A clear apprehension of the biblical revelation of man bears more significantly on the character of evangelism than is often recognized. Many extravagances, weaknesses, and failures in present-day evangelism come from a deficient understanding of biblical anthropology—the doctrine of man. To be successful the physician must know the nature of the human body. An evangelist has to know the nature of the human soul. And he who would serve the Church in the task of evangelism must evaluate that soul in the light of revealed truth. However much the books of nature and history can reveal of man, Scripture stands as the infallible source of true knowledge. To neglect such a basic text is indolence of the worst order.
What a minister believes about man determines the nature of his preparation, the content of his message, and method of appeal. Component parts of public worship are often selected with a view to the character of man, particularly in evangelistic services. The depth and passion of the preacher’s prayers reveal his comprehension of man’s natural condition. Important consequences—good or evil—depend in great measure on the evangelist’s comprehension of the true nature of the human soul.
Biblical Anthropology
The doctrine of man, revealed in Scripture, vividly sets forth the tremendous and difficult task of evangelism. We observed that a physician ceases to work when life leaves the body of his patient. But the evangelist begins with something that is dead; for according to Scripture, man is dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1), he is of the flesh (John 3:6), shapen in iniquity (Ps. 51:5), his heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), in his condition he is unable to receive the things of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14), without the restraining influence of the Spirit every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is continually evil (Gen. 6:5), he seeketh not after God (Rom. 3:11), and doeth no good (Ps. 14:3). What can be a more discouraging estimate of man than this?
Spiritual deadness, according to biblical revelation, finds its historical and causal origin in the voluntary apostasy of Adam. We read in Romans 5:12–21 that all men experience death, not in themselves, nor in their parents, but in Adam. All men without exception died in Adam: “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). But strangely absent from so much modern evangelism is just such reference to the specific and historical cause of spiritual death and its corollary, the objective righteousness of the second Adam as requisite to salvation. Martin Luther’s conversion occurred when he perceived that the gospel of Christ revealed the righteousness of God. And it is just as important for the sinner to know that Christ’s obedience is imputed to his own account through faith, as it is to know that at one time Christ died for his sin on the cross (Rom. 1:17; 5:19; Phil. 3:9). Often forgotten is that precious title of Christ in Jeremiah 23:6, “the Lord our righteousness.” Yet there lies the depth, strength and durableness of Reformation evangelism. It is true that some would shrug all this off as unnecessary theological detail; but is that not shrugging off a vital scriptural teaching, without which a sinner remains ignorant of his relationship to the Adam of death and the Adam of life?
This desperate situation of fallen man also implies the tremendous power that was required to rescue him. The same mighty and miraculous power that was necessary to raise Christ from physical death must needs be exerted as well on behalf of the spiritually dead (Eph. 1:19, 20). This truth is echoed in Colossians 2:12, 13: “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him.” Regeneration, spoken of here, is likened to a passing from death to life, a resurrection from the dead.
Spiritual death signifies a state of alienation from God and a loss of the moral image of God. It is an estrangement wherein men walk not according to the law of God, but “according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2). The ungodly spirit of the world governs their conduct; loving, serving, and worshiping God do not actuate their lives. They are children of darkness who walk “in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:17, 18). It should be observed that alienation from God issues in more than inactive deadness—it leads to active opposition, as we note in Jesus’ crucifixion and the stoning of Stephen. And this is what the evangelist must accept, this biblical evaluation of man’s ignorance, blindness, deadness to the Spirit and hatefulness if he is to undertake at all the mission of evangelism in the Church.
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Implications For Evangelism
But how can the spiritually dead be quickened and made alive? Certainly not through eloquent speaking or the wisdom of this world. The state of the unsaved sinner is such that the evangelist must distrust any power of popular persuasion, thunder, or terror of the law. However much he has the art to depict the beauty of holiness or the blessedness of a virtuous life, this can produce no motion within the spiritually dead. He may instill dread by his descriptions of the lake of fire and brimstone or implant longings in the hearts of his people for the glories of paradise, delineate in dramatic fashion the sufferings of Christ or describe the manifold love of God, but none of these skills in themselves can impart to a sinner life. Such a one is wholly insensitive to the spiritual truth and beauty of God.
The biblical doctrine of man, therefore, makes necessary an evangelist’s complete dependence upon almighty God in the effecting of man’s salvation. Only God has the power to give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Only he can create light in the darkened and distorted understanding of the unregenerate. And until the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, infuses divine life into a man’s soul, no man can put forth a hand of faith to lay hold upon Christ. No man can come forth out of the tomb of death, except by the voice of the Son of God: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” This is the source of power and life.
While the power to awaken the dead is the Lord’s he has ordained means and does use instruments for the carrying out of his purpose. One of these, of course, is the preaching of the Cross and Christ crucified: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). This does not mean foolish preaching. It means preaching what the world considers foolishness through which God is pleased to save those that believe. One common fault with evangelists today is that their messages contain a minimum of Gospel and a maximum of the extraneous—the witty, frivolous, and the inane (a form of man’s “wisdom”). And what is worse, they evidently mistake their foolish talk for the preaching of the Cross. Paul, knowing that God had ordained the Gospel to establish the faith, depreciated the excellency of speech and enticing words of man’s wisdom lest the preaching of the Cross be of no effect. And the Lord blessed his faithful preaching with the power of the Spirit.
