A Multifaceted Gospel for a Multireligious and Multicultural World

I delivered this message at Calvary Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio in 2002.

Prefer what I actually said? Read the transcript (lightly edited for readability).

Various Texts

Introduction: What do you say to the committed Roman Catholic who thinks that God will accept Him based on His own righteousness? What do you tell the atheist who tries to reject belief in God? What do you tell the person who is living for the pleasures of this world and thinks the Christian life is dull and boring? What do you say to the person who thinks he’s saved but whose life is totally given over to sin? The simple answer to these questions is that you tell them one thing—the gospel of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. To that we would all agree. All people, no matter what their culture or religious beliefs, have the same root problem and therefore they all need the same solution—the gospel.

That was one of the things I learned from the trip. No matter where we would go—different countries, different languages, different cultures, etc.—all people are essentially the same and have the same essential need—Jesus Christ. The gospel is not just for some people and some cultures. And it wasn’t just a message for days gone by. The problem is still sin and the answer is still the gospel.

But how do we approach each of these people? Do you tell them all the same thing? Do you take them through the four easy steps to get saved? Yes and no. You see, while the gospel is the same message it has always been, and that message does not differ in is essence from person to person or from culture to culture, I think that we learn, especially from how Jesus dealt with people, that we need to apply the gospel to the specific needs of people. It seems like our attempts to give people the gospel usually end up being a memorized formula. But Jesus dealt with people individually and in various ways. He told people essentially the same message, but he did it in a wide variety of ways.

I’m not going to take the time this evening to look through them all and see, but I would recommend it as an interesting study—the evangelism of Jesus.

1. To Nicodemus he said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7).
2. To the rich young ruler he said, “Keep the commandments” (Mat. 19:16–17).
3. To a lawyer he said, “Love God and your neighbor” (Luke 10:25–28).
4. To the woman at the well he said, “I can give you living water” (John 4).
5. To the multitudes he said, “You must eat my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:54).
6. To others he said, “Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23–25).

And on the list could go. But my point is this: Jesus did not have a memorized formula that he told people when he dealt with them about their spiritual needs. He adapted the form of his message, not the essential content, to apply it specifically to the problems and needs and background of the individual to whom he was talking. Now, let me clarify that I don’t think it is wrong by any means to have a memorized gospel pattern to share with people. That is an excellent way to start. But I think we learn from Jesus that we should seek to know and understand the gospel so well that we can make our presentation of it individual specific.

There may be times when we may want to focus on certain aspects of the gospel and other times that we may not stress them as much. Hopefully that doesn’t sound heretical. If it does I’ll try to illustrate the difference in a minute.

We see this diversity quite clearly between the emphasis of Paul and the emphasis of James. Paul was dealing with a people who thought they could be righteous through their works, while James was dealing with a people who thought they could be saved by simply affirming some truth in their heads without a real commitment to Jesus Christ.

So while Jesus only had one gospel, he said many different things to many different people to deal with them according to their specific needs. And while Paul and James were in theological agreement with one another about how a person becomes a Christian, they emphasized two different points because of the needs of their hearers.

I want to list just a few different emphases that I found myself using this summer with different people. Everyone needs to hear all of this truth, but sometimes one of these truths needs to be emphasized more than another. Some of these are sadly neglected in a lot of our evangelistic efforts.

Let me just say before I get into these that I love to be able to share the truth of God’s Word with unbelievers. Some of the highlights of my trip were the opportunities I had to share Christ with people. There is an amazing liberty that the Lord gives to share Christ with someone. I used to be so fearful, but now it is a great source of joy to me.

1. The Gospel of Joy for the Worldly Pleasure Seeker (Alex and Arturs)

There are a lot of people who are anti-religious and some who are “religious” who are living for the pleasures of this world. They have been deceived that the things this world has to offer will bring them the fulfillment in life that they are looking for. They have the opinion that the Christian life is boring and a burden and there is no joy in it, so they pursue the pleasures of sin to try to find happiness.

There are a large number of people who fall into this category. And instead of just telling these people that the gospel offers them a home in heaven, we can also emphasis the joy that God provides to the believer through the gospel.

