Last night we ended our series on the Lordship of Christ in all of life by looking at how Christ is Lord over a major part of our Christian life–our witness to Him. The notes are sparse, but they’ll will remind you of the references and main points if you want.
One thing I want to make clear which, last night as I was driving home I wondered if I had or not, is the mechanics of how we depend on the Spirit to be the power in our witness to Christ. In other words, how do we actually do this? Here’s my attempt at (at least the beginning of) an answer. And it’s simple:
We depend on the Spirit by seeking to speak the words of the Gospel about Christ into a person’s life, and by trusting the communication of the information about Jesus to “do the work” as the Spirit applies it to their life.
Now, much more could be said or explained here in order to clear up misconceptions, but I invite you to think it over, to search the New Testament to find if the Apostles agree (I think they do, of course), and to get back to me with your thoughts on this, and especially, with your experiences in practicing it. But I really think that as you read the record of the early church and their writings in the New Testament, what you find is that they depended on the Holy Spirit to apply (in power) the message about Christ to their hearers. Which means they didn’t depend on anything else in addition to the message. This might cut across the grain of much idea of “mission” in today’s contemporary American church culture, but I think we have to begin to reckon with the degree to which we are called to be (maybe first and foremost) transmitters of information. Of course, we need to be living embodiments of the message as well, but the key is not to lose the “information transmission” part of witnessing to Christ in the quest for “incarnational living” in our witness.
Anyway, here’s what we talked about last night:
What are we to do? If Christ is Lord over our witness for (and to) Him, what does He say our witness should be? In other words, how does He define it?
- Matthew 28:18-20–He has all Authority: so Go make disciples, baptize, teach Jesus’ commands. (Notice “I am with you…”)
- Mk 16:15–Preach the Gospel
- Luke 24:44-49–Preach repentance, and forgiveness of sins (Notice “Wait in Jerusalem for Power”)
- Acts 1:6-8–Be witnesses of Him…
How are we to do it?
- Mt 28: Jesus is with us.
- Lk 24: Power from on High (Ps 113:5, Is 32:15)
- Acts1: The Holy Spirit à God Himself living in us…. (Now notice the effects of this in Acts 2:1-14, 37-41; 4:3)
Having Power behind our words: See 1 Cor 2:1-5 for Paul’s description of how He saw His witness: Specifically in the area of human wisdom vs. the power of God (see 1:17!) and persuasiveness vs. the cross of Christ.
Summing it up: The Holy Spirit (God Himself) wants people to know first of all the message of what God did in Christ for Humans, and how they should respond. When that message is spoken by believers and heard by unbelievers, He will impart power to it by working in the hearers’ hearts and minds to open and save them. Our part is to be faithful to deliver the message–and to deliver it in such a way that the information about Christ is not obscured by the one delivering the message. If we overshadow the message, then Christ is not clearly seen, and the Spirit will be less likely to impart power to the message (since He would be empowering something pointing to the one delivering the message, instead of the one the message is about). So, if our message is about a messiah who died on a cross and rose, we should rely on that information and the power God gives to it, and nothing else…
We ended the night in small groups praying over these topics:
Let’s pray:
- for the filling of the Spirit for the purpose of carrying out Jesus’ commands
- for the Lord to teach us to depend on His spirit instead of our own
- for specific people and your witness to them
- in line with Luke 10:2: God is Lord of the Harvest, let’s ask Him to send workers.
Verses to aid our prayer… 2 Thess 3:1, Col 4:3, Eph 6:19-20