Pre-Evangelism

How much does a person need someone asking you, What must I do to be saved? What we just heard Dr. R.C.

Sproul say there would be a great summary, wouldn't it? A great place to begin. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Saturday.

I'm Lee Webb. Defending our faith involves work, doing our homework, wrestling with the objections that people might raise, and knowing how to respond. The key is being prepared. In other words, knowing what you believe and why you believe it. We continue now in our study of Christian apologetics, and we have been looking at 1 Peter, chapter 3, where Peter gives us the mandate to always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

A reason, of course, is when somebody says, I understand what you believe, but why do you believe that? And when people ask that question, they want us to substantiate the content of our faith that we have proclaimed. So that Christianity involves, as we saw in the early church, not only the proclamation of the truth of God, but in that proclamation was included a defense of the claims that were being made by Christianity. For example, Peter himself, who gives us this mandate elsewhere, says when he's writing to his readers in the first century, Brethren, we declare to you not cleverly defined myths or fables, but we declare unto you what we have seen with our eyes and what we have heard with our ears. Luke, when he sets forth his gospel, begins that gospel by telling how he has done his research and his canvas, the eyewitnesses of those things that took place in the life and ministry of Christ, so that what he's doing is drawing on the original sources of those who had been witnesses to Jesus.

And just as in courtrooms today, we bring in witnesses to give testimony to the truth or the falsehood of what is being avowed, so the New Testament does the same sort of thing. Now, I mentioned in our last session the dilemma that those who are in the Reformed faith have, because as Reformed thinkers, we believe that nobody comes to Christ and is converted until first God the Holy Spirit changes the disposition of their soul, and that all of the arguments and all of the reasoning and all of the testimonies that we bring to bear in Christian outreach will be to no avail unless or until God the Holy Spirit brings the increase, unless He changes the heart of the hearer. So though apologetics is a task that is given to us and we are to be responsible in the handling of the truth claims of Christianity, it's the situation that Paul speaks of where we may plant the seed and somebody else may water it, but only God can bring the increase. Now, some people believe that since it is the Holy Spirit's task to convert and not our task, since it's beyond the realm of our power, people say, well, then we don't need to be engaged in a defense of Christianity. In fact, to give arguments for the truth of Christianity, to give reasons for our faith, would be in fact to undermine the spiritual work of God the Holy Spirit. I hear Christians all the time saying, I don't want to study philosophy because I don't want to get in the way of the Holy Ghost, and the Bible says, beware of vain of vain philosophies.

And I say to those people, how in the world can you beware of something that you're not first aware of? And if you're unaware of these pagan philosophies, sometimes you can be seduced by them and be sent in the wrong direction as Christians because you haven't paid attention to what's going on. So even though I believe only the Holy Spirit can change a person's heart and ultimately the person's mind, bring them to repentance, nevertheless we see the very important dimension of apologetics in what I call pre-evangelism and also what we call post-evangelism. Now, I've already talked about the value of stopping the mouths of the obstreperous, as John Calvin said, and as Peter speaks, about bringing the opponents of Christ to a position of shame because by defending the truth of Christ, we're defending Him.

We're defending the honor of God, not as if He needs us to defend His honor. But nevertheless, this is one way in which we bring honor to Christ by showing that the truth claims of His faith are not rooted and grounded in nonsense or absurdity. Now, in pre-evangelism, here's the role of apologetics. I have to do a little review for those of you who have been through our series on doctrine and where we've studied justification because the Reformation doctrine, which I believe is the biblical doctrine of justification, is that doctrine known as justification by faith alone. And when Luther declared in the sixteenth century that justification is by faith and by faith alone, one of the immediate questions that arose at that time was, what kind of faith saves? Because James tells us in the second chapter of his epistle, what does it profit a man if he says he has faith but has no works? Will that faith save him? And he goes on to give a categorical answer to that question, saying a profession of faith that is absolutely void of any response of obedience to God is clear evidence that that faith is a dead faith and no faith at all. And so Luther, in answering the critics of the sixteenth century, said justification is by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone. The only kind of faith that saves is what Luther called a fides viva, a living faith, a vital faith, a faith that issues forth in the fruit of faith in works.

Now those works, of course, don't count towards your justification. Only the merit of Christ counts. But without the flowing forth of the fruit of faith, there would be no real faith in the first place.

That's the idea. So again, in that dispute in the sixteenth century, the theologians at the time were saying, well, what is it that comprises saving faith? And so the thinkers of the sixteenth century distinguished among several actual nuances or levels or elements of faith that together comprise saving faith, but three chief levels, and those are the level of notitia, or sometimes called the noti, and then there is the level of assensus.