You see, many of these people are so caught up in the things of this life that they don’t even care to consider the future. They are so concerned with finding pleasure now that they aren’t interested in what they can have later.

Let’s look at one passage briefly and see how Jesus made this point.

John 4:7–14 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. ⁸ (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) ⁹ Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. ¹⁰ Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. ¹¹ The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? ¹² Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? ¹³ Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: ¹⁴ But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

I think what Jesus was stressing to this woman was not only that this water would give her eternal life, but that it would satisfy her inside and fill the void that she was trying to fill by pursuing pleasure with men.

John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

So in presenting the gospel to people, we should emphasize that the gospel not only promises a better life in the future, but a better life now. We should stress to people the emptiness of living without Christ and living in the world. And we should tell people of the true joy and purpose and meaning in life that can be found in knowing Christ.

I had a guy tell me once that he would rather enjoy life now and go to hell in the next life than live a miserable life as a Christian and go to heaven in the next. But this man was sadly mistaken. If he continues in his unbelief, he is going to lose out on both in this life and the next.

We truly do have a gospel that meets all of our needs both now and for eternity!

1. The Gospel of Truth for the Unbelieving Philosopher (Igor)

Another group of people, who tend to be more focused on the intellectual and love philosophical speculations and discussions need to be confronted from a different angle. For the person who regards His intellect as the supreme standard of truth, the gospel addresses him as well. He needs to be shown the folly and inherent contradiction in his own thinking, because truly all thinking that rejects the Bible is not consistent thinking. It is self-contradicting and self-defeating.

Sometimes it is essential to show someone the problems in their own view before they are ready to listen to the Bible answer. I found that to be the case with Igor. He had so many objections to God and the Bible. Many of them could be cleared up easily because they were based on misinformation.

For the others I simply tried to show the inconsistency in his thinking so that he would see that what he believed was not the answer. The goal was to take him to the truth of the Bible. Throughout our discussions I was continually showing him the alternative in the truth of the Scripture. I would take him to passages of Scripture that taught his depravity and showed how that influenced his thinking. I took him to passages like 1 Corinthians 1 that teaches that God seeks to save people through the message of the cross and not through their intellect so that He might receive all the praise and glory. I showed him that ultimately, the gospel is a message of trusting God and taking Him at His word, even when we don’t understand.

So with Igor, what really was effective from a human standpoint was to counter his objection by showing him their inherent self-contradiction and giving him the only true alternative in the Bible. I really had to stress that God is not obligated to answer all our questions. His thinking is far about ours and we must simply trust Him and take Him at His word.

Igor told me that he really appreciated what I had said to him. He had talked to many people about religious things and had basically decided that no one knew what they were talking about. He had basically given up on God and religion. But he told me that he really liked what I had told him and that it really satisfied him. I stressed to him that it wasn’t my own thoughts, but the teaching of the Bible.

Please pray specifically for Igor. I talked to him for many hours and he made a lot of progress. Sergey has plans to get in touch with him as soon as he gets back from being away for the summer. And I am planning to keep in touch through email.

You see, we must be able to give a reason for the hope that we have as Christians. Had I just tried to give him the few easy steps on how to get saved, he would not have taken the time to listen.

1. The Gospel of Righteousness for the Religiously Self-Righteous (Wiolete & Marina)

The gospel that almost every person of a false religion needs to hear is the message of imputed righteousness. You see, every single religion in the world, other than the evangelical religion, teaches that a person is right with God based on his performance and merit. They teach that if you are going to be righteous before God, if you are going to be accepted by Him, you need to earn that position. Only the true gospel of Christ teaches that we are righteous before God, not based on our own righteousness.

It is unfortunate that in a lot of our gospel presentations we only talk about one half of man’s problem and one half of the work of Christ. We talk about sin and we talk about Jesus’ death, but we don’t often talk about the need for righteousness and Jesus’ perfect life.

2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Not only does man have the problem of needing to pay for his sin, but he has the problem of needing to perfectly obey God. God not only demands that sin be punished, but He demands that we be perfectly righteousness and perfectly obey Him. And not only did Jesus suffer the consequences of our sin and failure to perfectly obey God, but He also perfectly obeyed God in our place.

