Doctrine and evangelism are not often linked together, but they should be. For example, Protestants have historically said that the Gospel is basically defined by justification by faith alone. But is that necessary to teach people in evangelism? If it is the Gospel then perhaps it is. But we have substituted for the Gospel a message about Jesus followed by an appeal to pray. If justification by faith alone is the heart of the Gospel, then we must teach it to people that we are evangelizing. Justification by faith alone is a message for those that are under conviction of sin and know that they must have their sin dealt with. If people are not under conviction of sin, they will view the Gospel from an intellectual view only. The Gospel goes to the heart. It is easier to tell people a message about Jesus than it is to teach them the Gospel, but Jesus never promised us that making disciples would be easy. That is why He said in the Great Commission that He would be with those who do this. We must speak to people of what it means to be justified. We must tell them that God must declare them just or righteous or they will not be saved. Notice that we have just moved from focusing on what the person can do to what God does in salvation. That is one reason why people don’t like this; it is hard to tell a person that God must do the work. But justification is a work of God. What does man do in justification? If justification is a forensic or declared justification, then God must declare a man just. Man simply receives and believes the truth.
But how do we escape the Roman Catholic argument that God cannot declare a man just who is not really just and that the Protestant doctrine is a legal fiction? When the whole Gospel of God is proclaimed it is clear that this is not legal fiction. Romans 3:19 through chapter four is a declaration of the Gospel and its glory. The Gospel comes to man at the point of man’s only real need and that is to be saved from the wrath of God. If man thought about this apart from his self-centered motives, he would wonder how God could be just and still justify the sinner. Romans 3:26 answers this question for us in its context: “for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” This text tells us that the Gospel is such that God can be just and righteous and still declare those sinners who have faith in Christ righteous. God can do this in a perfectly just way and the sinner can be declared perfect in God’s sight. This Gospel is worth proclaiming to sinners and this is why Paul calls it the Gospel of God (Rom 1:1).
If a person has seen that God must declare him righteous before he can enter into God’s presence, he has to know that he can never be righteous from himself. People must feel the weight of this and know that God will never allow anything impure or unholy to enter heaven. God’s holiness will never allow this. To those who feel the weight of this, the Gospel is good news. To those who feel the weight of their sin, the Gospel of God is good news to them. This is more than someone bigger than them in heaven who just can’t live without them and begs them to come home to Him, this is a God who is sovereign over men and has saved His enemies in a way that allows Him to be just and display His glory before all of creation. So how can God be just and still justify a person who has committed innumerable sins against Him and His law? God sent Christ to be a sacrifice in order to remove the wrath of Himself from sinners. I am not convinced that anyone understands the Gospel apart from propitiation. If the word is too big, at least the concept is should be taught. In this great doctrine we see the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Here we see God in human flesh taking the wrath of the Father upon Himself so that God’s justice would be satisfied and sinners could be saved from hell. Does this need to be understood and received for sinners to be saved? Indeed it is. This is what Christ came to do and this is the glory of the cross and of God.
We can see how justification by faith alone is the Gospel of God and is how God saves sinners to the glory of His name. We have seen how sinners must see that God must be just and yet must declare them righteous if they are to be saved. We have seen how through the cross God has removed His wrath from sinners in such a way that He can be just in doing so. But how does the sinner enter heaven? On what basis is the sinner able to enter heaven? Even if Christ has taken away the wrath that was due unto the sinner and delivered him from hell, which would not automatically enable the sinner to enter heaven. What allows the sinner to go into heaven? Romans 4:6: “just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works.” Here we see that God credits (reckons, imputes) righteousness to sinners. How does that work? Is this important to know?
We are still speaking of the glorious Gospel by which God is just and saves sinners. He does not just deliver them from hell and not deliver them to heaven, but He purchases heaven for them. In other words, the Gospel is about delivering from hell and purchasing heaven for sinners. This is how God can be just and justify sinners. He sent Christ who suffered for the sins of sinners in order that they would not perish. But He also sent Christ in order to give His gift of righteousness so sinners would enter heaven. The Gospel through Christ does not deliver from hell and that is it; it takes them into the gates of heaven and into the arms of Him who is eternal and infinite love.
