with Friendship Evangelism

6 Friendship Evangelism Is Dishonest

Nowhere in the New Tes­ta­ment can we read of Jesus approach­ing peo­ple like this:
“So you’re not real­ly inter­est­ed in giv­ing your life for God? Don’t wor­ry, just come and join us for some fun…” (i.e. relax­ing togeth­er, lis­ten­ing to music, play­ing sport or some oth­er hob­by).
How­ev­er, in the back of his mind he thinks: “…if they just come to the games night, I can get a chance to slip in a few words about the gospel.”

Jesus respect­ed people’s wish not to live with God, and did not try to influ­ence (manip­u­late) them, not even “for their own good” (i.e. that they might be saved). He knew it doesn’t work that way and that any oth­er approach than a direct one is not hon­est. Appeal­ing to people’s desires in order to influ­ence them is sheer manipulation—just like any world­ly mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy which tries to push peo­ple into buy­ing things they nev­er real­ly want­ed. In this way peo­ple are treat­ed as objects rather than indi­vid­u­als with a free will. In con­trast to this, Chris­t­ian love means tak­ing peo­ple seri­ous­ly in their beliefs and opin­ions, and not using deceit­ful tac­tics in order to “win them over”. Remem­ber the exam­ple of Paul men­tioned in 1 Corinthi­ans 2:1–5.

Entic­ing peo­ple with things they like also gives a dis­tort­ed pic­ture of Chris­tian­i­ty because it gives the impres­sion that you can hold on to your life (your plea­sures). Such an approach makes it seem as if there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence between the life of a believ­er and an unbe­liev­er.

7 Friendship Evangelism Encourages a Worldly Lifestyle

The prob­lem is that many reli­gious peo­ple them­selves see no prob­lem in pur­su­ing their plea­sures while liv­ing with God. Through their lives (their words may sound dif­fer­ent) they pro­claim that faith is just like anoth­er hob­by you can fit along­side your oth­er world­ly inter­ests. Faith becomes some­thing to be touched on every now and then, as one feels like it, rather than being some­thing that con­sumes a Christian’s entire life.

Where the wish to give one’s life com­plete­ly for God is miss­ing, friend­ship evan­ge­lism pro­vides a con­ve­nient excuse to con­tin­ue sin­ning under the guise of remain­ing “relat­able”, or “build­ing a base” to talk about God with oth­ers. This approach is nei­ther hon­est towards one­self, nor towards God or oth­er peo­ple.

May I nev­er boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been cru­ci­fied to me, and I to the world. (Gala­tians 6:14)

I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave him­self for me. (Gala­tians 2:20)

Any­one who loves their life will lose it, while any­one who hates their life in this world will keep it for eter­nal life. Who­ev­er serves me must fol­low me; and where I am, my ser­vant also will be. My Father will hon­or the one who serves me. (John 12:25–26)

When friend­ship evan­ge­lism is used to jus­ti­fy doing things that do not please God, there is prac­ti­cal­ly no lim­it to what is pos­si­ble for a Chris­t­ian to do. Some take a slight­ly milder approach, only going as far as invit­ing unbe­liev­ers for a games evening at home…others take it as far as going to par­ties or to the dis­co (or still worse, hold­ing a “Chris­t­ian” dis­co) in the name of “evan­ge­lism”.

Some reli­gious peo­ple even go to great lengths to prove to unbe­liev­ers: “I’m no dif­fer­ent to you…I’m a fan of the same foot­ball team…I lis­ten to the same music…I saw the same movie as you….”

This does not help peo­ple to repent because it hin­ders them in under­stand­ing God’s holi­ness and denies that many such activ­i­ties are in them­selves sin­ful.

John writes:

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, love for the Fatheris not in them. For every­thing in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but who­ev­er does the will of God lives for­ev­er. (1 John 2:15–17)

8 Christians Cannot Make Friends with the World

It is nor­mal for Chris­tians to seek God’s will in every­thing they do, as too, is the long­ing to view day to day occur­rences with his eyes. This leads to fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on almost every­thing and to entire­ly dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties and usage of time than for unbe­liev­ers. As a Chris­t­ian strives to live a holy and god­ly life, they will be con­front­ed with how incom­pat­i­ble their life is with that of unbe­liev­ers.

This is not a “prob­lem” to be over­come by mak­ing com­pro­mis­es, but a nat­ur­al, albeit painful, part of being “aliens and strangers” in the world that Chris­tians must humbly accept (Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 2:11).

Jesus him­self made no apolo­gies for his choice of friends:

You are my friends if you do what I com­mand. (John 15:14)

He did not try to be friends with every­one. He knew that those who reject his mes­sage live in oppo­si­tion to God and that his path was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent one to theirs.

