Gospel Grid (God, Man, Jesus, Response)
Introduction
When it comes to evangelism, we often look to tools or easy methods, but the truth is that these are not always effective. What we need is an understanding of the gospel. We need gospel clarity. If we know the gospel clearly, we will be able to present it clearly to others. This allows us to tailor what we say to the person we say it to. Everyone is different, but everyone needs to hear the truth. With that in mind, we have written this short article to help you understand the gospel and how it relates to the people in your life. We have done this because we desire to equip you to reach your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors with the truth that has radically changed our lives.
God
The first stop in evangelism is God. Christians believe that there is a God and that he is the Supreme Being who has no beginning and no end. We believe that he has all authority, all power, all knowledge, all goodness, and all worth. We also believe that this God is not a mystery but that he has spoken, that he has revealed himself specifically through the reliable and authoritative account of his character, nature, and plans in the Bible. So in order for someone to become a Christian, there are several important questions about God that people have to answer:
Is there a God?
Who is this God, and what is he like?
How do you know this God?
How those questions apply in a particular person’s life will differ based on the person. For example, consider two of my friends. The first is a guy I knew in high school who wanted to be a pastor, while I had no plans of becoming a pastor but was more interested in public service. So we went off to college and I became convinced that the best way for me to make a lasting impact on the world was by becoming a pastor, and he lost faith in God and went into public service, but he calls himself a happy agnostic. He doesn’t believe the Bible is reliable, he doesn’t believe that Jesus is God, and he doesn’t even know if he believes that there is a God. My prayer for this guy is that he would begin to believe that there is a God, and he would see the beauty of the eternal creator who called all of creation into existence with a few sentences, and who rules over the universe. That is what evangelism looks like for him.
Evangelism looks different for a second friend of mine, who is Jewish. He is a very committed Jew, and he is incredibly proud of his Jewish heritage, but he doesn’t believe that Jesus is God. He believes in God, he even believes in Moses and the Ten Commandments, but he doesn’t see who God really is and what he is really like or how God has ultimately revealed himself. He doesn’t believe in the trinity; he doesn’t believe that Jesus is God. My prayer for him is that he would see God in his fullness, that his incomplete perception of God would be changed, that he would see the love of God and the beauty of God and understand that God is actually pursuing him for relationship.
As you think about evangelism, you need to be able to diagnose where people are spiritually and where you need to begin the conversation. Even right here in the Bible Belt, we live among people who have very different ideas on who God is or whether or not there even is a God.
Man
The second idea that people need to understand in order to understand the gospel in order to be a follower of Christ is the idea of man. Christians have traditionally used this term to refer to the belief that every person was created by God and that humans were created good but also freely chose to disobey God, what the Bible calls sin. When humanity sinned, we gained a knowledge of evil that has been infecting our hearts ever since. Sin separated us from God, and as a result we choose to serve ourselves rather than to serve the one who has all goodness and worth. Since we have a knowledge of evil, not only do we fail to love God, we fail to love one another. Therefore, Christians believe that the human condition is actually fatal. This has been proven throughout the history of the world because every sinful human has died. We also believe that, because we have sinned against a holy, good, and eternal God, we deserve retribution, we deserve to be punished for that sin by that God.
In your presentation of the Gospel, this is often the most difficult thing to present to people. This is something that everyone knows about themselves deep down but that no one wants to believe. Most people believe that they are basically a good person, or at least they have convinced themselves that they are ok. It takes a miracle of the Holy Spirit called regeneration for our eyes to be opened to our own sinfulness before an almighty God. As Christians we certainly have an obligation to show people the truth about their own soul, but, when we do, we need to do it with grace. I have seen people who are passionate about evangelism confront people with their sin and really only make them mad. The truth of the gospel, the truth about our own sin, is offensive, but as we present these things, we are commanded to be gracious. We don’t approach sinners as self-righteous know-it-alls but as fellow sinners, who by the grace of God have found the cure. This is the truth about every one of us; we are susceptible to any sin. Every one of us, left to ourselves, if the circumstances were right, could be guilty of theft, adultery, even murder, but for the grace of God. So let’s quit walking around with our noses in the air and start walking around with our heads bowed.
Jesus
The third stop in evangelism is with Jesus. Once people see who God is and how holy and how wonderful and big he is, and once they see their own condition before such a big and holy and wonderful God, then the good news of Jesus is such good news. The place that I always love to go for this is 2 Corinthians 5:21, where Paul explains, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The first thing we must understand about Jesus is that he lived a totally righteous life. In other words, he achieved the righteousness of God in his life. However, God the Father took Jesus who knew no sin, who was totally innocent, and God made him to be sin. On the cross, Jesus embodied, he became, our sin—all of our sin, the guilt of that sin, the shame of that sin, all of it, was transferred to Christ. Once Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, the Father punished Jesus, the Father put Jesus to a horrible death, so that the punishment or the debt for our sin was paid in full. Then Jesus rose from the grave, defeating death. And if you have faith in him, if you believe in him, if you follow him, just as your sin was transferred to him, his perfect righteousness is transferred to you.
It is because of the holiness of God and because of the depth of our sin that our only hope is that someone would save us. That is why Jesus is the only way because only Jesus can be such a savior. Al Mohler once said:
If all we need is a teacher of enlightenment, the Buddha will do. If all we need is a collection of gods for every occasion and need and hope, Hinduism will do. If all we need is a tribal deity, then any tribal deity will do. If all we need is a lawgiver, Moses will do. If all we need is a set of rules and a way of devotion, Muhammad or Joseph Smith will do. If all we need is inspiration and insight into the sovereign self, for crying out loud, Oprah will do. But if we need a savior, only Jesus will do.
Response
If you come to terms with who God is—his glory, his weight, his holiness—and then your eyes are opened to see who you are in your sin before a holy God, and then you see that there is a rescuer, who has paid the price of your sin and called you to eternal life, then you must make a choice.
The last stop in evangelism is response. In evangelism we call people to respond to this truth. They must decide if they believe this is true. If the eternal God sent his own totally righteous son to rescue your sinful soul, and my sinful soul, then there is only one response. The love of God towards us demands our everything. If this is true, if Jesus is who he says he is, then he can’t just be a part of your life, he can’t just be a good moral teacher who you respect; he has to be everything. In the words of C. S. Lewis:
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
