Someone needs to say “Jesus is Lord” and to say it loud and clear. In too many circles Jesus is being reduced to the level of just another man. That “Christianity is Christ” is widely denied.
The denial comes in a variety of ways. Sometimes it arises from an emphasis on the importance of the way the Christian lives. The New Testament does emphasize the importance of living out the implications of the faith. It stresses that Christianity is not just a matter of profession. Deeds, not words, show who Christians are. Jesus said, “not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). He goes on to speak of people who will profess in the last day that they have cast out demons in Christ’s name and done other spectacular things. But he will disown them saying, “I never knew you; depart from me you evil doers” (Matt. 7:23).
The making of proselytes is considered to be bad business. It appears that evangelism is what I do and proselytization is what other people do.
Being a Christian then is more than claiming the name. Works are important. But from that starting point it is possible to reason that good deeds are the only things that matter. To be a Christian, we may say, is to be good, to be considerate, courteous, beautiful, helpful, and the like. A Christian is a man at his best.
The trouble with this is that the same thing might be said about the better adherents of any of the other great religions. For that matter it makes a good description of the best type of humanist.
It is important to realize that Christianity is Christ. Without faith in the Lord Jesus there is no real Christianity. Good works are important. Let no one deny it. But good works do not make a Christian. They are important results of genuine Christian profession, but they are not Christianity in themselves.
People in the church sometimes stress the importance of mission and see the church as those sent by God to do his work in the world. There is nothing wrong with this, strictly understood, for that is precisely what the church is to do. But it is not always precisely understood. It may be taken to mean that mission is everything.
Thus we get the idea that the church is the servant of the world. The church is seen now as minister to the underprivileged. The obvious illustration is the mission hospital in a deprived area. There are people who lack proper medical facilities. Christians who supply them do so in the spirit of their Master who healed the sick. Where there is famine they feed the hungry, where there are insufficient means of education they provide schools, and so on.
This reasoning may easily be extended. Some missionary-minded people use their hospitals and schools as a means of evangelism. They find them useful tools for spreading the Gospel. But this is the wrong approach. We should assist the unfortunate because they are unfortunate and not because of what we hope to get out of them. We should do our works of mercy and of love simply because people have needs and we have the means of helping them. We should not do such works with a view to enlarge our church membership lists.
This must be accepted. Love seeks not her own. Love is concerned to give simply to meet the need of another person. Genuine Christian service is not self-seeking.
But this opens up the way to a further leap in the argument. Agreed, we do not do our works of mercy in order to gain converts. But some people add that we must not seek to gain converts. The word proselytization usually figures in here. The making of proselytes is considered a bad business; a true follower of Christ cannot engage in it. Everybody seems to agree on this but not on the meaning of proselytizing. In the end, as Lesslie Newbigin says somewhere, it appears that evangelism is what I do and proselytization is what other people do.
But the end result of this reasoning may well be that Christian service is reduced to social service. The Gospel is muted lest we be accused of bribing men to become Christians. And the Great Commandment is conveniently overlooked.
Now we have made social service the one needful thing. We have effectively removed Christ from Christianity. And we have made Christianity something other than what it has always been.
That is serious enough. But before we look further it is worth pointing out that this approach does not even succeed in doing what it sets out to do. It is supposed to make Christians act with compassion. But does it? It helps us remember to be compassionate to those with obvious physical needs. But what of the other needs of men? This approach has no compassion for those whose needs are spiritual, those who are caught in the grip of some religion that gives them no real communion with God and no victory over sin. It has no compassion for people whose lives are cramped in superstition and fear.
Dr. Max Warren makes a similar point. He does not minimize the importance of ministering to the hungry and he sees “the remarkable growth of human compassion” as an important “sign of the times” today (I Believe in the Great Commission, p. 158). But when we have fed the hungry man we may discover that his mind is also empty. But now, “with the belly full and the mind stimulated, and with hope reborn, the man of whom we are thinking is likely to begin asking himself some fundamental questions about himself, his neighbour, and even God. To these questions there are many answers. But there is a Christian answer, and the great commission is not obeyed when that answer is withheld” (p. 159).
The Christian answer must be given if we are to remain Christian. We must meet the needs of the belly and of the mind if we are to be Christian and compassionate. But we must not forget John R. W. Stott’s question, “Is anything so destructive of human dignity as alienation from God through ignorance or rejection of the gospel?”
The Gospel is not optional for the religiously inclined. It is the essence of Christianity that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19). Surrender that and we are no longer Christian.
