Do the Word

My peacemaking hat is off to Rev. David Platt who, after getting ear-boxed at the recent Southern Baptist Convention for raising concern about the use of the Sinner’s Prayer, ended up voting for a resolution affirming the use of the prayer and–in the weeks following–repeatedly emphasizing his support for it.

What has surprised me about this iteration of the Sinner’s Prayer discussion and debate is that it has been primarily cast as a repudiation of Calvinist soteriology. As Platt notes, the implication is that what would cause people to disdain the use of the Sinner’s Prayer is that they “don’t want the hopelessly condemned thinking they are saved or joining churches when they actually have no chance for life in Christ.” Platt of course notes that nothing could be further from the truth.

I have of course never been accused by anyone at any time of being a Calvinist, and yet as an evangelical Wesleyan type I am steadfastly opposed to the urging of the Sinner’s Prayer as a response to the Gospel proclamation. My reason why is tied to what may be the ultimate irony of this year’s Southern Baptist Convention, namely, that the same convention that affirmed the use of the Sinner’s Prayer also approved the adoption of “Great Commission Baptists” as an acceptable alternative name for its churches to use.

As much as it sometimes makes my fellow evangelicals uncomfortable to hear this, the Great Commission given by Jesus is not to bring sinners to salvation through a personal  relationship with Jesus. It is instead to, in the words of Jesus,

go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Now it is of course possible to make a case that the Sinner’s Prayer is the “repent” portion of the “repent and be baptized” tandem that appears so often in the New Testament when people seek to respond to the Gospel.

The real challenge, however, is that we evangelicals are so focused on making sure people don’t think they can earn their salvation that we want to stress that the Sinner’s Prayer, prayed with the right heart attitude, is necessary and sufficient to lead you to salvation. Thus, we end up saying things like, “Baptism is not necessary for salvation.”

The great big problem with this, however, is that it overlooks an obvious point:

Baptism is necessary for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. So is discipleship.

This point was so important to Jesus that in the Great Commission he does not mention us leading people to a personal saving relationship with him–which is obviously a pretty important task–but instead mentions us baptizing and discipling people. Why do you suppose that is?

Because while it is absolutely categorically impossible to baptize and disciple people rightly without repentance, it is quite possible and in fact very common–as modern evangelicalism proves–to lead people to repentance without them being baptized and discipled.

So what is the solution? Just this:

Never undertake a method that permits the compartmentalization of repentance as separate from baptism and discipleship.

And a vital corollary:

Never lead someone to pray the Sinner’s Prayer before you work together with them to make definite, clear, and specific arrangements for their baptism and discipleship.

Regular readers of this blog will have to think back long and hard to the last time I heaped big praise on an article in Christianity Today. This is not because I don’t like Christianity Today–I actually like it quite a bit–but because as I await Christian perfection it is easier for me to riff on articles I don’t like than to call your attention to articles that I think you and I should print out and tape to each other’s foreheads because they are so good.

Gordon T. Smith’s The New Conversion: Why We ‘Become Christians’ Differently Today is a first class forehead taper. I have nothing to add to what Smith writes in the piece. I think it’s phenomenal and desire only that you go on to read it after I spoil the surprise by quoting from it at length.

Smith masterfully summarizes the revivalistic mindset which, thankfully, is on the wane among evangelicals today. I say “thankfully” because the darn thing just isn’t nearly as Scriptural as we’ve purported it to be over the last century and a half:

Evangelicals took for granted that the language and categories of revivalism were the language and categories of the New Testament. Conversion was viewed to be a punctiliar experience: persons could specify with confidence and assurance the time and place of their conversion, by reference, as often as not, to the moment when they prayed what was typically called “the sinner’s prayer.”

The focus of conversion was the afterlife: one sought salvation so that one could “go to heaven” after death, and the assumption was that “salvation” would lead to disengagement from the world. Once converted, the central focus of one’s life would be church or religious activities, particularly those that helped others come to this understanding of salvation that assured them of “eternal life” after death. Life in the world was thought to hold minimal significance. What counted was the afterlife. And if one had “received Christ,” one could be confident of one’s eternity with God. Conversion was isolated from the experience of the church. Indeed, it was generally assumed that a person would come to faith outside of the church and then be encouraged, after conversion, to join a church community.

Typically evangelicals approached evangelism through the use of techniques or formulas by which a person would be introduced to spiritual principles or “laws” on the assumption that if these principles were accepted as “true,” a person would offer an appropriate prayer and thus “become” a Christian.

Baptism, it was insisted, was subsequent to conversion and essentially optional. For although baptism was thought to be perhaps important, true spiritual experience was considered a personal, interior, subjective experience and thus not sacramental.

