Do We Witness Too Much?

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As I teach on men’s team ministry around the country, I have a habit of pointing out two facts from the New Testament: First, the New Testament contains only three commands to witness (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 2 Timothy 4:5). Second, the New Testament contains over forty commands to love (Some examples are: Romans 12:10; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5:14; Philippians 1:9; 1 Peter 4:8; 1 John 3:16).

The interesting thing is that the commands to witness are given to church leaders, such as apostles and pastors, but those same apostles and pastors in turn do not repeat those same commands to their converts. In other words, the apostles’ MO was not to preach the gospel and get people saved so that their converts would preach the gospel and get people saved so that their converts would preach the gospel and get people saved and so forth–sort of like a spiritual Ponzi scheme or multi-level marketing.

For example, the Apostle Paul was commissioned to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. In his epistles he tells his readers he is not ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:14-16), he asks for prayer that he may be able to preach the gospel boldly (Ephesians 6:19, 20), and he tells his readers he would be under a curse if he did not preach the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:16). But what you do not see Paul doing is urging his Gentile converts to preach the gospel themselves (i.e., to witness, with the exception of Timothy, a pastor). In fact, in one famous passage, Paul commands wives to basically “shut up” and let their actions speak for themselves.

Peter, the very first to proclaim the gospel at Pentecost, in his epistles does not in turn urge his converts to go out and preach the gospel themselves (i.e., to witness).

John reminds his readers three times in the first three verses of his first epistle that he is “proclaiming” the Word of Life to them. And yet he does not in turn urge them to do the same to unbelievers (i.e., to witness).

True, the early church had believers who were specially gifted as evangelists (Ephesians 4:11). But again, what you do not see is those evangelists commanding other believers to do evangelism. Why, then, is there this lack of “second generation” commands to witness in the epistles?

The reason is because the apostles knew that their preaching of the gospel, when mixed with faith on the part of their hearers, results in a specific product: people who are able to love exactly like their Lord, Jesus Christ. It was not just any kind of love the apostles were after, such as sentimental love or token love, but the very love of Christ.

The apostles knew that this kind of love is what the world craves and they knew that when practiced, this love will in turn draw even more people to faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself taught this to them in the last night discourse, “A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one anther” (John 13:34-35). This same emphasis on the evangelistic power of love appears in Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, “I pray that they may be one as we are one.”

Far from being a vacuous spiritual Ponzi scheme, the apostles’ preaching of the gospel produced a radical and consistent corporate love that had practical results in the lives of their converts which then, in a very natural way, resulted in even more converts. This process of practical love producing new believers is what Paul is referring to in Titus 3:14, “Let our people learn to engage in good deeds, to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful” (i.e., that they may have new converts).

This practical form of love with evangelistic results is why you see throughout the epistles of Paul, Peter and John little emphasis on witnessing in the classic sense and such a strong emphasis on love. Again and again these three key apostles remind their readers that they are to love.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17b-19). Through their elders, Paul exhorted the Ephesians in his last address to them in Acts 20:34, 35, “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Peter admonished his readers, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22, 23). This love was to be extended even to unbelievers through acts of kindness. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God, on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12)

John saturated his first epistle with exhortations to love. Here are just two examples: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16); “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us” (1 John 3:23).

Perhaps at this point, an analogy would be helpful. As a pastor, I have done many weddings. And yet at none of them did I ever say anything like, “Bob and Mary, we’re all looking forward to you having lots of children, and soon! So get out there and propagate!” No, I never did that. It was just assumed that children would probably be a natural byproduct of their marriage, of their love for each other. In spite of the fact that I never exhorted any of the couples I married to have children, almost all of them now have children! I just let nature take its course. In fact, my guess is that if the couples I married had felt pressure from me and their families and friends to have children, an awful lot of them would be childless!

This “natural birth” process seems to be what we’re seeing in the New Testament. Initial evangelism by apostles, gifted evangelists and pastors results in a community of believers who learn to love like their newfound savior, Jesus Christ. The natural byproduct of this community of believers who are loving like Jesus Christ is even more people coming to Christ. After all, who wouldn’t want this kind of love? Instead of training their followers in unnatural ways to do evangelism, church leaders emphasized practical expressions of the love of Christ and then let the Spirit take His course.

So to answer the question, do we witness too much? My answer is yes. At least, we witness too much out of a sense of obligation resulting in unnatural words and deeds that are devoid of Christ’s love.

Now before anyone gets all apoplectic on me, let me just say that one of my goals in life is to see more people–thousands of people–come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior, not less. But our witness is too often tinny, like the Christian pastor I saw one time manning a motorized pulpit in a parade I recently attended. He had good intentions. He was trying to witness in a public parade. But he looked ridiculous. Is any non-believer really going to take the gospel seriously after seeing something like that?

I’m just as guilty of noisy-gong, clanging-symbol evangelism as anyone else. As a kid, I made sure everyone on my paper route got a gospel tract at Christmas time. In high school, I carried my Bible on top of my books and generally made a nuisance of myself witnessing in class. I’ve preached the gospel on beaches, city parks, town squares and shopping malls. I’ve counseled people at crusades. I’ve taken the gospel to over 20,000 homes. I’ve done evangelism in Canada, Haiti and Mexico. I even tried to witness to Muhammad Ali as a student at UCLA by tossing him my New Testament during a Q&A session following his speech.

Besides getting dressed down by a disgruntled heavyweight boxing champion in front of a thousand of my fellow college students, I’ve been spat on, yelled at, cursed at, and threatened. I’ve had people throw books at me and pelt me with rocks. I’ve been derided by teachers and professors. So when I say we witness too much, I am speaking from my own experience. I was one of those “Jesus freaks, out in the streets, handing tickets out for God,” as Elton John sings in Tiny Dancer. Some of my efforts resulted in professions of faith. Whether they were real or not, I won’t know until I get to heaven. But more often than not I came up empty.

Truth be told, it’s hard work fishing for men outside of Christ’s paradigm of love, really hard work. I used to so identify with Peter as he explained to Jesus why he wasn’t all that thrilled at his invitation to go fishing with him, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.” Jesus made it clear that following Him was the key to successful fishing, and evangelism (Luke 5:1-11). Jesus repeated the miracle and the lesson at the end of Peter’ s training just for emphasis (John 21:1-14).

“Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” That is the key to evangelism. Later Jesus would be more precise, “A new command I give you, Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Follow Jesus, love one another as He has loved us, and let the Spirit take His course. That is my new MO. And I must say, it is both a relief and a joy. There are now thousands of men who are taking up the call to love the way Christ has loved us, through identification, commitment and sacrifice. As they direct that love in extremely practical ways to the people in their churches who need it the most – the widowed, single parents, the fatherless, the disabled – we are seeing people come to Christ and come back to Christ. And we have these results without ever having mentioned evangelism in our training!

Now I identify with Peter in another way: Just as Peter, after following Jesus’ instructions and casting the net on the other side of his boat, brought in an overflowing number of fish, so now I have the opportunity to disciple thousands of men in the love of Christ.

Follow Jesus. Love like Him. Then reel in the catch. It’s a whole lot easier and a lot more fun.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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