Why People Should Evangelize

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:11a, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

What does that mean? What does it mean when the Bible speaks about the “fear” of the Lord? It simply means having a real and proper apprehension of who God is, a real and proper apprehension of the character of God, the holiness of God, the God-hood of God.

The reason why we are strangers to the state of our own souls; why we are in little desperation to invest our time and energies in taking care of it; why we are strangers to others who are a breathe away from Hell is fundamentally because we are strangers to God Himself.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

—Matthew 22:34-40

We don’t really know who the Lord is that’s why we don’t fear Him, and because we don’t fear Him we don’t know what it is to truly love Him, and if we do not know how it is and what it is to truly love Him we can never really love others genuinely. And what is love for others but love for their souls.

The question then, “Why people should evangelize”, is the wrong question. Because people, fleshly, human beings would never evangelize, they hate the Gospel so much that it is in their hands that the Son of God was Crucified.

Rather, the question is, “Why should Christians evangelize?”

Well, why not?

Why shouldn’t not Christians evangelize? Why should Christians evangelize?

1. Because They are Christians

If you are a Christian today, and you have met God in His holiness, in His transcendent majesty, like Isaiah of old after the angelic chorus was sung:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!

—Isaiah 6:3

You have seen the glorious majesty of God, His thrice holiness. You have seen His perfections, His beauty, His truth. And in seeing the holiness of God the first thing you realized is that you are not. You have realized that you are not holy. You have been brought to the greatest dilemma. If God is holy and perfectly just, how can you, a sinful abomination before Him, stand before that God?

You confess with the Psalmist, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3) The answer of course is no one. No one can stand before God, who is just and holy. The fury of His wrath burns against sin and sinners. We have realized that we are not morally neutral creatures. In thinking about a thrice holy God we find out that in the core of our souls lies a detestation of Him. We exercise in our hearts a moral hatred of Him. We discover that we despise the holy.

We remember Paul’s declaration of the human condition in Romans chapter 1, we have done that which is both ungodly and unrighteous. We have committed a compound wickedness (v.18). An evil that is raised to a second degree of repetition, and I’m convinced that if it was possible Paul would find no problems raising his description of this evil even to the fourth and fifth degree. Because despite God’s clear revelation of Himself, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature ever since the creation of the world (v.20), not only did we not honor God as God or that we have failed to give Him the thanks He deserves, but we even had the nerve, the moral repugnance to exchange the glory of this immortal, thrice-holy God for an idol (v.23). We exchanged the truth of God for a lie (v.25). And God’s wrath abides on us. His wrath is dreadfully provoked against us, each moment.

And you say with the prophet:

Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!

—Isaiah 6:5

And as the seraphim touched the lips of Isaiah with the burning coal from the altar (v.6), so too Christ comes on your behalf to satisfy the fury of the wrath of the infinite Jehovah, that worms like you and I, our guilt be taken away and our sin atoned for (v.7).

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and 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.

This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

—Romans 3:21-26

Therefore when the voice of the Lord cries out, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8), we readily sound the reply, “Here am I! Send me.”

Why should Christians evangelize? Because they have been brought from death to life by the precious blood of the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. Christians evangelize because they are Christians.

2. Because They Fear and Love God and They Love Men

Having been saved from death and hell, the fury of the wrath of the infinite God; having been hidden in Christ Jesus our eternal righteousness (Col 3:3); having been gripped by such a God, finally able to apprehend what it means to fear Him and love Him, we persuade others (2 Corinthians 5:11a). Because we have seen the grave realities that do stare us in the face everyday.

Hundreds of thousands of people everyday dying in sin. Millions all over the world, human beings like you and I living in moral rebellion against the God that has blessed them with life and every good thing. We see sin for what it really is, and we see death in the eyes of all men as what they really are, abominations before Him. And save for the grace of God in Christ Jesus we would be the same (1 Cor 15:10).

And the Christian confesses with the apostle John, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God… (1 John 3:1a)” So then “by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers (v.16).”

Why should Christians evangelize?

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

—1 John 4:9-12

Because God has first loved us, and chosen unworthy vessels like you and me, saved us from the fury of His wrath, that’s why we love God and that’s why we love men. This is why Christians evangelize.

The Motivation of Evangelism

I. Why People Don’t Evangelize

II. Why People Should Evangelize

III. The Love of Christ Constraining Us