Evangelism is not the job of the pastor alone. Pastors are certainly set apart to feed the sheep which they do primarily through the ministry of the Word in preaching, teaching, public reading, and prayer. However, pastors also have another job to equip the saints for ministry themselves. The Apostle Paul marks this additional task out clearly in Ephesians 4.
In this section the Apostle highlights that the Lord Jesus gifted His church with ministers of the Word to have a specific goal in mind, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:12-14)
As the text makes plain, a pastor’s job is not to solely be engaged in ministry alone, but to equip God’s people to be equipped for various service for the building up of one another in Christ. How is this goal to be accomplished? By understanding what is the Gospel or the good news of the Christian faith as expressed in Holy Scripture.
There is no greater fundamental need to every Christian than a proper working understanding of what is the heart of our faith. If you have all the other Christian trappings that so surround our churches today but cannot share this most basic message of the Gospel then I implore you to pay careful attention. You must be crystal clear about this Gospel message because the future of your soul and life as well as the souls and lives of others are indeed impacted by your own understanding of the Gospel.
Can you tell someone what the Bible is all about? Do you understand the Gospel? Do you know where to turn in your Bibles to lead others to Christ’s message of salvation? Are you able to answer some of their objections? The good news today is that the Apostle Paul provides clear answers for his readers in Romans 3:21-31.
How should we summarize this passage? The Gospel is God’s answer to our guilt. The Apostle wrote, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” (Romans 3:22) This is the heart of our Gospel. God’s righteousness is granted to all who believe.
Contrary to some false understandings, God does not bestow His perfect righteousness to those who are righteous already, for as we see in the immediately prior passage, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:10b-11) If God was to search around the world for a righteous person so that He might save one, He would come up empty-handed for the Scriptures says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23).
One of the great dangers of the Pharisees is that they took the message of the Bible and added to it to try and prevent people from breaking God’s law. However, in their efforts they so covered the law of God with their man-made laws that the original work became imperceivable. We must guard against this as well today. For when we consider the text provided by the Apostle we find a straightforward and simple Gospel.
What is that simple Gospel message? Even though we are all born unrighteous and daily add to our guilt by breaking God’s holy law, God has provided a way of pardon from His wrath to come. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, covenanted with the Father to sacrifice Himself in our place so that we might be saved from the horror that awaits all those on judgment day who will be found without Christ’s righteousness. Jesus’s perfect death on the cross satisfies the righteous judgment of God against sin.
But this gift of salvation, which He secured by His death on the cross, is only made ours by faith alone. Paul defends this point of salvation by faith alone in Christ in Romans 3:24-25, for we “are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Does this mean then that our salvation starts by faith but only continues by our work? Absolutely not. If we believed such a thing (as some do), we would be robbing God of His glory and have reason to boast in ourselves. But the Apostle undoes every false claim to have salvation rooted in the mind, will, heart, abilities, efforts, and/or works of an individual. From first to last, the work of salvation is the work of God. Does not the Apostle teach us this fact from Romans 3:27-28, “what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified [that is declared righteous and forgiven of all sins] by faith apart from the works of the law.” Even the faith by which we believe in the promises of God is a gift from God granted to us for no reasons rooted in us but solely from his sovereign and unconditional election (Ephesians 1:4; 2:8-10).
God’s Gospel is from beginning to end a display of the love, wisdom, righteousness, power, grace, mercy, and character of God. We do not save ourselves. Indeed, we cannot. All of our positive affirmations are useless in the court of heaven as our best efforts. The only thing that can save us is Christ. Christ our righteousness! Christ our substitute! Christ the perfect sacrifice!
We must believe in Him as the One sent from the Father to settle our accounts with God. For there is no other means by which we can be reconciled to God but by the body and blood of Christ in our place. I pray that you might know this yourself and that you might share it with others.