Greg and Amy remind Christians that God’s goal is to conform us to Christ’s image, which involves teaching, fellowship, and spiritual growth, not just getting people saved.
Transcript
Amy Hall: “Given the stakes of temporary time to choose an eternal destination, why do any Christians do anything but evangelize? Why does a church have state-of-the-art equipment and buildings for temporary time when they preach an eternal reality? Seems like Christians are not practicing what they believe.”
Greg: Well, there’s probably some merit in this observation regarding priorities. However, I think there’s a mistake, and it’s an understandable one, and it reflects, I think, a mistake that everyone—pastors often make. The mistake is thinking that the only reason we’re here is to help get other people saved. That’s why we’re here, after all. I’ve heard people say this, but that isn’t the New Testament perspective.
Paul says—and, I’m not sure, it’s either Philippians or Thessalonians or maybe Colossians—somewhere it says that his goal is to present every man complete in Christ. It isn’t just, “Okay, now you’re saved. Rapture out.” It is to develop and grow in godliness. And, by the way, that’s the point of discipleship. The Great Commission is not a commission to evangelize. It entails evangelism as a necessary but not sufficient element. The sufficient element is discipleship. Make disciples. That is the command of the Great Commission.
And what Paul does with all of his converts is he works with them, especially in Ephesus. He spent two years in Ephesus building and strengthening them. Then, when he leaves in Acts 19 or thereabout, he’s saying goodbye to the Ephesian elders. It’s a big deal because they’re all close to each other. He said, “I’ll never see you again.” And he knows this. He’s on his way to Jerusalem and other places afterward under persecution. But he has spent time training them to do things. He wasn’t just training them to preach the gospel. He was training them about the things of God, the kinds of things we see all throughout his epistles.
So, this is the goal, broadly put—presenting every man complete in Christ. Now, this requires facilities, organization. It requires a proper use of resources at our disposal. It’s not just a matter of “all we need is to get people to pray the prayer, and let’s keep moving on to get people to pray the prayer and then get all these people into Heaven.” That isn’t what the kingdom is.
It’s interesting. When Jesus came to preach, the operative language was not that he came to preach the gospel, but that he preached the kingdom of God. Now, the kingdom of God is the rulership of God. It’s the world being brought back under the authority of their rightful Sovereign. And that entails a whole lot more than regeneration. That entails a whole way of life and living a certain way before God to bring honor to him in the life we already have. It entails developing in godliness, because godliness is not just a value for this age but also for the life to come.
So, there is a lot going on there. And it just strikes me, the question reflects this fairly one-dimensional idea about the role of Christians in the world is just to evangelize and get other people saved.
Amy: As 1 Peter says, we’re called so that we can proclaim the excellencies of God. And we do that in large part by who we are—by our behavior. Romans 8 talks about how God is conforming us to the image of Christ. That’s his goal for us. That’s what he’s working—he’s working all things together for good to conform us to the image of Christ.
And here’s—I don’t know if this is the verse you were thinking of, but this is from Ephesians 4: “And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
Greg: No, that wasn’t the verse I was referring to, but that does the job.
Amy: Yes. So, that’s what God is doing. He is maturing us. He’s turning us into people who reflect him. This is what he was doing in the Old Testament with the Law. But of course—
Greg: I’m just funning with you, Amy.
Amy: Of course, the Law couldn’t make people better. So, he was trying to conform—well, not trying. That was the purpose of the Law, was to conform people, but of course, we know the Law was only there to show us our need for Christ and the Holy Spirit to change us. But that’s what he’s doing. He’s creating a people to proclaim his excellencies, and he’s maturing us. And all of that involves teaching, gathering, being together, and fellowship. All these things are involved, and so we do those things.
Greg: That’s right.
Amy: And I just love the way you put it, Greg—that this is a kind of a one-dimensional look. So, of course God is bringing more people into his people, and of course we should care about that. And if a church doesn’t care about that, there’s a problem. But there’s a lot more going on.