Compassionate Evangelism*
How Our Repentance Leads to the Repentance of Others
As you live a life of repentance, it becomes apparent that there are those in your circle of influence who are in desperate need of the same repentance you have experienced and presently enjoy. You realize and are confronted with the reality from the word of God that the people with whom you work, or go to school, or who are a part of your family, do not know Jesus and are called to repent, even if they are unaware. Yet, how will they know unless those who have repented tell them? This brings me to discuss the critical spiritual discipline of compassionate evangelism.
“The greatest act of love we can display to another person is revealing to them the truth of the gospel.”
In Mark 1:15–20, Jesus preaches repentance and calls his first disciples to come follow him, to repent, begin their journey following the Son of God, and become fishers of men. Theologian David Garland, commenting on this reality, asserts, “Jesus does not call them to be shepherds, gathering in the lost sheep of the house of Israel, or to be laborers, bringing in the sheaves (Matt. 9:36–38), but to be fishers. Old Testament prophets used this metaphor for gathering people for judgment (Jer. 16:14–16; Ezek. 29:4; 47:10; Amos 4:2; Hab. 1:14–17), and one should not assume that Jesus uses fishing as a benign reference to mission. When the fisherman hooks a fish, it has fatal consequences for the fish; life cannot go on as before. The disciples are called to be agents who will bring a compelling message to others that will change their lives beyond recognition.” (1). What a powerful and sobering reality. As Jesus’s disciples, we are called to an enterprise that is not passive, but very much active; not apathy, but passion in how we live and what we say, all for the one who has hooked us, as it were.
“What a powerful and sobering reality. As Jesus’s disciples, we are called to an enterprise that is not passive, but very much active; not apathy, but passion in how we live and what we say, all for the one who has hooked us, as it were.”
The Great Commission (Matt 28:16–20) is therefore understood as a call to compassion. The greatest act of love we can display to another person is revealing to them the truth of the gospel. May our resolve as repentant followers of Christ be as the great nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon who declared, “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for” (2). May we each be determined to tell others who we know have not yet yielded their lives to Jesus Christ of both the judgment of God that’s coming, and the diversion and absorption of God’s wrath and forgiveness found in the Savior, Christ Jesus our Lord.
*This is the sixth in a series taken from the book The Power of Repentance by Barry Gibson.
Garland, David. Mark, 62.
Spurgeon, Charles. Spurgeon’s Sermons, 18.
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