These pas­sages express the sep­a­ra­tion that exists between a believ­er and an unbe­liev­er:

You adul­ter­ous peo­ple, don’t you know that friend­ship with the world means enmi­ty against God? There­fore, any­one who choos­es to be a friend of the world becomes an ene­my of God. Or do you think Scrip­ture says with­out rea­son that he jeal­ous­ly longs for the spir­it he has caused to dwell in us? (James 4:4–5)

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seat­ed at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earth­ly things. For you died, and your life is now hid­den with Christ in God. When Christ, who is yourlife, appears, then you also will appear with him in glo­ry. Put to death, there­fore, what­ev­er belongs to your earth­ly nature: sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, impu­ri­ty, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idol­a­try. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. (Colos­sians 3:1–7)

When Jesus sent the dis­ci­ples out to preach the gospel he com­mand­ed them to sep­a­rate from those who were not open for their mes­sage:

What­ev­er town or vil­lage you enter, search there for some wor­thy per­son and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greet­ing. If the home is deserv­ing, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If any­one will not wel­come you or lis­ten to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Tru­ly I tell you, it will be more bear­able for Sodom and Gomor­rah on the day of judg­ment than for that town. (Matthew 10:11–15)

Like­wise, Paul expressed how impos­si­ble it is for believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers to share in fel­low­ship:

Do not be yoked togeth­er with unbe­liev­ers. For what do right­eous­ness and wicked­ness have in com­mon? Or what fel­low­ship can light have with dark­ness? What har­mo­ny is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believ­er have in com­mon with an unbe­liev­er? What agree­ment is there between the tem­ple of God and idols? For we are the tem­ple of the liv­ing God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my peo­ple.” There­fore, “Come out from them and be sep­a­rate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daugh­ters, says the Lord Almighty.” There­fore, since we have these promis­es, dear friends, let us puri­fy our­selves from every­thing that con­t­a­m­i­nates body and spir­it, per­fect­ing holi­ness out of rev­er­ence for God. (2 Corinthi­ans 6:14–7:1)

Paul bor­rows this pic­ture from the law: “Do not plough with an ox and a don­key yoked togeth­er” (Deuteron­o­my 22:10). To do so would make plough­ing a straight line near impos­si­ble. Sim­i­lar­ly, a believ­er wants to do things which bring glo­ry to God, and an unbe­liev­er does not. In spir­i­tu­al mat­ters they can­not work togeth­er, and every­thing in a Christian’s life is to be con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al­ly. There is no “free time” in which spir­i­tu­al prin­ci­ples do not apply. Every sit­u­a­tion is a ser­vice to God (“ser­vice” is not a Sun­day morn­ing meet­ing, see Romans 12:1–2).

The atti­tude of want­i­ng to serve God can­not remain a the­o­ret­i­cal wish, but nec­es­sar­i­ly leads to com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties and use of time to unbe­liev­ers. Apart from the dai­ly respon­si­bil­i­ties of work or school etc., we have to con­sid­er how we use our time and what the pri­or­i­ties are. Unbe­liev­ers often look for their own aims such as how to amuse them­selves, but believ­ers look at how Jesus lived and seek tasks that are not for their own amuse­ment, but which serve God’s kingdom—such as fel­low­ship with oth­er believ­ers, or evan­ge­lism, read­ing the Bible, prayer etc.

The pas­sage in 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 ff. is often wrong­ly lim­it­ed to mar­riage or part­ner­ship.

The con­text of verse 14 con­tains no men­tion of mar­riage. Paul uses very strong expres­sions to show the oppo­si­tion between the life of a believ­er and an unbe­liev­er. They have no more agree­ment than Christ with idols! To exclude that this pas­sage refers to friend­ships would be incon­sis­tent with oth­er pas­sages in scrip­ture that speak about sep­a­ra­tion (see Psalm 1, 1 Peter 4:3–5, Matthew 10:34–36, Matthew 18:15–18, James 4:4–6, Eph­esians 5:3–7, 1 John 1:5–7). It would also be arbi­trary to refer this only to mar­riage and not to friend­ships. If there is such a dif­fer­ence between believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers, how can friend­ship be pos­si­ble?

Paul did not mean, how­ev­er, that Chris­tians can­not co-oper­ate with unbe­liev­ers at all, for exam­ple in the work­place or at school. At work, the tasks in them­selves are not opposed to God, and a Chris­t­ian can show a good exam­ple by work­ing in a way which pleas­es God. In such con­texts, it is impor­tant to be coop­er­a­tive, help­ful and con­sid­er­ate. Respect and sub­mis­sion to author­i­ties is also bib­li­cal (Romans 13:1–7). We should only be care­ful not to com­pro­mise our faith. If Chris­tians did not work in nor­mal soci­ety, they would have to leave it entirely—which would be unbib­li­cal (John 17:15).

