Every now and then a fellow believer will ask me, “Pastor Cliff, how do you witness to Catholics?” Or, “How do you evangelize Muslims?” I always give the same initial answer: “Like I evangelize everyone else.” Many times the inquirer is surprised, as they think, “It can’t be that simple.”
I remember a while back teaching an apologetics class at a church and a believer I know protested to my assertion that there is one gospel for all people and that gospel never changes. The fellow Christian blurted out loud to everyone, “What you are saying won’t work with Hindu Indians because they don’t understand the word ‘sin’!”
A Tailored Gospel?
Similarly, I have a certain world-renown Christian apologist/philosopher as a guest every year in my Apologetics class at seminary to talk with my students. He’s been to China over thirty times and he is convinced that Chinese Budhists need a special, tailored gospel presentation because they have no frame of reference to understand the standard gospel proclamation. He avers, “Most Chinese people believe humans are by nature good…and [don’t believe in] original sin.”1 He argues that every person needs a specially crafted, tailored gospel proclamation because he believes, “The starting point for our beliefs is our socio-cultural upbringing.”2 In other words, he believes people are more different than they are the same and so you can’t talk to Chinese people about the Christian faith the same way you’d talk to non-Chinese people.
My friend in the example above as well as my seminary guest argued that the same gospel presented in the same manner won’t work with all people because they were emphasizing the discontinuity that exists among people. I admit there are discontinuities—not everyone is the same. Obvious discontinuities among humans include skin color, ethnicity, language, religion, where you grew up, and more. And some of the discontinuities are superficial and can even change over the course of a person’s life. But in the big scheme of things, the discontinuities that distinguish people are all external, and as such are not as determinative as the continuities that all humans share.
The continuities of human nature are what define humans, not the discontinuities. Humans have superficial differences, but in their very nature, holistically, all people are the same, and it is this foundational sameness that warrants one gospel for all people. According to Scripture there is a biblical anthropology wherein God defines and explains what elements constitute a human. And those primary elements are universally true and unchanging. Human nature from God’s perspective is defined by continuity, not discontinuity.
What All People Have in Common
Consider the basic continuities of being a human according to Scripture. First, all people are made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27). To be made in God’s image primarily means that we are “persons”—we possess certain personal attributes of the Triune God. A key attribute of personhood is rationality. This is what sets us apart from animals and the rest of creation. Every person born is made in God’s image, regardless of ethnicity, race, gender, religion, worldview, language, socio-economic status, place of upbringing. In addition, the image of God means every person’s life is sacred as it is a special gift from God.
Second, every person born has been given a conscience by God (Rom 2:15). The conscience is the innate spiritual moral barometer that gauges right and wrong in the human soul.
Third, every person is born with the law of God imprinted on the heart (Rom 2:15). The law defines what is right and wrong and is the content of what the conscience gauges.
Fourth, every person is born sinful and separated from God their holy Creator (Ps 58:3; Rom 3:23). This inborn sin affects every part of a person’s constitution. Jesus said no one is exempt from the poison of internal, innate sin that pollutes the heart, soul, mind, will, emotions, desires, and spirit. Jesus declared that out of the heart of every person “come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt 15:19).
Fifth, every person is born with the sentence of death which is separation from God (Rom 6:23).
Sixth, every person knows from birth that God exists (Rom 1:19-21). There are no true atheists! But, because all people are born sinful, they defy him and pursue false religion (Rom 1:25).
The above six principles are fixed and inescapable ontological realities of human nature. We know this because God has told us in his Word. Every human is his creation and he knows what every person needs when it comes to salvation from sin. God declared, “Behold, all souls are Mine…The soul who sins will die….But if the wicked man turns from his sins he shall surely live” (Ezek 18:4, 21).
It is these six continuities of human nature that necessitate one gospel for all people. The fact that all humans, without exception, possess the image of God, personhood, a conscience, and the law of God imprinted on the heart ensures that every person can understand the gospel message that God has entrusted to the Church. It is the job of believers to proclaim and explain it so people can understand.