And again, those of you who have been with us as we've studied justification, this should be familiar by now. And then the third is fiducia, and I want to review this so that we can see where apologetics comes into play in pre-Evangelism. Fiducia, let me work backwards. So fiducia is that personal trust and reliance, that aspect of faith that involves a genuine affection for Christ that flows out of a new heart and a new mind. And it's the fiducia, we believe, this level of saving faith that can only be engendered by the work of the Spirit.

So I'm going to separate the fiducia from the other two, but let's now go back to the beginning, the notitia. When we say that you are justified by faith, the faith that justifies has to have a content. So the immediate question is, if I say, you have to be saved by faith, you should say to me, faith in what? Faith in hamburgers? Faith in Buddha? I mean, we have that idea in our culture where people say, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere. Oh, does that mean I can put my trust in Satan and be saved, or that the Old Testament people could trust in Baal and they could be saved?

No, no, no. There is certain content that is part of Christianity, an essential level of information, so that when the apostles went out to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, they gave a summary of key points about the person of Jesus and about the work of Jesus, how He was born according to the Scriptures, how that He suffered on the cross for their sins, how He was raised from the dead, and so on. That's all part of the notes or the data, or the notitia. That's the information that before I can actually call somebody to saving faith, I have to give them the information or the content that they're asked to believe. And that involves the mind.

That involves communication of information that people can understand. Before I can call upon Christ, for example, as my Savior, I have to understand that I need a Savior. I have to understand that I'm a sinner. So I have to have some understanding of what sin is. I have to understand that God exists. I have to understand that I have to understand that I am estranged from that God, that I'm exposed to that God's judgment in for me ever to flee to Christ as a Savior. Again, manifestly, I don't reach out for a Savior unless I first am convinced that I have a need of a Savior. And so all of that is what I call pre-evangelism. All of that is involved in the data or the information that a person has to process with their mind before they can ever respond to it in faith or reject it in unbelief. Now, the second element of that is the element called assensus, which is simply the Latin word for intellectual assent. If I say to you, do you believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States? What would you say?

Yes. But that doesn't mean that you have put your personal faith and trust in George Washington to be your Savior or anything like that. I've just asked you if you believe in George Washington in the sense of, does your mind give assent to the proposition George Washington was the first president of the United States? Now, you have a whole movement in theology today that says faith has nothing to do with propositions, that the Bible is simply a book that bears witness to relationships, and it's relationships that count, not propositions. And again, these are the people who think that all I need to be a Christian is to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and I don't need doctrine. I don't need any theology. I don't need to affirm any creed.

No creed but Christ is the call here. It's that I don't believe in propositions. I believe in Jesus. He's a person, not a proposition.

Now, you hear that sort of thing all the time. And what those people are communicating that is very important and true is that obviously you can have a knowledge of the propositions and not know Jesus. You can know about Jesus and not have a personal relationship with Jesus. And surely the most important thing in the Christian life is the personal relationship that we have with Jesus. However, when I'm talking to people about this Jesus with whom I have a personal relationship, I'm saying things about Him. I'm saying this Jesus is the eternal Son of God. And they'll say, Well, that's a proposition. I don't care about that. That can be true or not true.

I say, No, no, no, no. The Jesus I want you to have a relationship with really is the eternal Son of God. And you can't have a saving relationship personally with this Jesus unless you know who this Jesus is, unless you can affirm the truth of this Jesus that He really did die on the cross in a death that was an atonement, and that it's true that He came out of the tomb. And if you say you have a personal relationship with Christ, but you don't believe in the truth that He was raised from the dead, then you're telling me you have a personal relationship with a corpse.

That's all the difference in the world from saying you have a personal relationship with the resurrected Christ, with the risen Lord. So all of those things that we say about Jesus and we say we believe about Jesus involves the mind saying yes to a proposition. Now, as James says, again, that if you believe in God, he says, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble. For example, if you have the information about Jesus and you even are persuaded that the information is correct and true and you can affirm it propositionally, as Dr. Kennedy says, all that does is qualify you to be a demon, because the demons know the truth. It was the demons who were the first ones to recognize the identity of Jesus when He was on this earth.

And so they're convinced of the truth of who He is, but they hate that truth. And so what Dr. Kennedy was getting at there was that, again, unless God the Holy Spirit moves you from these two levels to this one, you will be able to get to this one. You haven't reached a saving faith. So let me repeat. Having these two without this will save no one.

But you can't really have this without having the first two. That's the point I'm trying to get at, and that's where apologetics is of vital importance. I said that in the early church, apologetics was closely linked to proclamation in the sense that there were all kinds of misconceptions about what Christianity was about. People were believing that Christians were cannibals because they were meeting in secret, eating somebody's body and drinking somebody's blood. And so the theologians had to say, no, no, no, no, that's wrong information.