A strong rea­son for many peo­ple to take part in things they know deep down are not pleas­ing to God is the fear of people’s reactions—the fear of los­ing friend­ships and being reject­ed. Look­ing for accep­tance by unbe­liev­ers leads a per­son very far from God. Con­cern­ing this, Jere­mi­ah wrote:

This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That per­son will be like a bush in the waste­lands; they will not see pros­per­i­ty when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose con­fi­dence is in him. They will be like a tree plant­ed by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no wor­ries in a year of drought and nev­er fails to bear fruit.” (Jere­mi­ah 17:5–8)

Con­cern­ing the con­se­quences of pleas­ing peo­ple see also: John 5:44 and 12:42–43, Luke 9:26, Gala­tians 1:10.

9 Friendship Evangelism Is Exclusive

9.1 Favouring Some and Not Others

Jesus loved every­one and was ready to give every­thing in order to lead them to a rela­tion­ship with God. He did not want peo­ple to attach them­selves to him per­son­al­ly.

Then Jesus’ moth­er and broth­ers arrived. Stand­ing out­side, they sent some­one in to call him. A crowd was sit­ting around him, and they told him, “Your moth­er and broth­ers are out­side look­ing for you.” “Who are my moth­er and my broth­ers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seat­ed in a cir­cle around him and said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! Who­ev­er does God’s will is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Mark 3:31–35)

Jesus was open for every­one who want­ed to know God. It was them to whom he devot­ed his time, and not the many who were not inter­est­ed in hear­ing what he had to say.

Friend­ship evan­ge­lism on the oth­er hand, leads to befriend­ing a few peo­ple in order to “reach” them with the gospel. Often these rela­tion­ships are built pure­ly on per­son­al pref­er­ence (who it is that you like or find inter­est­ing, or where there is some com­mon interest—just like peo­ple in the world). This kind of friend­ship is based on self­ish motives rather than the self­less wish to serve who­ev­er we can. Such rela­tion­ships are also exclusive—some are pre­ferred, oth­ers are not and remain alone.

Ask your­self: “Who is my real fam­i­ly? Who do I real­ly have time for? Is God the aim of these rela­tion­ships?”

By focus­ing on a few unbe­liev­ing friends, who may nev­er decide to fol­low Christ, many are passed by who may well be search­ing for God at this point in time. This is not love. We should be active­ly open for every­one who is look­ing for God right now.

He said to anoth­er man, “Fol­low me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and pro­claim the king­dom of God.” (Luke 9:59–60)

Jesus calls the man to leave oth­ers to bury his father so that he can preach the good news to peo­ple who are search­ing for God. He says that those who are spir­i­tu­al­ly “dead” (i.e. who do not want to live with God) can take care of this task. This is of course not a rule against bury­ing some­one. It does, how­ev­er, show that Jesus was ready to cut through social norms in order to put the spir­i­tu­al pri­or­i­ties first, even if it meant offend­ing oth­ers. If he con­sid­ered an occa­sion such as a bur­ial so sec­ondary, that the unbe­liev­ers should deal with it them­selves, then how much less would he have spent vast amounts of time doing unnec­es­sary things with them?

So we see that Jesus did not con­sid­er it right to spend many months and years “patient­ly” try­ing to draw peo­ple to him­self. Through his words the urgency and pri­or­i­ty of the mat­ter was made clear and peo­ple were faced with the deci­sion to accept or reject God’s call. Hav­ing cho­sen God, they too should fol­low their mas­ter in show­ing oth­ers what it means to put ser­vice in God’s king­dom first in their lives.

True friend­ships are built not on human pref­er­ence, but on the com­mon wish to serve God. Only then, when the focus is not pleas­ing each oth­er, but pleas­ing God, can deep, free, self­less rela­tion­ships devel­op. Such rela­tion­ships are a tes­ti­mo­ny to the world of the love that God works in those who fol­low him (see John 13:34).

Peo­ple have many rea­sons for choos­ing who their friends are—often based on com­mon inter­ests, human sym­pa­thies, per­son­al pref­er­ences or advantages…and oth­er such aims, which are large­ly self­ish. Chris­tians, on the oth­er hand, are called to love every­one, with­out bias. This love means invit­ing them to know God and his love. If peo­ple reject this love, then we have to accept that we can­not help them.

9.2 Clinging to People Endangers Spiritual Life

For many, the wish that loved ones will be saved is a great hin­drance to clear­ly assess­ing their lack of open­ness. This, in turn, leads to mak­ing com­pro­mis­es con­cern­ing mat­ters of obe­di­ence to God because of the expec­ta­tions of friends and rel­a­tives, and to los­ing the clear spir­i­tu­al assess­ment of how impor­tant it is to look for God’s will in every­thing. By this the stan­dard for Chris­t­ian life, that is, the truth, is changed.

Jesus knew that cling­ing to peo­ple will hold many back from enter­ing the King­dom of God. He loved peo­ple more than any­one. He was aware that love means not com­pro­mis­ing the mes­sage, or try­ing to make the nar­row way broad­er, and that it is not pos­si­ble to live with God with­out tak­ing up the cross.

