Four Neglected Essentials of Evangelism

The Japanese are the second-largest unreached people group in the world. Tokyo, where I serve as an associate pastor, is the largest city in human history and thus home to the greatest concentration of lost people on earth.

From my time in this unreached context, I’ve noticed that Christians often neglect four aspects of evangelism that the Bible and church history treat as essential.

1. The Doctrine of God

“Do you believe in God?” I asked a woman who visited our church for the first time that morning. She enthusiastically answered yes. But due to ambiguities between singular and plural in Japanese, I clarified, asking whether she believed in the One True God of the Bible or the eight million gods of Shinto. She responded with the latter and was shocked to learn that Christians only believe in one God.

Monotheism, taken for granted in the West, historically has been confounding in Japan. In the 1500s, Jesuit missionaries in Kyushu were initially mistaken for a new Buddhist sect because they mistranslated “God” as Dainichi (a Buddhist deity).^{11 .} Christians in Kyushu: A History https://www.tofugu.com/japan/history-of-christianity/ Francis Xavier didn’t realize the mistake for two years.

However sincere they may be, our hearers cannot be saved unless they place their faith in the proper object. This is why Paul, speaking in a pre-Christian context, spends almost 80 percent of his Mars Hill sermon establishing the doctrine of God (Acts 17:22–31). In the post-Christian West, such an approach may be just as necessary.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Chalcedonian Christology or eternal relations of origin as irrelevant to evangelism. I recently spoke with a non-Christian who, despite little exposure to Christianity, asked, “How can Jesus be both God and man? How can Jesus and the Father both be God, yet there is only one God?” The gospel is irreducibly Trinitarian, and our evangelism must reflect it. Could this explain the Trinitarian shape of the Great Commission passages (Matt. 28:18–20, Luke 24:44–49, John 20:21–23, Acts 1:6–8)?

2. The Reality of Hell

As a brand-new Christian wrestling with the idea of hell, I felt a deep dissonance between what I saw in the Bible and popular clichés like “you can’t scare people into heaven,” “hell is just separation from God,” and “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.” This left me with a sense that appealing to hell in evangelism was at best an illegitimate motivation and at worst manipulative.

Tim Keller, citing D.A. Carson, argues that fear of judgment and death is one of the six major appeals the Bible uses for non-Christians to believe in the gospel.^{22 .} Center Church, Timothy Keller, p. 114–15; “Motivations to Appeal to in Our Hearers When We Preach for Conversion”, D.A. Carson, Thermelios Jesus makes this appeal frequently. As Joel Beeke observes, the Bible contains 245 warnings about hell.^{33 .} “Dr. Joel Beeke on Hell”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T-KbFjntoY

We’re far less comfortable using hell in our evangelism than our forebears in the Patristic, Medieval, Reformation, and especially Great Awakening eras of the church. But we do lost people great spiritual good when we make it clear that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31).

When I was a convinced atheist 12 years ago, I learned about a Christian classmate’s belief in the exclusivity of Christ. All the events leading to my conversion began when I asked her plainly, “Do you think I’m going to hell?” She kindly yet confidently responded, “Yes, unless you trust in Jesus.” Knowing the fear of the Lord, let us persuade others (2 Cor. 5:11).

3. The Call to Repent and Believe

I once took a missiology class while in seminary where my professor required me to describe a time when I shared the gospel with a friend. In response to my submission, my professor gave this critical feedback: “Instead of telling your friend he can repent and believe in Christ, ask him if he will repent and believe in Christ.” The gospel only benefits those who respond in faith. Merely conveying the facts of the gospel is not sufficient; we must seek to persuade non-Christians to repent and believe.

Reading Acts, one is struck by Luke’s unembarrassed insistence that while conversion is the sovereign work of God (Acts 11:17–18, 13:48, 18:9–10), it ordinarily occurs through the means of human gospel proclamation (Acts 10:43, 13:39, 18:8). The Lord opened Lydia’s heart so she could pay attention to what was said by Paul (Acts 16:14).

This biblical balance between God’s sovereign work and his use of human means in conversion is reflected in the historic Reformed position, summarized in the Canons of Dort, Head 2 Article 5:

It is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people.

It is our responsibility to urge non-Christians to repent and believe. The recovery of this historically Calvinistic understanding of evangelism gave birth to the Modern Missions Movement at the end of the 18th century. Missionaries like William Carey, Adoniram Judson, and John G. Paton passionately affirmed the absolute sovereignty of God over all things while also seeing themselves as instruments of God’s providence.

We must recognize the danger of the semi-Pelagianism and revivalism of Charles Finney: false converts. But in doing so, we must also not overlook the danger of subtle forms of hyper-Calvinism: no converts.

4. The Role of the Church

Her hair still wet from the baptistry, a young woman who had recently become a Christian asked several of our members to take a photo with her after the service. She wanted to remember everyone who had welcomed her, answered her questions, and pleaded with her to trust in Christ.

Our team is often asked, “What’s your strategy for reaching the Japanese?” To the disappointment of those expecting something more exciting like an honor-shame gospel presentation or finding redemptive analogies in Japanese culture, we answer, “the church.”

The church is God’s evangelism plan. It is his ordained means of reaching the world. It was God’s idea to create a people out of nothing, calling sinners from darkness into his marvelous light so that they would proclaim the excellencies of Christ (1 Pet. 2:9–10). The saving, transforming power of the gospel displayed in the local church is the hope not just of Japan, but of the world.