Transcript

ANNOUNCER: When you evangelize others, how do you share the gospel? What are things that we should not say, but also what are things we should say? How should we frame up the gospel of God’s grace for eternal salvation? This is Grace in Focus. Glad you’ve joined us today, friend. We are a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We live in North Texas. We have a website we want you to take note of—that’s faithalone.org. At that website there are many resources. One is our bookstore. Lots of titles there, including Bob Wilkins’ latest book. The Gospel is Still Under Siege. So come by, have a browse and find your next book. That’s at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s question and answer discussion here are Bob Wilkin and Leon Adkins. 

BOB: Leon and I have known each other since 1981 when I taught a class for lay people, when I was a fourth year student at Dallas Seminary and then you later went to Dallas Seminary yourself and later became pastor of Berean Memorial Church in Irving, Texas, where I speak couple three or four times here and enjoy historic Free Grace Church. Dr. John Danish was he was the founding pastor, right? 

LEON: Actually the church started as a mission of the First Baptist Church of Irving. So a few of their people came over and founded it and in the late 60s Dr. Danish was already pastor and the Southern Baptist Convention took a turn toward liberalism and so we withdrew and since then we’ve been an independent Bible church. 

BOB: Yeah I remember I was at first Baptist Dallas back in 80 and that’s when the Southern Baptist Convention went back to conservative because of Dr. Chriswell and all of the other conservatives they took over the seminaries and miraculously went from liberal to conservatives. 

Well it’s very good to have you, Leon, and yesterday Gene called in and he’s a regular listener and Gene said look I hear you guys on the radio a lot and you’re very clear about what we shouldn’t say in evangelism. We shouldn’t tell people that they need to clean up their lives. We shouldn’t tell them they got to turn from their sins or they’ve got to commit their life to Christ. They’ve got to promise to serve him. They’ve got to be baptized or they got to confess him or something. 

LEON: Invite Jesus into their heart. 

BOB: Invite Jesus into your heart, you know all of those thing,s but Gene said, okay but what is a simple way that you recommend that we can evangelize? So Leon I thought we could kick that around. How is a very simple clear and easy way to evangelize? What would you recommend when you, you know, you have people you talk to individually, you evangelize from the pulpit, etc. How do you share a simple easy message without getting the confusing things in there? 

LEON: I cannot make it any more simple than Jesus did. John 3.16 he said, “whoever believes in Him” and say someone is in my office I ask if they’re born again and they say well I don’t know what does that mean. I hand them a testament or a Bible and I may have to turn it to John 3:16 for them, but I open it or have them open it to John 3:16 and ask them to read it to me, and I say what did Jesus say you have to do to receive eternal life? And they look at it and say, well He said believe. And I usually say something like, well a lot of people say you have to walk down an aisle, kneel at an altar, promise to do better, all these kinds of things. But Jesus said all you have to do is believe in Him. Eternal life is a gift. In fact, the King James Bible translates it as a free gift, which is kind of redundant. But that’s exactly what it is it is a free gift. And the way you get a gift is to receive it. You hold out your hands and receive it. If you say, well here let me pay you for it it’s no longer a gift it’s a purchase. And you have to understand that it is a gift. And I think one of the problems in in the Christian world today, is people try to complicate it. They say, well yes, it’s it’s a gift but it’s not all that simple, you have to do something. And I say, no, you don’t have to do anything except believe and believe just means believing. If I say here’s you a hundred dollars, go to the mall and buy you something. How do you receive that ? How do you get the hundred dollars? You reach out and accept it. And Jesus offers the gift of eternal life and God is absolutely fair—He has no favorites. He doesn’t say, well, you’re a good person, so I’m going to let you go to heaven. It’s all the same for everybody—if you have five PhDs or if you’re illiterate—it’s all the same. 

BOB: That is so good. You know let me ask you though, when you talk about, okay you receive a hundred dollars, here’s a hundred dollars and you receive it. It is a little different though, because if you reach a hundred dollars over, the way I get that hundred dollars is I just grab it. But there’s no physically grabbing Jesus, right? 

So it is true that John 1:12 says, “But to as many as received Him to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” We receive by believing, but let’s be real specific now on what it is—because this is where Gene’s question gets. 

Okay, I love your point—what would Jesus do? We know what He would do because we have the gospel of John and John 20:31 says the purpose of John’s Gospel is to lead unbelievers to believe in Him, for the result of everlasting life. When I’m convinced that he is the Christ the Son of God, which in John’s Gospel means He’s the giver of everlasting life to all who believe in Him, well then I have that life. So what is it specifically that we’re asking a person to believe?