Enter through the nar­row gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruc­tion, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and nar­row the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13–14)

Those who attempt to make the nar­row way broad­er so that those they love are includ­ed, depart from the mes­sage of Jesus. They can­not then lead oth­er peo­ple to God and will lose the way to life them­selves. This is not love—even if it might look and feel like love to live up to the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers.

It was for good rea­son that to those fol­low­ing him, Jesus said:

Any­one who loves their father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me; any­one who loves their son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me. Who­ev­er does not take up their cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me. Who­ev­er finds their life will lose it, and who­ev­er los­es their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37–39)

10 Friendship Evangelism Hinders Deeper Community Life

In order to main­tain rela­tion­ships with unbe­liev­ers you have to spend (much) time with them. If all believ­ers do that, then they can­not real­ly share deep com­mit­ted rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er, because each of them does dif­fer­ent things dur­ing the week. They have trou­ble find­ing time to come togeth­er: one per­son has vol­ley­ball on Mon­days, the oth­er has art club on Tues­days, anoth­er arranged to see a film with work col­leagues on Wednesday…and so the list con­tin­ues. There is sim­ply not the time any­more to meet togeth­er each day to read the Bible and share their lives. This is not the pat­tern of life we can read of in the New Tes­ta­ment. Of the Jerusalem com­mu­ni­ty we know:

They devot­ed them­selves to the apos­tles’ teach­ing and to fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and to prayer. Every­one was filled with awe at the many won­ders and signs per­formed by the apos­tles. All the believ­ers were togeth­er and had every­thing in com­mon. They sold prop­er­ty and pos­ses­sions to give to any­one who had need. Every day they con­tin­ued to meet togeth­er in the tem­ple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate togeth­er with glad and sin­cere hearts, prais­ing God and enjoy­ing the favor of all the peo­ple. And the Lord added to their num­ber dai­ly those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42–47)

Here we see that the Chris­tians devot­ed their lives to each oth­er. They invit­ed oth­ers to share this with them. Their com­mon life was by no means a hin­drance in hav­ing enough time to call unbe­liev­ers to life with God. We have much evi­dence of how they worked togeth­er to call peo­ple (instead of each one car­ry­ing out their own per­son­al “mis­sion”). Through shar­ing they were able to sup­port one anoth­er and free up more capac­i­ty for evan­ge­lism and for fel­low­ship. Their love for each oth­er and the uni­ty among them was the tes­ti­mo­ny to the change of life that sal­va­tion brings and demon­strat­ed very vis­i­bly what it means to give one’s whole life to Christ.

See to it, broth­ers and sis­ters, that none of you has a sin­ful, unbe­liev­ing heart that turns away from the liv­ing God. But encour­age one anoth­er dai­ly, as long as it is called “Today”, so that none of you may be hard­ened by sin’s deceit­ful­ness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our orig­i­nal con­vic­tion firm­ly to the very end. (Hebrews 3:12–14)

The writer of Hebrews encour­ages the Chris­tians in this pas­sage to show care and con­cern for each other’s spir­i­tu­al lives every day. Fur­ther­more, he con­nects this with a strong warn­ing to ensure that every­one receives the help they need to over­come sin. The fight for holi­ness leads nat­u­ral­ly to the recog­ni­tion that we are weak, and need much strength­en­ing in our Chris­t­ian walk.

Part III Frequently Used Excuses

11 “Paul Said He Is a Jew to a Jew and a Greek to a Greek…So We Should Also Adapt to Where People Are at”

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to every­one, to win as many as pos­si­ble. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not hav­ing the law I became like one not hav­ing the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not hav­ing the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all peo­ple so that by all pos­si­ble means I might save some. (1 Corinthi­ans 9:19–22)

It is clear that we are called to be sen­si­tive to people—to under­stand where they are com­ing from, and, where pos­si­ble, avoid things that might be an offense to them…but it is a grave mis­take to use this pas­sage as a license to jus­ti­fy sin in the name of “reach­ing out” to peo­ple. There is no indi­ca­tion in the New Tes­ta­ment that Chris­tians took part in pagan activ­i­ties in order to be “relat­able” to them. His­to­ry sup­ports this. They were known for not par­tak­ing in the cir­cus events, the­atre or sports.³

In the pas­sage above, the men­tion of “those under the law” (= Jews) and “those not hav­ing the law” (= Gen­tiles) shows that Paul was refer­ring to people’s cultural/religious back­ground, not to indi­vid­ual lifestyles. In his evan­ge­lism, he was sen­si­tive and respect­ful as far as his faith per­mit­ted, in order not to give offense unnec­es­sar­i­ly.

One exam­ple of this respect con­cerned the Jew­ish law. The law was a par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive area for Jews, and under­stand­ably so, as it had been giv­en by God. Utmost care was required of the apos­tles to lead the Jews to under­stand that it is no longer nec­es­sary to keep the for­mal aspects of the law. Romans chap­ter 14 describes how Paul became “weak”. He calls Jew­ish Chris­tians who only eat veg­eta­bles (per­haps because the meat which was avail­able was not kosher) “weak” in faith. Paul knew that he has the free­dom in Christ to eat non-kosher meat, but for the sake of the Jew­ish Chris­tians, whose con­science was weak in this point, he ate veg­eta­bles with them (Romans 14:20–21).

