Is your Christian life too private, too indoorsy?
“You are the light of the world,” our Lord declares. “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Some of us, it seems, mean to test that claim.
We can yell about Jesus as loudly as we want in our homes and church buildings — but we must keep it behind those walls. Public life is off-limits. The good of society requires it, you see. How can a multicultural, multireligious community flourish with the Christians insisting that all other gods are false and that Jesus is the only way to heaven? What about the atheists? Muslims? Jews? Our lofty ideals tell us to leave all the high places intact.
Though the heavens cannot contain him, though earth is his footstool, do we — his grasshoppers leaping upon his lawn — try to cage the living God in church buildings and around dinner tables? They say he is too wild and transgressive to be unleashed into the community. They are not wrong. He came to bring division: light from dark, the truth from the lie, his sons from Satan’s. Our God holds up his Son; his Son holds out his ring for all other gods and men to kiss. Refuse, and his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessing is only for those who take refuge in him.
Man does not like a God who lays claim on everyone and everything. And we, his ambassadors, too quickly grow tired of discipling them to observe all that he commanded. We comply with society’s red tape above our Savior’s red letters. Sheep, too happily sheepish. The Sunday gathering soon becomes the one (and virtually only) place for overt Christianity. Christ must be left out of malls, sports, restaurants, workplaces, and anywhere else he is unwanted. We quickly feel we have done enough to huddle once a week in that fenced green pasture. We are well-fed, happy enough, and sleepy.
Will Stones Cry Out?
Charles Spurgeon, a man who went to the people in open-air preaching and evangelism, states my main burden well:
We ought actually to go into the streets and lanes and highways. . . . Sportsmen must not stop at home and wait for the birds to come and be shot at, neither must fishermen throw their nets inside their boats and hope to take many fish. Traders go to the markets, they follow their customers and go out after business if it will not come to them; and so must we. (Lectures to My Students, 224)
How do you bring the gospel to where the people are? Christ teaches us to be fishers of men, but do we drop our nets in the boat instead of the sea?
How much of Christianity is lived among ourselves, for ourselves? The gathering of God’s people is the most notable event a calendar can contain. Heaven and earth meet when the saints gather to hear from their Lord. Yet, as much as the church is an end, we also harness together to bring others in. We are refreshed, equipped, and emboldened to go out on mission and return, in coming weeks, with more souls.
Does it bother you when additions to your church body grow stagnant? Are you concerned that so many in this world are perishing without hearing of Christ? If the gathering continues, kids’ programs run smoothly, and some spiritual benefit is exchanged from Sunday to Sunday, is all well with your soul?
Will that building that saw nearly all of our light testify against us on the last day? Will the walls testify that we knew that great name by which men must be saved, knew that souls outside were perishing, knew that a vast eternity stretches before every soul and that most run to ruin, and yet, like the rich man with Lazarus, kept feasting inside?
How about the windows? How much of that beautiful stained glass is stained with our neglect of the people on the other side? How many of these painted lookouts are but kaleidoscopes through which we peer at people who have never heard the gospel from our lips?
Or how about the pews? Surely they will protest their innocence. They were meant to be a training ground, a place of equipping. They meant to send their bearers along on their mission. Instead, these pews, looking down upon so many dress shoes, high heels, and boots in our congregations, saw so few beautiful feet going out to publish the good news of happiness and salvation among the people (Isaiah 52:7).
What of the roads leading to and away from the gathering? They had heard rumors about “The Great Commission,” though they saw evidence of only “A Nice Suggestion.” They would have been stones crying out, most willing preachers for their Lord, if only given such a chance. They pointed out into a wide world in need of Christ. But alas, so few returned week by week with a testimony of conquest.
Go
Horatius Bonar says the part we’d rather leave unsaid:
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, what a soul in hell must suffer forever. Lord, give us bowels of mercies! We too ought to pray, “Give us thy tears to weep; for, Lord, our hearts are hard toward our fellows. We can see thousands perish around us, and our sleep never be disturbed; no vision of their awful doom ever scaring us, no cry from their lost souls ever turning our peace into bitterness.” (Words to Winners of Souls, 12)
Brothers and sisters, souls are dying, hell is gaping, an awful doom awaits the perishing. We have been entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Go and tell it on the mountains, over the hills, and everywhere. Go and do street evangelism, or hand out gospel tracts, or knock on doors, or preach in the open air, or move overseas as a missionary, or engage in mercy ministries, abortion witnessing, or letter-writing. Be simple or get creative, but go — across an ocean, across a taboo, across a street. Go — to unbelieving family members, to classmates, teammates, neighbors. Go — to the least of these, to the forgotten in prisons or nursing homes, to the poor, orphans, and widows. Go.
What has our Lord left us here for? “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). If you know the excellencies of Christ — who he is, what he has done, and what he has done for you — go and proclaim them.
“Well, they don’t want to hear about his excellencies.” So be it. Jesus does not remind us of his supreme authority for nothing: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19). Because of his supreme authority over heaven and earth, there is never a place where the gospel has no place. Where the King says, “Go!” you may go — you must go — no matter what man threatens. When they strictly command us to no longer speak in the name of Jesus, disciples of the cross reply, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).
Let us bring Christ to the people that we might bring the people to Christ.
