ANNOUNCER: What are the bottom line non-negotiables when sharing the gospel so that you don’t leave anything out of the saving message, especially when you’re in a hurry to share the gospel? That’s our question for today. We’re glad you’re joining us here on Grace in Focus. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org, Lots to learn about us there, lots to see, including hundreds of articles that you can study from a Free Grace perspective, a bookstore where you can find our brand new Old Testament Commentary Volume 1, information about our free online seminary, application and registration period open now for the fall semester, and today is the last day to get pre-registered for our national annual conference. Find it all online at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right Bob, we’ve got a question from Steven. Says he enjoys listening to the programs and listens while he’s walking in the woods, so thank you Steven for listening. His question is about salvation. He says how much understanding of who He, Jesus, is historically and what His mission was is necessary for saving faith? And he gives an example that I like, so I kind of want to frame it in this. He says, “I evangelize at a food pantry when carrying groceries out to people’s vehicles. Some folks don’t know much about the Bible or they come from other cultures. They don’t know much about Christ. How do I discern and supply them with the necessary understanding to believe in Him?”

BOB: Okay, so that’s a great question, Steven. I would say a person needs to understand enough about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in order to believe the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

SAM: But the things that you understand about Jesus, about His work, about the Bible, that lead you to believe in Him are not the things that give everlasting life. Jesus didn’t say he who believes that I came, I saw, I did, I left, or whatever, that’s not what we believe. It’s believe in Him, in His promise, the thing that He promised in John 3:16. That is what we believe in to receive everlasting life. 

BOB: Right. So let’s say, for example, someone is convinced that this Jesus of Scripture guarantees everlasting life to them simply because they believe in Him for that life. Well, then I would say that person has eternal life, even if they don’t know much about Jesus. On the other hand, let’s say I’m dealing with someone that has a PhD, New Testament studies, they can translate the entire New Testament in Greek by sight. They don’t have to look up words. They know it all. They can give you a lecture about substitutionary atonement and about the bodily resurrection of Jesus on the third day. And they can tell you about the union between Jesus’ deity and humanity, called the hypostatic union. And yet the person believes that in order to get into the kingdom, they’ve got to not only believe in Jesus, but they’ve got to follow Him their whole life and keep on believing their whole life in order to keep their salvation. Well, that person’s got an awful lot of correct knowledge about Jesus, but they don’t believe the promise. 

And so the key, I would say, Stephen is this, you’re walking someone to the car, give him what’s called the bottom line up front first, “BLUFF.” We had a friend who spoke at our conference, Dix Winston, and he said that’s a kind of a military concept where when you’re talking to your commanding officer, you don’t go in and meander around the bush and talk for five or ten minutes before you get to your main point. First sentence, you’re telling the commanding officer what he needs to hear. And then if he wants supporting details, you’ll give him all he needs. Same thing in evangelism. 

So Steven’s walking somebody out to the car and he says, did you know Jesus is God, that he’s God in the flesh? And he’s the second member of the Trinity? Well, you’ve pretty much used up most of your time and you haven’t given him the bottom line up front yet. Let’s say you’re walking him to the car and say, do you know that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose bodily from the dead on the third day? Again, you used up a fair amount of your time and you’ve not given him the bottom line up front yet. If Steven is anywhere in the United States, chances are good that most have at least heard the claim that Jesus is God in the flesh and that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again. 

Here’s the key point with some people, if they hear John 3:16, that’s all they need to hear to be born again. They hear that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but has everlasting life.” It dawns on them that’s true. They believe it. They’re born again. They don’t have all of the knowledge that other people would have. 

But on the other hand, there are people who they’re going to need an awful lot of what are called apologetics defenses of the Christian faith. So there are a lot of people that need a lot of proof. For example, I have a book on my shelf over there by Morrison and it’s called Who Moved the Stone. Morrison was an atheist and Morrison set out to disprove Christianity and he wanted to know who moved the stone and stole the body of Jesus. He was trying to disprove Christianity by disproving the resurrection. He ended up writing a book in favor of Christianity and in favor of the resurrection. And there’s lots of examples of this. There were two, 

SAM: The Case for Christ. 

BOB: Oh yeah, by Lee Strobel? And there’s lots of examples like that of people who set out to disprove Christianity. But they already knew the claim that those who believe in Jesus are saved once and for all and they’ve rejected it. Two of the big apologetics are number one, Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead on the third day. And number two, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. A Saul coming to faith is an amazing thing. 