You're responding to a distortion. So let me clarify for you what the New Testament actually says so that you have a correct understanding of the information. Now, again, I can say this is what we're actually saying so that you're not rejecting a straw man. You still may reject it, but at least you know what it is you're rejecting at the point of rejection. Now, the next step is where you try to prove or give evidence for the truth claims of Christianity.

Again, we live in a time where we've been infected with what's called Fideism, which says, I don't need to have a reason for what I believe. I just close my eyes like tiny Alice and take a real deep breath and scrunch up my nose. And if I try hard enough, I can believe. And I jump into the arms of Jesus. I take a blind leap of faith. I hear that expression all the time. And every time I hear that expression, people say, take a leap of faith.

I have a pain that starts at the back of my feet and goes all the way up my back. And I want to say, no, no, no. The Bible never tells you to take a leap of faith into the darkness and hope that there's somebody out there. The Bible calls you to jump out of the darkness and into the light. And that is not a blind leap, that the faith that the New Testament calls us to is a faith that is rooted and grounded in things that God does that makes it very, very clear that this is the truth. For example, when Paul does encounter the philosophers at Mars Hill and he says to them, the former days of ignorance God overlooked, but now God commands all men everywhere to repent because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world by what? By that one whom He has proven to be His Son by the resurrection of the dead. Now, it's not like God comes down in the form of Christ and Jesus goes into a closet someplace and offers an atonement. And after He offers the atonement, then God in the closet raises Him up from the dead.

Nobody sees Him. Nobody knows about us like Joseph Smith behind the sheets privately and secretly reading the secret message that he has from the angel Moroni. There's none of that in Christianity. When Paul is before Agrippa, he said, King Agrippa, these things were not done in a corner. Jesus was crucified openly, and it's not like we went to an empty tomb and say, we can't figure out what happened here.

Somebody stole the body. But Christ came out of that tomb, not in secret, but publicly, where we have eyewitness after eyewitness, over 500 people who saw Him at one time, and as one born out of due time, O King, I saw Him with my own eyes. Now, ladies and gentlemen, maybe you think that Paul's testimony is that of a lunatic, and you don't want to give credibility to it. But do you see the difference between making a case for the truth claim or just saying, well, yeah, no, nobody saw Him die, nobody saw Him rise, God did all that in a corner someplace or in a closet. I'm asking you to believe it.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and take it by faith. That's not faith. That's credulity.

That's superstition. And the task, again, of apologetics is to show that the evidence that the New Testament calls people to commit their life to is compelling evidence. Is compelling evidence and worthy of your full commitment. Now, that involves often a lot of work, and sometimes we would rather duck the responsibility of doing our homework, of wrestling with the problems and answering the objections and just say to people, well, you just have to take it on faith. That's the ultimate cop-out. That doesn't honor Christ. We honor Christ by setting forth for people the cogency of the truth claims of Scripture, even as God does. Even when God sends Moses to Pharaoh's court and says, you tell Pharaoh that I said to let my people go and to bring them out where they can worship me at this mountain. And Moses says, how am I going to know? How am I going to get in there? Who am I to tell Pharaoh to tell Pharaoh that? And will the people follow me? How are they going to know?

God says, here's how they're going to know, Moses. Put your hand in your shirt. And he puts his hand in his shirt. Just pull it out. Pull it out.

It's leprous. Moses, terrified, says, put your hand back in your shirt. Puts it back in his shirt. Pulls it out. It's gone. Take your staff. Throw it on the ground.

Turns into a snake. He said, that's how you're going to know. I'm going to empower you in such a way that even Pharaoh won't be able to deny that it's the Lord God who is behind this mandate. And that's why we have to take the trouble to do our work before the Spirit does His work, because the Spirit does not ask people to put their trust and their faith and their affection in nonsense or in absurdity or in unsubstantiated truth claims.

That's why we have the testimony of the Scriptures for our consideration. That's Dr. R.C. Sproul, and his message today here on Renewing Your Mind is a powerful reminder of why we need to understand our faith more deeply. Here on the Saturday edition of our program, we're airing R.C. 's series, Defending Your Faith.

Throughout the series, he makes the case for the importance of classical apologetics. We'd like to send you the 32-message series on 11 DVDs for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. You can call us to make your request at 800-435-4343.

If you prefer to make your request online, you can go to renewingyourmind.org. We're including a 12th bonus disc in this offer. It contains all the audio files of the series, plus a copy of the study guide. That's an invaluable resource if you plan on teaching this series in a Sunday school class or a small group setting. Again, the title of the series is Defending Your Faith.

It's 11 DVDs plus that bonus disc for your gift of any amount. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343, and our web address is renewingyourmind.org. Thank you for being with us today. Next week, we'll continue Dr. Sproul's series on apologetics. He'll tackle some critical questions like, how do we recognize the truth, and is it possible to know anything is true? Those are big questions, and we'll cover them next week here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.