But how does one take Christ and His Gospel? Assuredly that is by faith alone or faith without works. But how is it that a person who has faith can be saved and a person who does not have faith is not saved? What is it about faith that saves? There is nothing about faith itself that saves. Salvation is about Christ and faith is how one has Christ. The sinner is united to Christ as his representative or head. All are born in the flesh and have Adam as their head. By union with Adam a person is guilty of original sin by virtue of his representation. But when a sinner is united with Christ, that sinner is seen as one with Christ. The Church is the body of Christ with Him as its Head. So when a person is one with Christ as in marriage, all that bride has (sin) is His and all that He has (righteousness) is His bride’s. This is the great exchange and it shows how God can be just and have Christ be the Head of His people.
Faith is either that which flows from a new heart and union with Christ or it is that which a natural man is able to come up with. Faith is a spiritual act and cannot be done by a natural man. The Gospel is foolishness to the natural man and so he is not going to believe and love it. Faith is that which apprehends the glory of God and the spiritual realm. Believers walk by faith and not by sight (II Cor 5:7), which is to say that they walk in a way where they apprehend the will of God and do not walk according to the world. Ephesians 2:8 is very clear that faith itself is a gift of God and is not something that is worked up by man. So are we to teach this to people? If we don’t, they will think that they have the ability to do it themselves. Faith is the gift of God and men need to hear this in order to deliver them from trying to make faith a work.
Because of space I did not deal with the fuller expression of justification. It is justification by grace through faith alone. The teaching of grace is essential to justification as set out in Romans 3:24 where we are told that justification is by grace. But in Romans 4:16 we are told that salvation is by faith in order that it may be by grace. The Gospel is declared to men and men are saved to the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph 1:6) and it is by grace that men are saved (Eph 2:8). The Gospel is all of grace in order that it may be all of Christ and come through faith. Sinners are not saved by faith as if faith is a work, but through faith as a way of simply receiving grace and Christ. So the Gospel is really all about God saving sinners to the glory of His name.
But are these things really important for evangelism? Is it the Gospel or not? To repeat, if justification by faith alone is the heart of the Gospel, can we evangelize in truth without it? Can we bring the good news to sinners apart from the good news itself? Can we preach the Gospel apart from the Gospel? Can we teach and preach the Gospel of God apart from teaching of God and how He works in the Gospel? For the Church to return to its roots, it must return to the Gospel of Scripture as it thundered forth from the lips and pens of Luther. The Church must learn to evangelize with the Gospel itself and not watered down portions of it. People must come to faith through the proclamation of the glory of God in the face of Christ through the Gospel. But in most methods of “evangelism,” the Gospel itself is not really there and the doctrine of God is not really dealt with.
We must face reality whether we like it or not. If we are bringing people in the church when we have not really taught them the Gospel, that harms the church and them. If we are evangelizing people apart from the Gospel, what are we doing? If we are evangelizing in a way where God is on the periphery, are we really telling people the Gospel of God? If we tell them some basic facts of Christ and do not proclaim the glory of it, are we really telling them the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (II Cor 4:4)? A message that does not declare the glory of God and of Christ is not the Gospel. It may have some elements of the Gospel in it, but it is not the Gospel. The Gospel is all about the glory of God in Christ saving sinners by the Gospel of justification by grace through faith alone. There is no other Gospel. Surely these things are important in evangelism if we are to do more than inoculate people to the truth. A man-centered evangelism is a false evangelism leading to false conversions which man thinks is all about him. This is simply a method of inoculating people to the true Gospel of God. The natural man, though a false convert, loves to hear of a God who is all about him. But he does not want to hear about the glory of God who saves to manifest His own glory. Maybe this is one reason that the church is so weak. People are evangelized with a man-centered message and so come to church thinking that God and church is all about them.
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