So where are we headed? Someplace very, very good: Backward, to the treasures we received from our Christian forebears as of primary importance–treasures that we kind of forgot to steward but are now by the grace of God recovering from the attic:

Increasingly, there is appreciation that conversion is a complex experience by which a person is initiated into a common life with the people of God who together seek the in-breaking of the kingdom, both in this life and in the world to come. This experience is mediated by the church and thus necessarily includes baptism as a rite of initiation. The power or energy of this experience is one of immediate encounter with the risen Christ—rather than principles or laws—and this experience is choreographed by the Spirit rather than evangelistic techniques. Evangelicals are reappropriating the heritage of the Reformation with its emphasis on the means of grace, and thereby affirming the priority of the Spirit’s work in religious experience.

Smith sends an appreciative shout out to Leslie Newbigin, who is a seminal figure on my list of people I probably should have read but for some reason never got into. Nevertheless, if what Smith writes about him is fair summary, then I will at least feel worse as I continue not to read Newbigin for some reason in the future:

Newbigin argued that conversion is a matter of understanding, ethics, and community—that there is no conversion without conversion of the mind, identification with the reign of Christ, and incorporation into a faith community that is marked by and sustained by its sacramental actions—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Newbigin’s fundamental observation and conviction is that the church is not a provider of religious products and services but rather that the church is a people in mission. The church, collectively, is through an active discipleship a living embodiment of the kingdom to which the church witnesses. Thus the church is not obsessed with its own growth but with the kingdom, as it seeks to live the gospel within particular social and cultural contexts. This perspective is reinforced by Newbigin’s recognition and reminder to his readers that all reasoning arises from a particular rational tradition which is embodied within a living community.

Anyway, that’s enough excerpting. There’s a lot more to the essay, which also tips the cap to Charles Taylor, whom I think doesn’t get enough cap tipping from our, uh, cloakroom.  Taylor is well worth adding to your list of people you probably should have read but for some reason never got into.

As for Smith, total man crush here. Great essay. Fire up the printer. As a means of underscoring the difference between proclaiming the revival message and proclaiming the gospel, this essay is worth a post, a reprint, a like, and whatever pin thing you do over there on Pinterest.

No–no cartoon charts, no explanations of esoteric passages from the book of Revelation, no  billboards announcing prophetic speculations. Just this, from Luke 10:1:

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.

Makes sense, really, that a proclaimer of the gospel would proclaim something like, “And the reason I am here is because he is on his way to see you.” After all, “gospel” is:

an imperial pronouncement, an imperial decree, a proclamation of good news from the empire. News of the expansion of the empire, the vanquishing of her enemies, the ascension of a new emperor to the throne, a birth in the household of Caesar – all of these were ‘gospels.’

As we talked about earlier this month, the full proclamation of the gospel is tripartite: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. So anywhere the gospel is authentically preached, the result will be urgent preparation, expectation, and longing for Christ’s return.

Not seeing that a lot in gospel proclamations these days… Since the “gospel” preached by many evangelists is not the gospel but rather a plan of salvation, the presenting issue is the creation and satisfaction of existential angst in the mind (rather, emotions) of the hearer. But for the true proclamation of the gospel, the issue is not the generation of sufficient existential angst to trigger the decisional tipping point to say yes to Jesus but simply faithfulness to the imperial announcement entrusted to the messenger.

I was reminded powerfully and simply of what the authentic proclamation of the “Christ will come again” plank of the gospel looks like when I was doing discipleship training recently for underground Eritrean church members. (Eritrea is consistently regarded as one of the most persecuting nations in the world.) As part of the “do the Word” training, I sent them out into the community in teams of two to do good in Jesus’ name.

One of the women encountered a number of people to whom, some Christian, some nonbelievers, she would ask, “Don’t you know that Christ is coming again?” She said it like it was the most natural and obvious thing to ask in the world. She didn’t say, “If you died tonight, do you know where you’d go?” That’s contrived. She said, essentially, “I am a messenger. I was sent to you because he is coming to visit here soon.”

It reminded me of Paul’s announcement to the Athenians at the Aeropagus:

“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

The most natural gospel presentation in the world. No angst-inducing personal introspection required (or, for that matter, desired).

Perhaps the most obvious reason why Christians double-clutch on this third plank of the gospel proclamation is that we are two thousands years into this ambassadorial function of ours and we don’t want to look like Harold Camping, announcing the end of the world and constantly revising the timeline.

But who said anything about a timeline?

Well, the Apostle Peter did say just this:

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Sadly, when the day of the Lord does come, I suspect it will be as much an intrusion for most Christians as it will be for nonbelievers.

But not for my sister from Eritrea. With the Apostle Peter she announces exactly what she should:

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

She is an awesome proclaimer of the gospel, that Eritrean sister. Everywhere she goes, people are looking up.