By Tyler Allred
Have this mind among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father
(Philippians 2:5-11 ESV)
Today I was listening to a sermon from Tim Keller he gave on February 1st, 2013 titled Imitating the Incarnation. He gave a rather provocative statement that I think can help shape how we approach evangelism:
“We must realize that the only possible way to respond to Jesus is “extremely”
He went on to reference what John Stott says in his book, Basic Christianity
“If you read the bible you’ll see that nobody who ever met Jesus Christ ever had a moderate reaction to him. There are only three reactions to Jesus: they either hated him and wanted to kill him, they were afraid of him and wanted to run away, or they were absolutely smitten with him and they tried to give their whole lives to him…
Now we have a problem, because, Keller went on to say, “the average person in America likes Jesus… you can’t like Jesus!… no one has ever liked Jesus who knew who he was.
This should challenge us in how we do evangelism
This is a sobering statement for me. I must confess that there are plenty of times when I am perfectly content with getting people outside of Christianity to at least like Jesus. I’ve even invited people to check Jesus out using those exact words! I’ve invited seekers to explore faith by saying, “Let’s look at Jesus in the gospels, and see if you even like him!”
But if we stop there, and I’m afraid many of us are too eager to stop there, we are not being faithful to sharing the good news about who Jesus really is. If Jesus is who he claimed to be, and if did is what powerful passages like Philippians 2 above claim, then we dishonor our Lord by preaching a gospel where simply liking Jesus will suffice.
It’s as if our evangelism is pointing people to Jesus’ Facebook page and simply asking them if they will “like” him! (“like” Jesus and get free stuff TODAY!!!)
I’d like to add at this point that I’m not advocating that “fire and brimstone/ picket wielding” evangelism so many of us have run from! (The goal is not to have people run away in fear of YOU, but to run madly in love toward Jesus!) But our gospel is too powerful to leave people on the fence about Jesus. If we are truly sharing this good news with our lives, our words, and in the power and authority of Jesus name then those around us will only have 3 options: they will hate him, they will fear him, or they will fall in love with this savior who has captivated your own heart. We should be on our knees begging God to make it the latter but we are not responsible for their response; what we do have control over is the type of message we’re putting out there that would call forth the correct response.
Does the gospel you share cause people to respond “extremely” to Jesus?
Or does your witness allow for a casual “like” of Jesus from a distance?
