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    Evangelism Without Guilt
    Evangelism Without Guilt
    Evangelism Without Guilt
    Ebook95 pages3 hours

    Evangelism Without Guilt

    By Michael D. Morrison

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    About this ebook

    Guilt is so thoroughly engrained in religious culture that many people cannot imagine the gospel without a focus on guilt. They present the gospel as a transaction: you will be forgiven IF you accept the gospel. But Jesus already paid for your sins and you are already forgiven. There is no IF. Sin is forgiven, but it still messes up relationships. The gospel needs to focus on our relationships.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrace Communion International
    Release dateFeb 20, 2013
    ISBN9781301910830
    Evangelism Without Guilt
    Author

    Michael D. Morrison

    I grew up in a small town in southern Illinois: Sparta. Our family of seven was religious but did not go to church - instead, we had a Bible study at home every week. I eventually began attending a church after I moved away, and then I went to a Bible college, and eventually a seminary. Now I work for Grace Communion Seminary, an online seminary based in Glendora, California. My interests are the Gospels, the epistles and theology of Paul, and ethics.

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      Book preview

      Evangelism Without Guilt - Michael D. Morrison

      Evangelism Without Guilt

      By Michael D. Morrison

      Copyright 2013 Michael D. Morrison

      All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com 

      The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

      Cover art copyright Grace Communion International.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Fixing Broken Relationships

      A Theological Look at Evangelism

      A Trinitarian Perspective on Evangelism

      God’s Gift for You: Outline for an Evangelistic Tract

      Evangelism Focused on Relationships

      An Evangelistic Outline

      Summary of the Outline

      About the Author

      About the Publisher

      Grace Communion Seminary

      Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      Introduction

      God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them (2 Cor. 5:19). Love…keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:5). Jesus canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14).

      Jesus paid for our sins, our debts, and he did it 2000 years ago. It was done, past tense, before we ever lived and long before we ever believed it. God took the initiative to save us, not punish us. Functionally, he forgave us. There is no longer any debt to speak of.

      Why then do many evangelistic presentations dredge our sins back up, to pronounce people guilty? Why do they threaten people with non-existent debts? They present God as a cranky judge who is upset merely at the fact that people don’t know that someone else has paid their debt. They present a Father who seems unaware of what his Son did, and one who has a different attitude toward us than the Son has.

      Some evangelistic presentations present the gospel as a trial in a court – that we first have to be proven guilty before we can be forgiven. But the Bible says that the sins are already paid for, and already forgiven. God is not counting our sins against us. He does not keep a record of our mistakes. The book of our sins is already blank.

      Other presentations say that our sins have created a huge chasm between us and God. But this chasm is a fiction; it has already been filled in by Christ. Our sins are not a barrier that keep us away from God, because God has already reconciled us to himself. It is a unilateral declaration of peace. He does not harbor any grudges against us.

      A guilt-based gospel is a misrepresentation of who God is, what Christ has done, and how people are to respond. It often works, though, because many people are already enculturated into thinking that God is cranky, that he is angry at people, and that we have to do something to get back on his good side. They think that God is like Zeus or Thor, ready to send lightning strikes on anyone who annoys him. But the gospel should free people from these errors, rather than act like they are correct.

      What would the gospel look like if we didn’t harp about sins that are already paid for? If we didn’t focus on guilt that God has already put aside? (We are of course guilty of all kinds of sins, but the Bible says that God is not counting our sins against us. He is not concerned about a legal category called guilt.)

      Guilt is so thoroughly engrained in religious culture that many people cannot imagine the gospel without a focus on guilt. They say the gospel is a gift, but they actually present it as a transaction: you will be forgiven IF you accept the gospel. But in truth, Jesus already paid for your sins and you are already forgiven. There is no IF.

      However, many religious people think that God is still focused on our guilt, that our relationship with God is based entirely on whether he holds us guilty. They see humanity’s problem through the lens of guilt, and if we remove guilt from the equation, then they think that the gospel will have nothing left to say. There is no reason for anyone to accept the gospel, they think, if everyone is already forgiven. Such people have a one-dimensional gospel.

      But consider this: If humanity’s only problem is guilt, and that guilt is removed when we accept Jesus as our Savior, then that would mean that we have no more problems. If the only thing wrong with sin is that it makes us guilty, and that guilt is forgiven when we accept the gospel, then there will then be nothing wrong with sin! That is of course wrong, but it illustrates the fact that there’s a lot more to sin and salvation than just the removal of guilt. There’s a lot more to the gospel than a transaction by which our sins can be forgiven.

      To help us think more about this, consider this question: If our sins are paid for by the death of Jesus, what then is the problem of sin? The answer: it messes up our relationships. The reason that sin is wrong is because it hurts people, it hurts our relationships. Lying, cheating, and stealing hurt our relationships with other people; idolatry hurts our relationship with God. The reason that God tells us to avoid sin is not because it annoys him, but because it’s not good for us, and because God loves us, he wants us to avoid the pain that sin causes.

      The reason that sin is wrong is because it hurts our relationships, and we are relational beings; that is the way that God made us (Gen. 1:27-28), and that is the future that he has promised us (Rev. 21:1-4). So let us look at sin, salvation, and the gospel through the lens of relationships.

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      back to table of contents

      Fixing Broken Relationships

      One of the biggest problems in Western society is broken relationships—friendships that have turned sour, promises that have not been kept, hopes that have been disappointed. Many of us have experienced divorce, either in our own marriages or in our parents. We have experienced pain and turmoil from an unstable world. We have learned that authorities cannot be trusted, that people are basically looking out for themselves.

      Many of us feel like we are lost in an alien world—we don’t know where we have come from, where we are now, where we are going, how we will get there, or where we really belong. We try to navigate as best we can through the hazards, like walking through a minefield, trying not to show the pain we feel, and not knowing whether it’s worth our while.

      We feel tremendously alone, having to fend for ourselves. We are reluctant to commit to anything. We enjoy casual friendships, but anything deeper runs the risk of rejection, of betrayal, of deep hurt. We keep our options open, because the rewards of commitment are simply not worth the risk of pain.

      Religion doesn’t seem very helpful, either. Religious people are the ones who blow up innocent bystanders, who say that people are suffering because God is angry at them, who look down their noses on people who dress differently. Religious people are not the sort of folks we’d pick for a friend. And the God they talk about doesn’t seem very friendly, either. God makes no sense in the world today—right and wrong are just matters of opinion, sin is a rather old-fashioned idea, and guilt feelings are just fodder for the psychiatrists.

      Jesus seems irrelevant. The stories in the Bible show that he had a charmed life, healing people just by touching, making bread out of nothing, walking on water, surrounded by angels, walking hundreds

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