Toward Gen­tiles on the oth­er hand, Paul showed that he, even as a Jew, is free to eat with them, despite their non-kosher food (1 Corinthi­ans 10:27–30). He did not, how­ev­er, take part in pagan rit­u­als in order to be able to preach to them.

Paul became “all things to all men” for their sal­va­tion. He did every­thing pos­si­ble to over­come cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers, or bar­ri­ers due to dif­fer­ing ways of think­ing, but in doing so, he was care­ful not to make any com­pro­mis­es. Com­pro­mis­es would have led to a dis­tort­ed pic­ture of Chris­t­ian free­dom, and hin­dered peo­ple from under­stand­ing how rad­i­cal­ly they must repent of their sin­ful lives in order to be saved.

Above all, Paul approached peo­ple “on their lev­el” through his devo­tion. He sac­ri­ficed his time—indeed his whole life—in order to preach the word, often endan­ger­ing his life in doing so, just as Christ did. By this he demon­strat­ed that Chris­t­ian life is not a life of fol­low­ing what­ev­er leisure activ­i­ties one fan­cies, but a life of self-sac­ri­fice and devo­tion. In the fol­low­ing vers­es Paul express­es to what kind of life he called peo­ple:

Do you not know that in a race all the run­ners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Every­one who com­petes in the games goes into strict train­ing. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last for­ev­er. There­fore I do not run like some­one run­ning aim­less­ly; I do not fight like a box­er beat­ing the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to oth­ers, I myself will not be dis­qual­i­fied for the prize. (1 Corinthi­ans 9:24–27)

Are they ser­vants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much hard­er, been in prison more fre­quent­ly, been flogged more severe­ly, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lash­es minus one. Three times I was beat­en with rods, once I was pelt­ed with stones, three times I was ship­wrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been con­stant­ly on the move. I have been in dan­ger from rivers, in dan­ger from ban­dits, in dan­ger from my fel­low Jews, in dan­ger from Gen­tiles; in dan­ger in the city, in dan­ger in the coun­try, in dan­ger at sea; and in dan­ger from false believ­ers. I have laboured and toiled and have often gone with­out sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone with­out food; I have been cold and naked. Besides every­thing else, I face dai­ly the pres­sure of my con­cern for all the church­es. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inward­ly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weak­ness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised for ever, knows that I am not lying. In Dam­as­cus the gov­er­nor under King Are­tas had the city of the Dam­a­scenes guard­ed in order to arrest me. But I was low­ered in a bas­ket from a win­dow in the wall and slipped through his hands. (2 Corinthi­ans 11:23–33)

…Not a “take it easy” life, but a life of seek­ing God’s will! Should Paul and his co-work­ers have joined peo­ple in their leisure activ­i­ties, they would not have been able to show that life with Christ means renounc­ing such enter­tain­ment and dying to one­self in order to serve Christ. What could the world pos­si­bly give them that they did not have in Christ? How could Paul have borne such suf­fer­ing for oth­ers, if he had giv­en any place in his heart for self­ish ambi­tions, let alone expen­sive, time-con­sum­ing and dis­tract­ing hob­bies?

Christ made him­self noth­ing (Philip­pi­ans 2:1–11). Paul fol­lowed his exam­ple. They both call us to do likewise—and by doing so, to become “all things to all men”.

12 “No-one Would Come to Our Meetings If We Only Spoke About God!”

This state­ment begs the ques­tion: “Have you your­self real­ly under­stood who God is, and what he calls you to?”

If we are aware that God is the author of life, cre­ator of the uni­verse, source of love, hope, and all fulfilment…how can it be a prob­lem to speak “too much” about him? …And if we can­not speak too much about him, why should we act towards out­siders as though we could? They should see through our exam­ple which impor­tance God and his word has in our lives.

Many peo­ple get to know God’s word as a dry and life­less book because they do not see it being put into prac­tice. It there­by remains for them an ancient text which is impos­si­ble to real­ly under­stand and large­ly irrel­e­vant for mod­ern life.

It is the task of Chris­tians to open up the word of God to peo­ple. As they live by it, they con­nect its aged words with mod­ern, prac­ti­cal life. Sud­den­ly, what was dif­fi­cult to under­stand becomes a dai­ly liv­able real­i­ty, and the Bible is revealed as a fath­om­less source of strength and encour­age­ment, cor­rec­tion and wis­dom.

Why should we mix preach­ing God’s word with appeal­ing to people’s tastes and wishes—providing dis­trac­tions and enter­tain­ment, as if it lacked some­thing? Such prac­tices only com­mu­ni­cate to peo­ple that the Bible is actu­al­ly not as free­ing, ful­fill­ing and life-giv­ing as it claims to be.

