The gospel will always challenge people. Whether the challenge is received, heard or believed is another matter.

The gospel challenge

I have heard countless sermons where Paul’s speech in Athens (Acts 17:16-34) is used to say our gospel proclamation must build bridges to our hearers world. In this sermon, it is claimed that Paul is seeking a point of contact between the Athenians and Christian truth, and having found it in ‘the unknown God’ he gently leads the Athenians to truth.

As appealing as this may be, this is not what Acts 17 says. The Athens event opens with Paul greatly distressed, or to be in paroxysms, to be exasperated at the centre of his being. The apostle then goes on to reprimand them because God has made himself known so they have no excuse for worshipping an unknown God.

As in Athens, that the gospel challenges every person’s position and belief is universally true - whether the person is a believer or not. It challenges the unbeliever to accept the Lordship of Jesus, and challenges the believer to greater slavery of Christ. But in either case it challenges.

So I want to ask why is the challenge not clearly heard?

The fundamental answer is that it takes the sovereign, merciful work of the Holy Spirit to open a persons ears, mind, and heart. This is why we constantly pray for others.  But there are still things we can learn about communicating this truth.

What people do with information

When a statement is made there are broadly three things can be done with that information by the hearer. They can:

1. dismiss the information
2. assimilate the information, where it is included as additional information in the mental world of order that exists in the hearer’s mind
3. accommodate the information, where the new information does not fit into the existing order of the hearer’s thoughts and so they must change or reorganize their central concepts.

Dismissing gospel truth is never what we seek as we proclaim Christ one to one, in small groups and from our pulpits.

Assimilation is not what we desire if the information is incompatible with the mental organizing models people have, but is taken on board anyway. If this happens the truth is just data, which is of no lasting value.

Because the gospel always challenges, it is accommodation that we seek. We pray that the truth of the gospel so challenges people that their model of reality is overturned, that their desires and longings are aligned with God’s and their wills inclined to serve the Lord Jesus. When this is the truly the case, then new information can rightly be assimilated.

Why is the gospel not accommodated?

Humanity’s desperately wicked heart will always seek a way to dismiss gospel truth. We do it saying things to our selves in a voice that drowns out the gospel proclamation. Things like “the speaker doesn’t understand my situation”, “their options are too narrow” and “that truth is something someone else has to respond to”.

This means in our proclamation we should seek to understand what our hearer’s treasure, expose that they in fact treasure this, and then expose the empty and destructive character of what they believe.

Some suggestions

The gospel will proclaim needs to become like a ‘burr in the saddle’ of our hearers. A burr works because it is not instantly eliminated, but it eventually becomes a nuisance. It should annoy and provoke them to consider accommodation rather than dismissal.

Here are some suggestions about how to do this:

• over time, build up a store in the mind of the hearer of unsolved puzzles that eventually causes a loss of faith in the mind’s current organisational map to solve the problems.
• use examples of how the gospel truth has been lived out to help your hearers see it is livable. This is one of the great values of testimonies.
• show how the gospel is consistent with what people know to be true. For years we called this apologetics.
• show how accepting the gospel opens up possibilities for explaining far more than what currently troubles the person
• recognize that learning is always done in social and cultural setting, so the ethical, moral and consistent lives of those who trust the gospel should be evident.
• keep praying and calling on people to repent. We should not fear calling people to commitment to Christ.

Come to think of it, I can see all these in Paul’s Athens sermon. 

Banner photo credit: Clairity on Flickr