So Jesus is our perfect substitute. He provides forgiveness because He died in our place, and He provides righteousness because He lived in our place. The essence of the gospel message is putting our full confidence in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and His work alone as the only way to be right with God and accepted by Him.

And when a person comes to Christ and by faith embraces Him as his substitute to deal with His sin and His need for righteousness, God considers all that persons sin—past, present, and future—as totally done away with and forgiven. And God also counts all of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to the individual, so that the believer is accepted as just as righteous as the Son of God, as having fully fulfilled all of God’s requires. He is accepted and loved in the Son, and He doesn’t need to try to earn God’s love and favor. He has all that he is going to have because of what Jesus did as His substitute.

I had the joy of sharing this message to some Roman Catholics who are held in bondage and fear, not knowing if God accepts them, not knowing if they are righteous enough to make it to heaven. They are taught that they can’t know, so they must perform and hope that they make it.

What a joy it was to share to liberating message of a perfecting substitutionary Savior who did all that we need to be forgiven and be totally accepted as righteous in God’s sight! I shared this with Violet and saw the joy light up in her face as she understood the simplicity of the gospel message. Please pray for her. I think that she is a believer.

1. The Gospel of True Faith for the Evangelical Antinomian

There are many people who have been brought up in the evangelical tradition. They understand the teaching of faith in what Christ has done alone, although they may not understand the doctrine of imputed righteousness since it is so often neglected. They may “believe” all the right things. But their problem is a misunderstanding of the nature of faith. They think that they are saved simply because they have this stuff in their heads, and they need to be challenged with the message of James that a true faith will demonstrate itself in the life by working. These people need to be instructed that true repentance of their sin and submission to Jesus Christ is an essential part of being saved. A person cannot be saved when he is telling the Lord that he refuses to submit to him, because as James teaches us, true faith is a working faith, a faith that submits to Jesus. Just as Jesus said, “Not everyone who calls Jesus Lord will enter into the kingdom, but the one who does the will of the Father” (Mat. 7:21).

Conclusion: So all people of all races and cultures and religions have the same essential problem and they all need the same solution—the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet these varied backgrounds and differences may require a different approach and a different emphasis in sharing the gospel. Just as Jesus dealt with people in individual ways according to their specific needs, so must we. And just as the messages of Paul and James differed in form, although not in content, so our presentation of the gospel must take on different forms to meet the needs of specific people.

So what is there for us to learn from this? What application can we have for our lives from this?

1. Well, first of all I think we can see and be reminded of the greatness of the gospel. We can be confident that it truly is a gospel that meets all of the needs of all people. There is no need or problem that man has that the gospel does not meet and have the answer for. And there is no person or group of people that the gospel is irrelevant for. The gospel has something to say to everyone, no matter how different there circumstances might be from someone else. There will never come a time when we need something else, something new. They gospel is the only answer.

1. Secondly, as a result of this fact, you, as a Christian, need to realize that you need look no further than the gospel of Jesus Christ to find the answer to your problems. Too often Christians turn to psychology or human wisdom or something else to meet the needs of their live. But we have seen that the gospel addresses every need that you could have, and it is there that you must turn to find the answer. To many Christians have the conception that the gospel is just for the lost, and then once you’re saved you move on to the practical principles for daily living. But Paul, in all his letters, is continually taking people back to the gospel of Christ. For Paul, the gospel is the answer to everything.

Colossians 2:6–10 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: ⁷ Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. ⁸ Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. ⁹ For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. ¹⁰ And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:

1. A third thing that I think we can learn is the need to go beyond the simple three-or-four-easy-steps-to-get-saved method of evangelism. There are some essential things that every presentation of the gospel must include. But to be effective evangelists, we must be able to apply the gospel to individuals and meet them where their greatest needs are. I know that every time I have gone on this mission trip I am reminded of how much better I need to know the Bible, and not just the Bible, but have a familiarity with false religions and other wrong philosophies of life, so that I can better know how to counter them with the truth of the gospel.

Let us be active in our evangelism, looking for opportunities wherever we are to speak a word of the gospel of Christ. And let us be diligently applying ourselves to know the gospel more fully, both for ourselves and to be better equipped to share it with others.