How To Share Jesus With the World

The popular message today that the church too often gives on how to witness to the unsaved is to say, Jesus loves you.” And He does. That is clearly stated in the Bible. God, the Father loves us so much that, as we read in John 3:16, He sent His only Son as the way to have eternal life in Him. But the teaching of the Bible does not teach us to share only that message. In His letter to the Colossians Paul gives us the method of sharing Christ with the world. Hear God’s Word as the Spirit inspired Paul to write.

Colossians 1:28
We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.  

Let us take a quick look at the instruction from Paul on how to proclaim Him.  Its quite simple and we see two commands. We can see that this is not just a message for the church, though we need admonishment and teaching as well, it is an instruction to admonish and teach “every” man.

What does Paul mean when he says we are to admonish? The Greek word for admonish is noutheteō.  The meaning of that word is to caution or reprove gently and the two common English equivalents are warn or admonish. The word derives itself from nouthesia, which is a mild rebuke or a warning. It can also mean to counsel.

So we see that Paul proclaims Christ by warning people. What is the warning? Anytime we interpret scripture we do so in light of scripture. This means we cannot just snatch up a verse in isolation and use it to declare whatever we want. In light of the entire message of the Bible I believe the truth Paul is saying here is the simple truth that Jesus came proclaiming. He began His ministry and He ended His ministry telling us to repent. John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Christ by saying the same thing. Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand is what he said.

Witnessing to the world is a hard thing and though God has commanded us through Jesus to do so, He also sent the Holy Spirit to give us both the power and the words to do it. I am not saying Paul instructs us to go out and grab people by the arm screaming a horrible message of condemnation. Remember the word speaks of a “mild” rebuke. What Paul is saying though is that we must share the truth, in love, that all of us are sinners in need of Christ, our savior. If we don’t, then we are leading people to a false sense of security in their eternal destination. The Bible teaches of a hell. There are only two eternal choices; heaven or hell. We must take the truth of hell seriously. I think it is noteworthy that Paul placed in his method of proclaiming Christ admonishment and warning first.

Then Paul tells us to teach all men. Again we see it’s everyone we are to teach. And we are to teach them with all wisdom. The word used for teach, is pretty much as we read it in our word teach. We teach others by holding conversations with them and by telling them what we know. We share the Word of God for the Word of God does not return void. We tell them how Jesus has worked in our lives, and how He has changed us. And the wisdom we teach with is God’s wisdom, not our own. The Holy Spirit is our source for that wisdom and we do not need formal Bible College training to be able to share God’s wisdom. Jesus tells us this truth in Matthew 10:20 saying, “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

Paul then adds the purpose we proclaim Christ. It is “so that we may present every man complete in Christ.” The message we proclaim is not simply that we get to go to heaven at the end of our life and we just get to live on as we were before we were born again. Ephesians 2:10 explains that “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

Yes Jesus loves us. But we are not being faithful to the Great Commission if we do not proclaim Christ in the way the Word of God commands us to. Being a Christian is not just a free ride to heaven; being a Christian has much more to it. We are saved by grace and grace alone. But with the title Christian comes commitment. Share the truth people.

I leave you with an admonishment. A warning if you will. These are not my words, but the very words of Jesus. Pray over them and ask the Holy Spirit to make them real in you own life and then in your work to proclaim Him.

Luke 14:26-35
 "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.  "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?  "Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'  "Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?  "Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.  "So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.  "Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?  "It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."