By Paul Copan
We've seen them in all manner of places -- on street corners, in parking lots, at craft fairs, outside stadiums. Sometimes they wear placards admonishing hearers to "turn or burn." Or they warn America of coming judgment and doom. Many will point out that this is an extreme, unhelpful method. Instead, they say we should challenge individual "sinners" by exposing them to their failure to live up to the Ten Commandments. A common justification from those "witnessing" is: "You need to tell people the bad news before they can listen to the good news." After all, does Paul not tell us that the Law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24)? Is this not the reality of Romans 1-3?
I want to offer ten thoughts on this question. First, however, a little context.
My friend Robertson McQuilkin has frequently said, "It is easier to go to a consistent extreme than to stay at the center of biblical tension." The "bad-news-first bears" (to coin a term!) may sometimes fit in here -- namely, being insistent that talk of sin must always precede talk of salvation. My major point is that we, especially when Jesus himself varied his "methods," should be careful about reducing the communication of Christ to others into hard-and-fast formulas.
Indeed, a wider view of Scripture presents a mixed bag; repentance isn't always mentioned (say, if one already has a repentant, needy, or seeking frame of mind). We do not always need to announce, "You're a sinner," first, and only then proclaim, "there is a Savior." I am not denying the seriousness of hell, judgment, sin, or the need for repentance; indeed, I regularly talk with non-Christians about these themes. Remember, however, that Jesus saved his harshest message of judgment for the hard-hearted religious leaders of his day (e.g., Matthew 23). He regularly called on his hearers to turn and align themselves with God's kingdom agenda. Jesus often appealed to those who knew their neediness.
What's more, Jesus had the strong reputation of being a "friend of sinners" and not merely a preacher to them. He reached out to the "unlikelies" of his day -- to those whom the religious authorities considered the unlikeliest recipients of God's kingdom blessings: tax gatherers, prostitutes, Gentiles, lepers, the ceremonially unclean, the demonized. Jesus let them know that God had not forgotten them. Jesus illustrated the old saying that people must "know that you care" before they will "care what you know."
How many of us have the reputation of being "friends of sinners"? How many of us truly follow in the way of the Master? It's easier to preach a message of judgment than to exemplify Jesus, who actually got involved in the lives of others. As the Barna Group's David Kinnaman shows in his book unChristian -- which includes material from John Stott, Chuck Colson, and other leading evangelicals -- the unchurched are under the general impression that they are the "project" of the professing Christian. Most of them come away from "witnessing" encounters with the impression that Christians, however well-meaning, are legalistic and arrogant or superior-minded.
