Speaking the Truth in Love
September 8, 2008
Dear Friends,
This summer I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks preaching and teaching in South Africa. It was a life-changing experience. I’ll tell you more about that later, Lord willing. However, while I was there I was able to spend some time with a young brother by the name of Tom Farrar. Tom is a bright young man from Canada who has left the comforts of the western world for the climes of South Africa to preach.
Tom has begun publishing some of his experiences and perspectives on a new web site called dianoigo.com. It is worth a look.
I asked Tom if I could publish one of his articles on the TFTW as I found them both practical and compelling. With his permission, here is an article he has entitled Speaking the Truth in Love.
This article is a sequel to the previous one, “And who is my neighbour? The universality of agapé love.” There, we discussed the nature of agapé love and in particular how we are commanded to love even people who are naturally undesirable to us – the needy, the disadvantaged, foreigners, enemies, sinners, etc.
In this article we will suggest that evangelism is a vital aspect of service to Christ which we neglect at our peril. Secondly, we will suggest that traditional Christadelphian outreach techniques in the West are no longer effective. We will claim that agapé love ought to be the foundation of every preaching effort, and discuss an alternative approach to sharing the Good News.
The Gospel of John tells us, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17 ESV; see also v. 14). Grace and truth are closely related concepts. Consider the following passage:
[Jesus answered 'But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'--he said to the man who was paralyzed-'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.' And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. (Luke 5:24-25 ESV)
What we observe in the above account is Jesus using grace (undeserved love) as a vehicle to express truth. Jesus often used this technique. As a community, we generally do not – we jump right into the truth, offering lectures and leaflets, with no tangible grace involved. We get little response, and as a result become apathetic and defeatist toward evangelism.
But as we shall see, the commandment to share the Good News did not come with an expiry date; and if we allow ourselves to think outside the box we will find that our defeatism is unwarranted.
Have a great week,
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