How to Lead People to Christ, Part 1: The Content of Our Message (John 6:43, 47)

How to lead people to Christ. The title of my two talks at the GES Pastors Conference this year may lead you to expect that I’m going to talk to you about how to do personal evangelism. Hopefully you will get some ideas about personal evangelism from the things that I say. But that is not my major objective.

Instead I want to talk about how Grace theology should affect the way we present the gospel, whether we’re presenting it to individuals or to groups. Nevertheless, before I go any further, let me just say this. I do genuinely enjoy talking to people about their eternal salvation. And I’ve done so with many, many individuals over the years.

In the kuga office where I work there works with me a close friend who does not attend Victor Street Bible Chapel. When I first met him he did not understand the way of salvation. But over a period of years and after many conversations on the subject he became a believer. He understands now that salvation is absolutely free, even though most of the people that he knows do not understand that.

He even knows what lordship salvation is, and he knows it ain’t good. Now the salvation of this friend of mine is one of the very highly treasured results of my many years of service to Christ. It’s an immense joy to me to realize that, as a result of his faith in Christ, the friendship that we’ve had now for eighteen years will go on forever in the kingdom of God.

What I’m trying to say is this. I’m a teacher by spiritual gift, but I enjoy doing the work of an evangelist as much or maybe more than teaching. So as I talk today about putting good theology into our soul winning, I’m talking about something that’s an important issue to me. And I want you also to know that I try hard to practice the things that I’ll be preaching to you today and tomorrow.

The question I am raising in my talks is a basically simple one. Here it is. Have we allowed solid Grace theology to properly affect the way we proclaim and share the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Have we really allowed our Grace theology to impact our sharing of the gospel?

Now I propose to address that issue under two headings. The two headings are these: number one, the content of our message, and number two, our invitation to respond to it. Now I want to consider the first of these topics this afternoon and the second one, God willing, in the discussion tomorrow morning.

So this afternoon, the content of our message. Let me begin with a strange scenario. Try to imagine an unsaved person marooned on a tiny uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He has never heard about Christianity in his entire life.

One day a wave washes up a fragment of paper onto the beach. It is wet but still partly readable. On that paper are the words found in John 6:43 to 47. But the only readable part of the paper are these: “Jesus therefore answered and said to them,” that’s in verse 43. And “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life,” and that’s verse 47.

Now suppose that our unsaved man somehow becomes convinced that this person called Jesus can guarantee his eternal future since He promises everlasting life. In other words, he believes Jesus’ words in John 6:47. Is he saved?

I suspect that there are even some Grace people who would say that this man is not saved because he doesn’t know enough. For example, he doesn’t know that Jesus died for his sins on the cross and rose again the third day. Needless to say there’s a lot more he doesn’t know either, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the eternal sonship of Jesus Christ, or the doctrine of the virgin birth.

But my question is this. Why is he not saved if he believes the promise of Jesus’ words? It is precisely the ability of Jesus to guarantee eternal life that makes Him the Christ in the Johannine sense of that term.

Our Lord’s exchange with Martha in John 11:25 to 27 demonstrates this. You remember the passage.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Her reply is a declaration that she believes Him to be the Christ.

Martha said, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Notice here that to believe that Jesus is the Christ means to believe that He guarantees resurrection and eternal life to every believer.

But now let’s look at John 4. In that famous passage we have the Samaritans saying to the woman who had encountered Jesus at the well,

“Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

Observe that the common denominator between the two passages, the one from John 11 and the one from John chapter 4, is the term Christ. On Martha’s lips He is the Christ, the Son of God. And on the lips of the Samaritans He is the Christ, the Savior of the world.

This is not an accidental or insignificant difference. In Jewish prophecy and theology the promised Christ was also the Son of God. That is, He was to be a divine person. Recall the words of Isaiah,

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

But in Samaritan theology, deeply flawed theology of course, the Messiah was thought of as a prophet. And the woman at the well is led to faith through our Lord’s prophetic ability to know her life. Her words, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet,” are a step in the direction of recognizing Him as the Christ.

There is no evidence in the text of the Gospel of John that either she or the other Samaritans understood the deity of our Lord. But they did believe that He was the Christ. And John tells us in his epistle,

1 John 5 verse 1, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”

A full theology of the person of Christ is not necessary to salvation. If we believe that Jesus is the one who guarantees our eternal destiny we have believed all we absolutely have to believe in order to be saved.

Did you notice the way I said that? The way I said that is kind of important. If we believe that Jesus is the one who guarantees our eternal destiny we have believed all that we absolutely have to believe in order to be saved. In other words we have believed the bare minimum that is necessary in order to be saved.