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A striking and encouraging illustration of how effective the preaching of the Word to the dead can be is seen in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek. 37:1–14). The prophet is shown a valley of dry bones and is urged to preach over them. He preaches as he is directed and indicates the marvelous results in these words: “So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.” The significant fact here is that the preaching of the Word alone was insufficient to restore life, and the prophet was directed to prophesy to the wind. Undoubtedly the wind symbolized the Holy Spirit and Ezekiel, in effect, was to pray, for the outpouring of him who alone could give breath to the house of Israel. It was thus the Word and the Spirit made a living army out of a valley of dry bones. God’s means for quickening the spiritual dead in the twentieth century are no different from those at the time of Ezekiel, and the same blessed results may always be expected.
The figure of death which is used here in no way implies that natural man is destitute of intellectual power. Spiritual deadness consists in the perversion of the pure intellectual capacity created in man by God. And in regeneration God merely takes what he has made and gives it a new and holy direction. The true evangelist knows, therefore, that he is addressing the unconverted as rational beings, and must confront them with the truth of the Gospel, beginning with the terrors of the law, the fact of eternal punishment, the way of salvation and then the gracious but urgent invitation to it. To a corrupt and depraved generation the Lord said through Isaiah, “Come now, and let us reason together … though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isa. 1:18). Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come before Felix and Drusilla. Thus Isaiah and Paul addressed themselves to the intellect and conscience of the unregenerate. Both would recognize that the actual change within a man is engendered by the Holy Spirit. Paul declared, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.”
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Biblical Precedence
It is true that much criticism has been directed against the means by which people are often drawn to the evangelistic meetings. Many deplore fanfare and Madison Avenue tactics as secular and undignified. However, these means are many times employed for the purpose of attracting average people to the preaching of the Gospel and it does have biblical precedent. In the second chapter of Acts, we note one rather spectacular way of gathering a multitude. It consisted of the rushing of the wind, cloven tongues like as of fire, and the speaking of other tongues. And when this was advertised abroad, a multitude came together (Acts 2:6) and Peter preached a sermon that was instrumental in saving some three thousand souls.
Another spectacular means which God used to bring one soul under the preaching of the Word was an earthquake (Acts 16). By what may be termed common grace a man can be attracted to hear the gospel, but only by special supernatural grace can he be made to respond to it. He may be brought to the pool by various means, but he can only be healed as God stirs the waters (John 5:4). One need not be greatly concerned how a sinner is brought under the preaching of the Gospel, as long as the method does not become a substitute for true preaching in the power of the Word and demonstration of the Spirit.
Knowledge Of Scripture
How carefully then must an evangelist’s message be prepared. Superficial knowledge of the Scripture can only produce superficial preaching and in turn superficial response. This means, therefore, that he ought to give to the Word his most careful attention, that he be, in short, a theologian, knowing well the essential teachings revealed in Holy Scripture. His calling to the preaching of the Gospel in simplicity and clarity does not give him margin to be simple (ignorant) of knowledge. God’s Word has the effect of making the simple wise (Ps. 19:7; 119:130). “Simple,” of course, means “not blended, mixed or compounded with something else.” When an evangelist adulterates the Gospel with irrelevant humor, anecdotes and personal experiences, he comes far from proclaiming the simple Gospel wherein he boasts, and it is that which God has specifically ordained as the means to awakening the dead.
It is the Spirit of God that gives power to resurrect a dead soul, however. And here is where prayer for that power becomes one of the most important factors in evangelism. Billy Graham constantly attributes the conversion of souls in his ministry to the prayers of God’s people. Regeneration of a man’s soul depends wholly upon God’s grace and power. Would that more evangelists understood this. They seek by human means to bring about “decisions,” they feel that they have failed unless they can present a good count; some will even stoop as low as to trick people into coming forward at meetings. But of what avail is it that the church be thus filled with the dead? Is that way more profitable and more glorious than appealing to God for true regenerating power?
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Evangelism, if exercised according to the nature of man as revealed in Scripture, will have none of the extravagances, idiosyncrasies, or weaknesses that have justified so much criticism toward it, and it will certainly induce men to greater dependence upon the Lord of life. Only God can quicken the soul that is dead in trespasses and sins.
Past All Understanding
Tired? Let go!
Hear the “Come unto Me,”
Of His heavenly voice,
If rested you’d be.
Lonely? Look up!
Let the world grow dim;
There is steadying strength
When you journey with Him.
Hungry? Draw near!
For a feast is spread
Of living water
And heavenly bread.
Doubting? Fear not!
For the promise holds true,
That the child of God’s care
Shall his faith renew.
So, rested and steadied
And nourished and stilled,
Claim each promise of God,
And each need shall be filled.
—Sue C. Boynton
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