I’m old enough to remember when “lifestyle evangelism” was all the rage. We were encouraged to get ourselves out of the salt shaker and into the world. The thought was that if we didn’t lead our conversations with unbelievers with the reality of sin and the need for repentance, if we simply lived a clean life in front of our neighbors, they’d be clamoring to know our secret. We are, as the Bible tells us, epistles read by men. Israel corporately was given the promise that if they honored God’s covenant, the whole world would be drawn to them. Count me among fers and agin the agins.
The devil, soon enough, arrives ready to twist and distort. What we have witnessed over the last forty years is plenty of lifestyle and precious little evangelism. And along the way our lifestyles have increasingly come to reflect the lives of those we’re supposedly witnessing to. Our message to the world is “We’re not so different from you. It’s just a little step to come to Jesus.” We treat Jesus like a juicy worm hanging from a hook bereft of a barb.
We invest millions in billboards with pithy quotes that God never said. Or we go on television to tell the world not that Jesus died so our sins could be forgiven, but that He gets us. All thinking we can sneak them through the Pearly Gates. We think we are shaving off the bristly parts. To remove the offense, however, is to remove the gospel.
Consider the Pharisee and the tax collector. The former man embraced a comfortable gospel. We are not perfect in ourselves. But, if we would cooperate with God, He will help us become what we ought to be. Remember he prayed, “I thank You Lord that I am not like other men.” “I thank You” acknowledges his need for grace. “Not like other men” suggests he didn’t need that much of it.
The latter man, the tax collector, was so uncomfortable he couldn’t even lift his head. He understood, without understanding all it would cost, that his only hope was mercy. He understood, and confessed what he was, a sinner. “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” There is the offense, without which there can be no gospel.
The irony is that in hiding what is offensive to the unbeliever about the gospel we expose what is offensive about believers to the unbeliever. Proclaiming a gospel that suggests the unbeliever is almost there communicates that the difference between the believer and the unbeliever is in the goodness of the believer. “Come to Jesus so you can be like me.”
Only when we beat our own breasts, crying out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” do we invite unbelievers to do the same. The path between heaven and earth is not something we go up. It is what He came down. For all those, and only those who confess our only hope is in Him.