The red letter challenge



Could you and your church do all your public evangelizing using only the gospel for your message? I would like to challenge you to try. By this I mean that everything you offer to the general public is to inform them of what the Lord said and did.

The things Jesus showed us by word and deed are surely sufficient to the purpose of evangelizing. They worked for him when he preached them. Likewise, the early church's public gospel was to tell about Jesus. Anything further was simply to work out the ramifications: How do you, in practical terms, understand and live out what the Lord taught? This further material was directed at those who had already heard about the Lord and decided his message was true. The Gospels were for the world, but the Epistles were written for believers.

I suggest we use the same model today, preach Jesus to the unsaved and doctrine to the saved. We are doing something that unnecessarily confuses those we evangelize when we get those things out of order.

As I have proposed elsewhere on this blog, the kerygma is Christendom's common ground, because if you are a Christian you believe it is essential, and if you do not think so, you are not a Christian. It is Christ's own message that saves when met with faith; the attempt, in good faith, to obey it sanctifies us.

All the rest of the faith is how-to information about day to day life as a Christian, and obviously, variations have arisen over the years. I am not sure that some degree of variation is not right and proper to different times, cultures and peoples. But this I know: the foundation that was laid must stay intact or we build for naught.

So the gauntlet is before you: Let him take it up who will. Know nothing but Christ and him crucified, unless you are talking to believers. If everyone takes up the challenge, that will give us at least an outward unity before the unsaved world, for we will all be saying the same thing, when we speak where unbelievers can hear. That is at least a start on the broader unity we are called to.

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