The Importance of Evangelism

The way of the Lord is justice and righteousness, summarized by Jesus as loving God and our neighbor. This is to be our nature as members of God’s family, and this theme is repeated throughout Scripture. However, the Old Testament also makes it clear that legalism cannot create such kingdom people – we need transformed hearts, a new covenant. Legalism relies on human ability, but the prophets looked forward to the coming of a Messiah who would fulfill God’s promises through the power of God.

When Jesus came, He reminded us of God’s ways, highlighted the need for changed hearts, and provided the way for that to happen through His sacrifice and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Although Jesus fulfilled the Law, He also repudiated legalistic approaches to changing lives. For example, when giving His final address to the disciples, Jesus rebutted their expectations of a legalistic national solution and focused them on proclaiming a message that would change hearts.

In other words, while the goal of creating a kingdom of love, justice, and righteousness never changed, the disciples needed to understand the unworldly method that they were to use. And just as through the rest of Scripture, it’s vital that we continually guard ourselves from depending on ourselves. Thus, Scripture makes clear the importance of evangelism.

The following is a brief summary of things that teach us about the importance of growing the influence of God’s kingdom using His methods.

From the very beginning of God calling a people, He made it clear that the purpose was that all the families of the earth would be blessed. Even though the Old Testament is focused on Israel’s story, repeated statements remind them of the ultimate goal of including everyone.

For example: Solomon’s prayer for the temple included a desire that all people would know God; Isaiah described Israel as a light for the nations so that God’s salvation would reach to the ends of the earth; the Psalmists frequently praised God’s name, even to the nations, making known His saving power, and prayed that even their enemies would come to seek His name and worship Him; Joshua looked forward to all the nations blessing themselves in the Lord because of Israel’s commitment to Him; and so on.

In many places, Old Testament Scripture foreshadowed the necessity of bringing people to God in order to grow His just and righteous kingdom, and like many other Old Testament themes, this was repeated and amplified by Jesus.

He began by making proclamation of the kingdom a key aspect of His ministry, complementing His loving acts. By doing so, he exemplified the need to grow God’s kingdom through reconciliation with Him.

This balance was echoed when He sent out the 12 to proclaim the kingdom. Although they were initially sent only to Jews, Jesus’ teaching looked forward to them going beyond. This was essentially a training mission, even repeated later with a larger group.

After exemplifying God’s mission Himself and then training others, Jesus directed believers to continue His work at the end of every one of the gospels. Some were commands, some were essentially prophecies, but over and over He reiterated that aspect of being a disciple.

At the beginning of Acts, the disciples asked if Jesus was finally going to set up God’s kingdom. Once again, Jesus focused them on the primary task of reconciling people with God by telling them about Him. In a sense, the answer was yes but not in the way they expected, and the final fulfillment would be in God’s timing.

And then, to drive this home further, the only direct record we have of the early church’s activities focuses on this task. There are indirect statements of gatherings, church organization, giving, teaching, and various ministries, but it’s as if God wanted us to understand that those are all in support of the mission that Jesus left with the church.

For example, we often talk about the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught the disciples. Note that we’ve also been given one example of the disciples praying, in Acts 3, where they reflect “Your kingdom come” as a prayer for evangelism. Or, Acts describes the many miracles that occurred in the early church, and significantly associates the majority of them with evangelism.

The other New Testament writings cover many aspects of discipleship, so are less exclusively focused on external matters. Yet even there the theme frequently appears. Paul described the evangelistic efforts of many other people, and urged that believers pray for leaders to give us peace so that people would ultimately be saved. Peter described us as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession”, so that we might proclaim God. And so on.

It’s clear that bringing people to God is an important part of discipleship, of becoming Christlike.

Even beyond Scripture, historical records of the early church show the same thing. One of the earliest Christian writings is an apologetic, and pagan descriptions describe Christians as people who wouldn’t stop talking about Jesus.

Foreshadowed in the Old Testament, exemplified, taught, and commanded by Jesus, and a focus of the early church in both Scripture and history, proclaiming the good news of Jesus is a central part of Christlikeness that compliments the physical demonstrations of service and love.