ANNOUNCER: We will rejoin in just a moment. But years ago, Zane Hodges wrote the Gospel Under Siege. Sadly, this is still true. And GES president Bob Wilkin has recently written its sequel. Bob’s new book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, is a book about theological clarity on the Biblical teaching about eternal salvation. It is available now. Secure yours today at the Grace Evangelical Society’s bookstore. Find it at faithalone.org/store. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s content.

BOB: A number three would be the change in history from the time of Christ to today. It used to be that we called AD in the Year of the Lord and BC before Christ. Now it’s BCE “before the common era” and even some Christian theologians will use those kind of designations. I kind of like in the Year of the Lord. 

SAM: Yeah, we’re going back to the parking lot. You’ve got 30 seconds or a minute. You’re talking to somebody. It’s important for us as believers, as disciples, to remember that we don’t have the ability to save anybody. The Holy Spirit is drawing everybody to the Lord. The Holy Spirit is the one that’s doing the work. We are workers in the field. We’re tending. So if you’re in the parking lot, your job might just be to plant a seed. So you might ask something like, Hey, do you know that Jesus gives you everlasting life if you believe it? Have you ever heard John 3:16? Something very simple like that.

Chances are they’re not going to believe right then and there. But like the examples you gave of those authors, they weren’t converted by someone bashing their head over with the Bible until they finally believed for those types of people. They had to figure it out for themselves. They had to look at the evidence. They had to be convinced and then that’s when they were ready to believe because it’s about having an open heart and an open mind. It’s not about just how much knowledge do I have. 

So the answer to your question, how much does a person need to know? You said at the beginning, how much is necessary for that individual to believe. Someone might be ready at, “He died on the cross. God loves me. If I believe in him, I have everlasting life.” That’s good enough. But other people might need to see, okay, Paul’s an enemy of Christ and he was converted. So that means this must really be the real deal. So those are reasons that can lead people, but it’s different for everybody and it’s not our job to, in every instance, give everybody the entire Bible. Sometimes we just give what we can, plant the seed, and someone else is going to water, but God’s going to give the growth.

BOB: Believe it or not, Steven, this came up in my so soteriology class, my doctrine of salvation class, at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Charles Ryrie was teaching the class and Dr. Ryrie asked all of us, he said, take out a piece of paper and pretend like you’ve come on the scene of an accident and someone is dying. This person has 60 seconds left to live. Write down in 25 words or less, what you would tell him. He said, okay, here’s the correct answer and his correct answer was something along the lines of “Because Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, whoever simply believes in Him has everlasting life that can never be lost.” And he said, if people left out the part about has everlasting life, it’s wrong. They have to have something along the fact that this is a salvation or a secure salvation or eternal life, etc. And it was something like a huge number of the people in my class got it wrong. 

So what I would say, Stephen, is this bottom line up front first is, did you know Jesus said he who believes in Me has everlasting life? Did you know that Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life?” Isn’t that amazing? It’s just whoever believes in Him. You say something like that. You’re right. The person’s likely to not believe that at the first time they hear it, but guess what? They’ve heard it and they can now think about it. And the Holy Spirit is drawing them. 

So find a verse you really like that you can quote to people and quote that as you’re walking them to the car. I suggest make it a verse like John 6:47 or John 3:16. Some people like to go outside of John so they might go to Ephesians 2:8-9. I would recommend sticking within the Gospel of John because it’s the only evangelistic book.

But in any case, that’s a great question. And by the way, the other things, Steven, that’s really helpful. If you say to someone, did you know Jesus said that “He who believes in Me has everlasting life, John 6:47? The person may well say, how could that be? Great. You can give a short answer. Then they said, yeah, but what about the person who goes out and lives like the devil? You can give a short answer. And they say, yeah, but what about the person who doesn’t deserve to go to heaven? You can give a short answer. But now you’ve got a dialogue going on. So get the bottom line up front first out there, that the one who believes in Jesus has everlasting life. Maybe they’ll say, why is this Jesus able to give everlasting life? Ah, well, that’s because He died on the cross for your sins. That which was necessary to bridge the gap between God and man. No longer is sin the issue. The issue is we’re dead and we need life. So there’s lots of ways these conversations can go. But get the basic promise out there at the first and then all the details can fall into place later. 

SAM: And let’s all keep grace in focus.

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On our next episode: are gifts that are found in the Bible always given free, no strings attached? Be sure to join us and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.