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BOB: What is it specifically that we’re asking a person to believe? 

LEON: We’re asking them to believe that Jesus can give them eternal life and there’s a subtle implication there nobody can go around giving people eternal life unless you’re God. 

BOB: Only God could do this. And by the way, believing He can do it is one step along the way, but in order to actually have the life, I have to believe it’s more than He can do it. I have to believe He guarantees it. In other words, the moment I believe in Him, well then I have the life. 

People can stumble over this but I read an article that Bob Bryant wrote—you know Bob? 

LEON: I know Bob.

BOB: And he wrote an article on John 4:10. And that’s where Jesus is talking to the woman that the well, and He said if you knew the gift of God, one the gift of God which we you’ve already talked about, and who it is that says to you give me a drink, talking about Himself, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.

Well there’s basically three elements in this. The first element is the gift of God which He explains in verse 14 is everlasting life. If you drink this water it’ll spring up in you into everlasting life and then the second thing is who it is that speaks to you. That’s the Messiah and we get that in John 4:25 and 26. She says I know Messiah is coming and I who speak to you am He. The third element is in verse 14. You’ve got to drink it. Well drinking it is just like you were talking about with accepting it or receiving it. It is believing. Drinking is a figure of speech in John’s Gospel for believing, right? John 6:35, “He who comes to Me shall never hunger, he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”

When you get to John 6:35, he explains what’s going on in John 4. “He who believes in Me shall never thirst.” To drink the living water is to believe in Him and that results in everlasting life.

So specifically we’re asking people to believe in Jesus for something he promises and what is it that he promises? 

LEON: Eternal life.

BOB: And if it’s eternal, how hard is it to lose it? 

LEON: It’s not hard to lose it’s impossible.

BOB: Okay, and why is it impossible to lose? 

LEON: Well, it is eternal life. It’s not like something that someone gives you, like you give your son a car to go to college and you say this is your car as long as you don’t get any traffic tickets and you make good grades and if he fails you take it back. But eternal life is not like that. It’s not a conditional gift and it actually is something inside you that you could never lose even if you wanted to. It’s a quality of life that is different from your natural life. You are reborn. Jesus compared it to being born again and you are spiritually reborn into God’s family.

BOB: Absolutely. Now when you use the word quality, you don’t mean, okay, this guarantees that i’m going to live a real quality Christian life. You mean a type of life, right? 

LEON: Absolutely. 

BOB: It’s Jesus’ life and His life is one that is everlasting. 

By the way, I’ve talked to people before—I remember I was at a church in Omaha and they were talking to me and they said, please when you talk, don’t talk about us having eternal life. Talk about us having everlasting life. They said eternal goes both ways, backwards and forwards. God is eternal, He has no beginning, no end, so he’s the alpha and the omega, right? 

We have a beginning and everlasting life began for us the moment we first believed in Jesus for the gift of God. So our life is everlasting, it goes on forever going forward, but it doesn’t go on forever backward. 

However the New King James is willy-nilly. Sometimes they’ll translate zoen aionion as everlasting life, sometimes they translate it eternal life. I don’t know why they go back and forth. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, because most people when they think of eternal life, if they realize it never ends, they realize there was a beginning point for us.

The beauty of what we’re talking about here is when you tell people this message they’re going to be bumfuzzled or as the British say gobsmacked. How can that be true? Just by believing in Jesus I’m never going to perish, I’m never going to hunger, I’m never going to thirst, I’m never going to die, I’m never going to be cast out? That’s too good to be true. And you say, well take that up with Jesus, because I’m not the one making this up—this is what Jesus promised. People ultimately need to realize that their tradition often contradicts the very words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well thanks so much, Gene, for your question. Thank you all for listening, and let’s remember to keep grace in focus.

ANNOUNCER: Would you be interested in some free ebooks on topics you hear on this program? Well if you are you, need to come visit us at faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. We would love to hear from you. Maybe you’ve got a question, comment or some feedback. If you do, please don’t hesitate to send us a message. Here’s our email address: it’s radio@faithalone.org, that’s radio@faithalone.org, and when you do very important, please let us know your radio station call letters and the city of your location. 

On our next episode: What did Paul commit to God and what is that day in 2 Timothy 1:12? Please come back and join us again and until then let’s keep grace in focus.