On the con­trary, God’s word is the real “food”. If we tru­ly appre­ci­ate it and live by it our­selves, then we will not see it as “bor­ing”, but will know how deeply sat­is­fy­ing it is, and will be able to help oth­ers to see it.

The Spir­it gives life; the flesh counts for noth­ing. The words I have spo­ken to you—they are full of the Spir­it and life. (John 6:63)

God’s word alone is life and free­dom:

Very tru­ly I tell you, a time is com­ing and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. (John 5:25)

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teach­ing, you are real­ly my dis­ci­ples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descen­dants and have nev­er been slaves of any­one. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very tru­ly I tell you, every­one who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no per­ma­nent place in the fam­i­ly, but a son belongs to it for­ev­er. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31–36)

It is the work of God, that peo­ple who ear­li­er had lit­tle or no inter­est in God can turn and repent. That is why we need not be afraid that the gospel can be “too much” for some­one to hear. It is tru­ly the “Good News” that saves peo­ple from their sins. Those who are open for God deserve to have the chance to hear the gospel in all its full­ness so that they can repent. Preach­ing a “gospel” mixed with world­ly attrac­tions might draw more peo­ple, but it can­not lead them to real repen­tance.

Jesus showed that we should not expect that many peo­ple will be open for the gospel. We should not feel oblig­ed, there­fore, to adapt to the expec­ta­tions of the mass­es.

Some­one asked him, “Lord, are only a few peo­ple going to be saved?” He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the nar­row door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” (Luke 13:23–24)

13 “We Should Be in the ‘World’…”

…but not of it! Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the first part of this say­ing (it is not a direct quote from the Bible) is often empha­sised, and the sec­ond part is giv­en lit­tle atten­tion. This say­ing is used as an excuse to par­take in world­ly activ­i­ties, in the name of “evan­ge­lism”.

This is how Jesus speaks about the dis­ci­ples being “in the world”:

I have giv­en them your word and the world has hat­ed them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you pro­tect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanc­ti­fy them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. (John 17:14–18)

Jesus called his dis­ci­ples to be a light to the world—that is, to be where peo­ple are, and to call them to repen­tance. He knew that when they speak the truth as he did they will face persecution—but they should not for that rea­son leave the world. If how­ev­er, they make com­pro­mis­es with the world they will be like salt which has lost its salti­ness and is good for noth­ing. They can no longer help oth­ers to repent, nor attain sal­va­tion them­selves. As pre­vi­ous­ly cit­ed, John express­es it like this:

Do not love the world or any­thing in the world. If any­one loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For every­thing in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but who­ev­er does the will of God lives for­ev­er. (1 John 2:15–17)

14 “Jesus Went to Sinners (= Pubs/Parties…)”

This cliché can often be heard as an argu­ment why Chris­tians should attend par­ties held by unbe­liev­ers and go with them to pubs in order to speak with them about God. Youth pas­tors seem to have an espe­cial fond­ness of this argu­ment. Where do they take it from? There are no exam­ples of Jesus tak­ing part in the equiv­a­lent of world­ly par­ties today—with immoral music and drunk­en­ness.

If you count Zac­cha­eus, the tax col­lec­tor who wel­comed Jesus into his house and was so touched by what Jesus said that he repent­ed of his greed…then yes, Jesus went to “sinners”—and in this sense, we should too.

A clos­er look at pas­sages in the gospels which refer to such “sin­ners” reveals that it was often they who came to him, because they heard what he said and were con­vict­ed of the need to repent.

Now the tax col­lec­tors and sin­ners were all gath­er­ing around to hear Jesus. But the Phar­isees and the teach­ers of the law mut­tered, “This man wel­comes sin­ners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1–2)

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sit­ting at the tax collector’s booth. “Fol­low me”, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and fol­lowed him. While Jesus was hav­ing din­ner at Levi’s house, many tax col­lec­tors and sin­ners were eat­ing with him and his dis­ci­ples, for there were many who fol­lowed him. (Mark 2:13–15)

These “sin­ners” had lis­tened to John the Bap­tist preach that the mes­sian­ic king­dom was near. They saw clear­ly that they were not in right stand­ing with God and that they need­ed to repent. Hav­ing repent­ed and been bap­tised by John, they were ready and wait­ing for the Mes­si­ah. When they heard Jesus speak, they were hun­gry for his message—in con­trast to the Phar­isees, to whom Jesus said:

Tru­ly I tell you, the tax col­lec­tors and the pros­ti­tutes are enter­ing the king­dom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of right­eous­ness, and you did not believe him, but the tax col­lec­tors and the pros­ti­tutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Matthew 21:31–32)

Jesus expect­ed the peo­ple to have lis­tened to John—a lone prophet, call­ing out in the desert, wear­ing camels hair. Obvi­ous­ly out­ward appear­ances, and adapt­ing to peo­ple’s tastes was not some­thing Jesus saw as nec­es­sary in order to call peo­ple to repen­tance. Jesus was not com­pelled to sink to the lev­el of seek­ing his own fun or good times in par­ty­ing, and then to slip in a few words about believ­ing in him. He spoke open­ly and direct­ly, turn­ing to peo­ple with a clear mes­sage to repent of their self-willed lives to serve God.

