Gospel Engagement with Professing Christians
Apparently adjusting to a whole new pandemic-life rhythm wasn’t quite exciting enough for my husband and me, so last summer we threw into the mix selling and buying a house, moving from a rural town to a big city, enrolling our kids in a new school, and filling a pastorate position at a new church! All the newness has been wonderful, but one distinct challenge has been daily highway driving. I’ve learned the hard way that when going somewhere new, blindly following turn-by-turn GPS directions is not the best navigation plan.
Multiple times I’ve gotten sidetracked because of an unexpected closure or construction detour. I’ve had more success navigating if I have a clear understanding of where I am ultimately trying to arrive. As Christ-followers with a missional mindset, navigating relationships with professing Christians may also feel daunting and unclear, especially if the behavioral signage in their lives doesn’t seem to be pointing in the right direction. Both in driving and in relationships, it’s helpful when the final destination determines the route.
The final destination determines the route. When we engage with someone who self-identifies as a Christian, it is helpful to have the correct end-goal in mind. Whether we are talking to them for the first time or the hundredth time, our goal remains the same: to love them as fellow image-bearers out of a heart made alive by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus’s finished work alone. The greatest way we can love them is to point clearly and repeatedly to Jesus. Putting the spotlight on him naturally helps each of us grow in our faith and Christlikeness.
While we would all agree that we desire to engage with professing Christians in ways that love them well and glorify God, our sinful flesh has countless ways to detour that mission. One common off-ramp is when believers take on the role of a “Private Investigator.”
It can be tempting, especially in the early stages of a relationship with a professing Christian, to want to correctly gather and analyze the evidence to determine whether this person is truly a follower of Christ. It is a good and important gospel mindset to hope that people genuinely have their heart regenerated by the Spirit of God, but we get off course if our heart’s desire is for us to be smart enough to “crack the case,” maybe even to “catch them in the act” and metaphorically slap that manilla folder down on the table in front of them, with “Not actually Christian” stamped on the front of it. Taking on the heart-posture of a P.I., we may subtly drift into cynicism and let the lenses through which we are seeing them and hearing them become clouded with the grime of pride and self-righteousness. We may expect their story to match ours in order to be valid, and we may forget where we were when God saved us.
Godly desires often co-mingle with sinful ones, like wheat intertwined with tares. Our desire for people to experience deep, true freedom in Jesus may coexist with hopes of being the ones to share the good news better than they’ve ever heard before, somehow garnering a little bit of credit when they do come to saving faith. 1 Timothy 4:10 reminds us, “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” He alone is the Savior. And because he is so good, he does grant his people wisdom from the Spirit and even “the mind of Christ,” as described in 1 Corinthians 2:16. So we can trust that God will lead and reveal truth as he sees fit.
Enter with love, and guard against cynicism. We, as the redeemed people of God, must be willing to notice, confess, and repent of our sinful thought-patterns when God graciously brings them to our attention. In this way we guard our hearts against cynicism and ask the Lord to help us enter conversations and relationships with genuine, Christlike love. As Ephesians 4 urges us, we are “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Paul writes this because “There is one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:1–6).
So, let us not replace Jesus’s easy yoke with the impossibly heavy one of perfectly perceiving the hidden heart of people around us and striving in our flesh to provide the cure we believe they need. Let’s choose to enter relationships with love, not fearing “being duped,” because we are not ultimately the judge. May we abide in Jesus, learning from him, for he is gentle and lowly in heart, and there we will find rest for our souls (Matt. 11:29).
“So, let us not replace Jesus’s easy yoke with the impossibly heavy one. Let’s choose to enter relationships with love.”
As we trust the Spirit to help us enter relationships lovingly and also discern wisely, it can be difficult to know how to talk about the gospel with someone who says they are a Christian. In our current cultural context, identifying as a Christian sadly does not adhere solely to the biblical definition. Self-diagnosis as “Christian” can result from being raised in a family that regularly participated in religious activities or from repeating a prayer once as a child and trying to live as a good person. While we resist the urge to take on the role of Private Investigator, we can engage with people in specific ways that will help us understand them and point them to Jesus more clearly.
Share the gospel in first-person narrative. This simply means telling our story. Acts 1:8 recounts Jesus’s proclamation that his followers would be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Today one of the greatest ways we can be witnesses for Jesus is to simply tell our story of how he rescued us and displayed his mercy to us. Titus 3:3–6 reminds us that “we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
“Today one of the greatest ways we can be witnesses for Jesus is to simply tell our story of how he rescued us and displayed his mercy to us.”
Although sharing our gospel-rescue story is simple, it is not necessarily easy. I encourage you to practice sharing your “testimony” or spiritual journey with trusted friends. This is a specific area of gospel fluency that we can grow in, especially in small group settings. We should practice telling our story with Jesus as the hero, so that when given opportunities to engage with professing Christians, we can present the gospel clearly and lovingly by telling our own stories.
We can also learn to ask gospel-clarifying questions that don’t come across as cynical fact-checking. People will be able to tell if we are engaging with them because we’re genuinely interested in and care about them or if we have ulterior motives. Asking questions about someone else’s life story will allow you to get to know them and will reveal heart-level truths about how they see the world. Pastor and author Jeff Vanderstelt encourages followers of Jesus to use four questions to deepen our gospel fluency and grow in our sanctification:
Who is God?
What has he done?
Who are we?
What do we do? (As in, how do we live out of that identity?)
These same questions can gradually be discussed in our friendships with other professing believers, with the Word as our source for truthful answers. Remember that God is both sovereign to save and outside of time. Don’t feel pressure to fit everything into one interaction for fear of “missing your one shot.”
Help professing Christians identify their treasure. Listen with gospel ears as friends talk about their life, and the Spirit will help us discern where each of our heart’s treasure truly is. What brings us the greatest joy? What makes us the most angry or scared? What gets most of our time, attention, or money?
“So often I live and speak in ways that do not display Jesus as the truest treasure of my heart.”
So often I live and speak in ways that do not display Jesus as the truest treasure of my heart. Productivity, efficiency, and material or physical comfort too often are the fool’s gold that shines out. We all readily forget the gospel truth, walking in unbelief in some area at any given moment. Praise God he has given us one another as signposts and reminders, as well as his Word and his faithful Spirit! The gospel frees us to be vulnerable with other Christians and provides the safety we all need to repent of lesser treasures and strive after the Pearl of great Price, Jesus Christ alone.
In the face of what seem to be contradictions—avoiding the Private Investigator approach while truly striving to know how professing Christians view God and the gospel—we have hope. We can’t possibly do this perfectly, but we can rest in the one who lived perfectly in our place. Our goal is to abide in Jesus, let the Spirit dwell in us and pour out of us. Our final destination is the throne room of God most high, joining with throngs from every tribe, nation, and tongue singing, “Holy, holy, holy!” By God’s grace alone we will be worshipping shoulder to shoulder with men and women as equally undeserving of God’s grace as we are. Some of them may be folks God puts in your path who thought they were Christians but needed to understand the true gospel better. Some may be folks you meet who are genuine brothers and sisters and who God will use to sharpen you. In either case, God alone does the rescuing, and he alone gets all the glory and honor forever, amen.
Myra Dempsey lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and four children. She is a staff writer for GCD, a blogger at DependentOnGrace.com, and a faithful church member at Cross City Church Columbus. It’s a joy for her to write about God’s goodness and point readers to him!
