If you get the opportunity to share the gospel with someone what exactly do you focus on in terms of what they need to do to be saved? There is something floating around out there, these are poor word choices by the say, called the ABC method, and that method advocates three steps: the A stands for admit you’re a sinner, the B stands for believe in Jesus, and the C stands for confess. You hear that from a lot from people. Other very poor word choices that are out there are confess Christ, deny yourself, yield to Christ, surrender to Christ, sorrow, you’ve got to shed a few tears, people need to cry a little bit, make Jesus Lord of your life, ask Jesus into your heart, forsake all and follow Christ, receive Christ, accept Christ, invite Christ into your heart. And these are just buzzwords that we toss around but as we start studying this today you’ll see that these buzzwords have almost no, let me rephrase that, they have no support in the Scripture.
So before I get to the right answer, why do we think this way? Well, we think this way largely because of the influence of Charles Finney. Charles Finney is the man who is credited with leading the Second Great Awakening in America. And Charles Finney is what was called a revivalist. And Charles Finney did a lot of good but he brought in some baggage, I think, to the way we do evangelism. He says you do whatever you have to do to induce people to convert. So if that means you use guilt, then you use guilt. That means if you want to darken the lights then you darken the lights. If you want to use dry ice, I don’t know what special effect you want to use, you use that, but you induce conversions through human means. And that’s basically what Charles Finney taught. He had a huge impact in America because of the Second Great Awakening.
So in the 20th century and the 21st century we find ourselves today using all of these word choices, that really aren’t found in the Bible at all, in terms of leading people to Christ. And the reason we use things is we’ve heard other people use them and the reason other people use them is they’ve heard others use them, and the reason they themselves use them is we’re all living in the wake of Charles Finney.
So when you’re dealing with an unbeliever and they’re confused about who Jesus Christ is, these are the sort of things you want to focus on. Man is a sinner, Jesus is the Savior. Jesus died as your substitute, Jesus rose from the dead according to Old Testament prophecy. And then as you’re sharing with them you’re praying that the Spirit of God, as you’re talking, is exercising His ministry of convicting them of their need to believe in Christ.
And beyond that you would focus on things like He is the Messiah, He is the Son of God, if you have time you might even focus on the fact that He is the great I AM, He is deity. In other words, He has the power to do what He claims He will do, which is take you to heaven, give you the gift of life and take you to heaven when you die. No one can do that other than God.
Let’s come up with an evangelistic model that I think incorporates all of this theology that we have been talking about. emphasize a five-pronged approach, five things that we focus on and they’re designed like a hand, you can see this in all of our Sunday School rooms. Points 1, 2, 3, and 5 are just education; you’re educating unbelievers about things. Point 4 is you tell them what they have to do once they have the knowledge. So you’ll notice that what they have to do is one thing, after you have explained to them points 1, 2, 3, and 5.
So the first two points are bad news; the last three points are good news.
You talk to an unbeliever about the bad news, which is you are a sinner before a holy God.
Then you focus on a second piece of bad news, see, you’ve got to get a man lost before you can get him saved, right. The first two points as the Spirit of God uses you gets them lost, helps them recognize they are lost. You have to, as the Lord uses you, convince them that they’re lost.
So then you focus on the penalty for your sin is death.
And now you move into the one thing they’re supposed to do, after they get the information. Piece of good news number 2 you can be saved from hell by believing… now when you use the word “believe” they won’t know what you mean unless you define it for them. To believe means to be flushed out for them so they understand the concept of dependence. You can be saved from hell by depending on Christ alone to save you. Excellent verses on this, we won’t read them again, we read them earlier, are Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; [9] it is not of yourselves lest any man should boast.”
Now if you have time you can explain to them what grace means, unmerited favor; what faith means, to depend; with it means to receive a gift, if it’s coming to you as a gift.
It’s faith alone in Christ alone that saves. There are no biblical examples of people with “every head bowed and every eye closed” as we like to say, praying a saving prayer of faith. Now is it wrong to pray a prayer? No it’s not wrong, as long as they understand that the prayer doesn’t save. That’s where people get confused. I said the prayer, I’m saved. That’s not what saves. What saves is dependence on Christ, that’s what saved.
So after you’re convinced that they have trusted in Christ then you move to the last piece of good news, and you want to assure them that they are saved and have eternal life. And this is where you teach the assurance of salvation because if salvation came to them as a gift, what could they do to undo the gift? Nothing, because their salvation depends upon whose promises? God’s! Can God lie? No He can’t. And God, many times in His Word, some of these verses we’ve gone over, John 5:24, John 6:47, assures the lost sinner that they have the gift of eternal life at the point of faith.
https://www.spiritandtruth.org/teaching/Soteriology_by_Andy_Woods/05_One_Condition_for_Salvation/20160203_condition_for_salvation_transcript.htm?x=x
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