This was not Jesus’ tes­ti­mo­ny: “I go out with my friends who drink, and show them a good exam­ple by not get­ting drunk / not drink­ing”; as can often be heard among reli­gious youth. Such behav­iour might be a “tes­ti­mo­ny” of a cer­tain kind of mod­er­a­tion, but it miss­es the point of being a wit­ness to the truth entire­ly. Jesus taught peo­ple open­ly that life with him means self-denial (for the sake of love) and not self-indul­gence and plea­sure-seek­ing, how­ev­er “mod­er­ate”.

Should we call those who are escap­ing from the world to a milder ver­sion of the same plea­sure-seek­ing and self-indul­gence? If this is the result, then they are twice as lost as before—and we along with them.

15 “Jesus Even Made Water to Wine…He Enjoyed a Good Party”

The wed­ding at Cana (John 2:1–11) is often used as an exam­ple of Jesus going to “par­ties”. Regard­ing this opin­ion, sev­er­al ques­tions should be con­sid­ered:

• Did Jesus want to con­done exces­sive alco­hol con­sump­tion?
• What kind of wed­ding was it?
• Why did Jesus per­form this mir­a­cle?
• What do oth­er Bible pas­sages say about tak­ing part in world­ly activ­i­ties?

We trust that with even a basic knowl­edge of Jesus, the first ques­tion can be answered with a con­fi­dent “no”. Had the wed­ding guests tru­ly have been “already drunk” (as peo­ple often inter­pret the state­ment of the mas­ter of the ban­quet in verse 10), Jesus would have sup­port­ed them in alco­hol abuse. An impos­si­ble pre­sump­tion! Like­wise, Mary’s request of Jesus, “They have no more wine”, was not to help the guests get drunk either. She was a very obe­di­ent believ­er and knew bet­ter than to ask her son, whose holi­ness she expe­ri­enced clos­er than any­one, to sup­port drunk­en­ness.

On the con­trary, this was a wed­ding of believ­ers for whom God was the focus of their lives. Jesus along with his fresh­ly appoint­ed dis­ci­ples had been invited—devout Jews. They were not togeth­er to indulge in their pleasures—unlike world­ly par­ties among unbe­liev­ers. They were togeth­er in order to share their joy that two peo­ple had decid­ed to join in the bond of holy mat­ri­mo­ny and start a fam­i­ly.

This pas­sage con­cludes with the words:

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glo­ry; and his dis­ci­ples believed in him. (John 2:11)

God’s glo­ry was being revealed. The time of the mes­si­ah had begun with an abun­dance of new wine—a poignant Old Tes­ta­ment sym­bol of God’s bless­ing (Isa­iah 25:6–8, Amos 9:11–15). The mes­sage con­tained in Jesus actions was not mis­tak­en with an offer of “free beer”.

Par­ties do not have the aim to focus people’s atten­tion on God but are pure­ly for plea­sure. They encour­age super­fi­cial behaviour—though more often than not the behaviour/conversations of the peo­ple is far worse than just super­fi­cial. Peter con­trasts the new lives of Chris­tians with their for­mer lives:

For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauch­ery, lust, drunk­en­ness, orgies, carous­ing and detestable idol­a­try. They are sur­prised that you do not join them in their reck­less, wild liv­ing, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the liv­ing and the dead. (1 Peter 4:3–5)

Some reli­gious peo­ple think that as long as they do not drink exces­sive­ly at par­ties they are being good Chris­t­ian exam­ples. They fail to assess that it is not only the alco­hol that is the prob­lem. Here Paul describes what liv­ing a holy life includes:

Fol­low God’s exam­ple, there­fore, as dear­ly loved chil­dren and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave him­self up for us as a fra­grant offer­ing and sac­ri­fice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, or of any kind of impu­ri­ty, or of greed, because these are improp­er for God’s holy peo­ple. Nor should there be obscen­i­ty, fool­ish talk or coarse jok­ing, which are out of place, but rather thanks­giv­ing. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a per­son is an idolater—has any inher­i­tance in the king­dom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with emp­ty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are dis­obe­di­ent. There­fore do not be part­ners with them. (Eph­esians 5:1–7)

It is impos­si­ble to be togeth­er with peo­ple seek­ing their own pleasure—especially where there is alcohol—and not com­pro­mise this stan­dard described by Paul. The jokes, super­fi­cial­i­ty, mate­ri­al­is­tic, earth­ly-mind­ed or plain­ly immoral con­ver­sa­tions, not to men­tion the immoral behav­iour of peo­ple, all these make it impos­si­ble for a Chris­t­ian to take part in such a gath­er­ing. We can only be a real tes­ti­mo­ny for God when we strive to reflect his holi­ness and puri­ty in every area of our lives—which includes sep­a­rat­ing from bad influ­ences of this like:

Do not be mis­led: “Bad com­pa­ny cor­rupts good char­ac­ter.” (1 Corinthi­ans 15:33)

Those who look for excus­es to take part in world­ly activ­i­ties such as par­ties should test them­selves as to whether they actu­al­ly like the world­li­ness. Per­haps this is the rea­son why they are so selec­tive in which Bible pas­sages they refer to for their stan­dard for Chris­t­ian life?

