Thoughts on Galatians 5:10

“I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine...”

In whom did Paul’s confidence rest? In Jesus. This verse speaks to so many areas of the Christian life. Today, in particular, it speaks to me about missions and evangelism. I think Christians today, generally speaking, put their confidence in the wrong places. In terms of evangelism we tend to put our confidence in programs and activities, in music, in a cool building, or in an engaging preacher. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that we place our confidence in ourselves and what we are able to accomplish instead of placing our confidence in the Lord. If we take the emphasis off of us and place it on Jesus it will drastically change the way we think about missions and evangelism.

If we place our confidence in ourselves then we force ourselves to “sell” Christianity to others. If the emphasis is on us then we feel the pressure to “sell” the Gospel by making it sound eloquent or relevant in hopes that the person we are speaking to will “buy into” Christianity. We think “maybe if the music is good enough or if we have a coffee shop it will convince people to come back to church and they will believe in Jesus.” I’m not saying it’s bad to have an eloquent, relevant message or that it’s bad to have good music and a coffee shop. I am saying those things are bad if they are what we rely on to get people to know Jesus. When we use anything other than Jesus to get people to Jesus we are placing our confidence in the wrong place. We ultimately end up selling a product, hoping we can make it sound good enough to convince people to buy. If we try to sell Christianity we are turning Jesus into a product and Church into a marketplace. We already know what Jesus thinks of that: “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.”

Instead we should follow Paul’s example and place our “confidence in the Lord.” Think about how this would change things. We would no longer be relying on ourselves to sell anything. We wouldn’t be selling Jesus to anyone. Instead we would be presenting the Gospel unedited knowing that through the proclamation of the word of God all whom the Father has appointed will come to know His son Jesus. Paul experienced this himself in the book of Acts. After preaching the Gospel “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” Those who believed that day were not convinced by Paul that they should believe. They were appointed by God to believe. All Paul did was tell them the truth about Jesus. He didn’t feel the need to sell them anything. Many of us get nervous when we talk to people about Jesus. We are unsure of ourselves or don’t think we know enough to share or don’t think we are eloquent speakers. If we understand this truth, none of that matters and the pressure goes away because we know that it is not up to us to convince anyone to become a Christian. When we understand that it is God who calls people to believe and our responsibility is not to convince them of anything but to share the Gospel faithfully with them it will transform the way we look at missions and evangelism.

I am blessed to be a part of a church, Church of the Cross, that understands this truth. On Sunday I saw a flyer for our Easter service. The flyer simply said:
“No Fireworks. No Skits. Just Jesus.” Amen.