Jesus’ One Gospel
Jesus had only one gospel, and it was the same one truth he preached wherever he went, regardless of the demographics of the audience (Mark 1:14-15). He did preach primarily to a Jewish audience, but there were also non-Jews on occasion who heard his preaching and he did not alter his message when addressing them.
In his first recorded public sermon Jesus commended the faith of a Gentile Sidonian and a Syrian (Luke 4:26-27). When talking to the immoral Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus did not water down or alter his message. Instead, as he did with everyone else he talked to, he exposed her sin and implored her to believe in him (John 4). Jesus once publicly addressed some Greeks telling them spiritual life could only be attained by following him, the Christ, the Savior who must die (John 12:20-26). Jesus ministered to a Canaanite woman near Tyre and Sidon and commended her faith in him (Matt 15:21-28). Jesus proclaimed the one same message, his messiahship, to Roman soldiers (Luke 7:1-10; Matt 27:54) and to the pagan, Pilate (John 18:28-40).
In addition to having just one message and method of declaring saving truth regardless of the audience, Jesus gave the same mandate to his followers. He commissioned them to preach the one saving gospel message to every person, no matter who they were or where they were in the world. He said to go to “all nations” (Matt 28:19) and preach the one gospel (Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8), calling every person to “repentance” (Luke 24:47), including Indian Hindus and Chinese people, regardless of their obfuscation about sin.
The Apostles’ One Gospel
The apostle Peter followed in Jesus’ steps preaching just one message for all people, whether they were Jews (Acts 2:14-38) or Gentiles (Acts 10:34-48). Peter made it clear that the one same saving message for all people is confined to the person and work of Jesus. Peter declared, “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And the one message was to be appropriated in the same manner by all people as well and that was by repenting and believing (Acts 2:38; 10:43). Peter said God would grant forgiveness to anyone who believed.
The apostle Paul is the prime example showing that there is just one gospel for all people. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. God commissioned him to go and preach to non-Jews, pagans from all different regions of the first-century world (Acts 9:15). And wherever Paul went he preached the same message (1 Cor 1:23), with the same basic elements, namely, God is the holy Creator, people are born sinful rebels deserving death, and the only solution is Jesus the God-Man, who died as a substitute for sinners and rose from the dead. Paul called this “the gospel” (1 Cor 15:1-4) and it is the only way any sinner can be saved.
Paul also declared the universality of the one gospel message when he wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom 1:16). And whether Paul was preaching to Jews or Gentiles “he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:16-18). And his preaching always culminated in the same manner regardless of the demographics of the audience. He would call them to repent and believe in Christ, as he declared to the pagan Greeks in Athens: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).
Prioritizing Sameness, Not Difference, In Our Evangelism
The fact that all humans are at bottom the same, by virtue of creation and inherited sin, should be an encouragement for all Christians. That simplifies our job of evangelism. Because all people are made in God’s image and are persons, they have all the rational and personal hardwiring necessary to understand all spiritual truth pertinent to the gospel, including their accountability to the Creator, the need for forgiveness, and the impulse to be rescued from imminent death.
So, our gospel message is the same for every person. Sure, we may have to emphasize certain truths with certain people, or explain certain concepts at length and in a detailed manner until it registers, hits a nerve, and the sinner is justly convicted. But at the same time, we don’t have to feel like we have to be experts with comprehensive knowledge about every worldview or religion we may confront as we proclaim the good news.
We need to prioritize the continuities of human nature as we preach. Every sinner has a conscience sensitive to God’s truth and the law of God in the heart acting as our advocate as we speak God’s Word. Every unbeliever already knows that God exists, so no pre-evangelism is required. All the while, the Holy Spirit is driving home the truth of God’s Word that you speak, deep within the recesses of the person’s soul and spirit, convicting them of the truth (John 16:8-9; Heb 4:12). To witness effectively to a Catholic, you don’t have to be an expert on Catholicism. In fact, you don’t have to know much about Catholicism at all. We just need to be proficient and have a mastery of the content of the simple, never-changing, gospel of Jesus Christ.
NOTES
1Five Views on Apologetics, Zondervan, 2000, 283.
2 Five Views on Apologetics, 283.