Final­ly, when all oth­er attempts to defend friend­ship evan­ge­lism fail, we often hear:

16 “What’s the Problem? God Wants Us to Have Fun!”

The word “fun” does not appear once in the entire Bible. This state­ment comes rather from the wish to cling to world­ly plea­sures. Jesus promised some­thing far deep­er and more ful­fill­ing:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be trou­bled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)

And on the night before his death, Jesus said to his dis­ci­ples:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my com­mands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s com­mands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be com­plete. (John 15:9–11)

Do you tru­ly believe this?

For many reli­gious peo­ple today, the real­i­ty of this joy and ful­fil­ment is hid­den, because they pre­fer to seek their own enter­tain­ment in the world—to such an extent that they imag­ine life with­out this enter­tain­ment to be “bor­ing”. In such cas­es it is most vis­i­ble that the true rea­son for tak­ing part in such enter­tain­ment with unbe­liev­ers is not evan­ge­lism, but their own wish­es. “Relata­bil­i­ty” is just an excuse.

*****

17 Closing Thoughts

The one holy God, author of life and ruler of all, hon­ours us by for­giv­ing us and seek­ing a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with us. The small­est and only fit­ting act of thank­ful­ness we can offer is to give our life back to him, whol­ly. Jesus enables his body (the Church) to live as he did—offering up a holy sac­ri­fice of love, so that “in this world we are like him” (1 John 4:17). Through the love and uni­ty of believ­ers, God’s holi­ness, good­ness and love are reflect­ed, so that peo­ple are con­front­ed with who God is and what it real­ly means to acknowl­edge him in their lives. In this way peo­ple can under­stand what liv­ing in God’s pres­ence means. Despite this tes­ti­mo­ny, for many this mes­sage will be a stum­bling block—especially for reli­gious peo­ple.

When some­one pro­fess­es to believe, but fails to live in awe of God (i.e. because of world­ly activ­i­ties and inter­ests) their lives com­mu­ni­cate a dis­tort­ed pic­ture of God, name­ly, that you can hold onto your own life and plea­sures and please God at the same time. Through their lives, they deny that God him­self and par­tak­ing in his ser­vice is the great­est source of joy in life and is incom­pa­ra­ble with any world­ly “joys”.

Com­bin­ing “faith” with world­ly activ­i­ties in order to attract peo­ple is dis­hon­est because it uses people’s desires in order to make them more “receptive”—just as any manip­u­la­tive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Like­wise, build­ing friend­ships with the back­ground motive of influ­enc­ing peo­ple to start believ­ing is dis­hon­est and an infringe­ment of their free­dom.

Faith means being faith­ful to Jesus words in our life and our mes­sage even in the face of mock­ery or per­se­cu­tion, just as Jesus him­self remained faith­ful to the truth to the end. We can only help peo­ple to be saved (and indeed be saved our­selves) if we do not com­pro­mise the mes­sage.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt los­es its salti­ness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for any­thing, except to be thrown out and tram­pled under­foot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill can­not be hid­den. (Matthew 5:13–14)

1. Unless oth­er­wise not­ed all pas­sages in this arti­cle are tak­en from NIV. ↩
2. Here “proph­esy” does not mean fore­telling the future, but teach­ing for mutu­al edi­fi­ca­tion, as described in the same chap­ter, vers­es 3–5: “But the one who proph­e­sies speaks to peo­ple for their strength­en­ing, encour­ag­ing and com­fort. Any­one who speaks in a tongue edi­fies them­selves, but the one who proph­e­sies edi­fies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you proph­esy. The one who proph­e­sies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless some­one inter­prets, so that the church may be edi­fied.” ↩
3. An exam­ple from an ear­ly Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist is that of Min­u­cius Felix, who in “Octavius” por­trays a dia­logue between a pagan and a Chris­t­ian based on dis­cus­sions of his day. One of the char­ac­ters in the dia­logue, a pagan antag­o­nist of the Chris­tians named Cae­cil­ius, argues: “…In the mean­time, liv­ing in sus­pense and anx­i­ety, you abstain from respectable plea­sures. You do not attend sport­ing events. You have no inter­est in pub­lic amuse­ments. You reject the pub­lic ban­quets, and abhor the sacred games…Thus, wretched as you are, you will nei­ther rise from the dead, nor enjoy life in the mean­while.” (M. Felix, Octavius, chap­ter 12,5–6).  ↩