Be God’s Witness, Not His Lawyer
E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973) has rightly been called the Billy Graham of India. Jones served as a Methodist missionary and teacher in that country throughout the crucial first half of the twentieth century. He became close personal friends with Gandhi and labored to contextualize Christianity into Indian culture in a respectful way. His book The Christ of the Indian Road had a significant impact on missions, and Jones was honored—including a Nobel Prize nomination—for his efforts to bring peace and mutual understanding between India and the West. One of Jones’s most famous quotes sums up what he learned through years of dialogical listening and speaking with Indians:
As God’s lawyer I was a dead failure; as God’s witness I was a success. . . . [The Christian minister] is to be, not God’s lawyer, to argue well for God; but he is to be God’s witness, to tell what Grace has done for an unworthy life.
I want to offer three readings of these stimulating words: one bad reading, one implication that Jones intended, and one further application.
First, the bad reading: Jones is not saying, nor would I suggest, that preaching must always lack argumentation or reasoning. Or to say it more clearly: Christian preaching and teaching will inevitably involve logical arguments, reasoning, explanation, and explication of what Christianity is.
The exposition of what Holy Scripture says and what the gospel teaches is central to Christian witness—and Jones certainly agreed! This is not what he meant by avoiding lawyering. So whatever else one thinks Jones is saying, this quote is not pitting reason or argument against witnessing.
Second, the implication: So, what is Jones saying? His contrast between being “God’s lawyer” and “God’s witness” is rich with implication, namely, that no one is persuaded to follow Jesus by argumentation alone. No one is argued into the kingdom of God. Rather, it is the testimony of God’s active and transforming grace in one’s life that is the ultimate and most important “argument” for the truth of Christianity. As Jones discovered when trying to re-contextualize the whole Bible into a very foreign Indian culture, there were many things that were difficult to explain and make sense of. But he came to see that was okay. Above and beyond his ability to be God’s defense lawyer was Jones’s witness to God’s grace in his life.
Reasoning and testimony are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they equal in power and importance. It’s better to be a good witness than a winning lawyer.
Third, one further application: We are not God’s prosecuting attorneys. When we stand as self-appointed lawyers in the name of God, seeking to prosecute his people and the world, we take on the role of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8), not the role of the preacher. The role of the preacher is to witness to God’s word and work in the world. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts and brings repentance.
Preaching will at times include a prophetic call, a rebuke, or a challenge (though probably less often than some of us think). But preachers cannot bring about true conviction or repentance; that is a work of the Spirit. And when we try to do the Spirit’s work, it always backfires. The crucial difference between being God’s lawyer and being his witness lies in how the preacher perceives his relationship with his hearers. Donning the mantle of (prosecuting) lawyer establishes an adversarial posture, while the calling of being a witness is a place of love—standing alongside others, pointing the way ahead to God, inviting people to God.
Therein is freedom and power. Lawyers attack positions, treat people with suspicion, marshal arguments about what should be, and seek to win as the goal. Faithful witnesses take a different role, one of humble and centered testimony to the truth they have seen and known.
Be God’s witness; he doesn’t need any lawyers.
This post is excerpted from Jonathan T. Pennington, Small Preaching: 25 Little Things You Can Do Now to Make You a Better Preacher (Lexham Press, 2021, 26–28).
Jonathan T. Pennington is associate professor of New Testament interpretation and director of research doctoral studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a preaching pastor at Sojourn East Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Pennington is the host and coproducer of the video series Cars, Coffee, Theology and the author of numerous books, including Reading the Gospels Wisely and Jesus the Great Philosopher.