If we could only capture that! We don't do it out of duty. We don't do it out of obligation. We do it out of debt. We are indebted to God. We have been like them, and we have been saved by the grace of God. We owe it to them to strive to persuade and to do it with alacrity as the opportunity arises.
Somebody said to me once, ‘Well, of course there are ministers who are no good at preaching the gospel, it is not their gift. Their gift is to teach.’ As I understand the New Testament, you cannot have such a person. Everybody who is a preacher, a minister, a pastor, however well he may teach, must also be – and it must be his chief concern – a preacher of the gospel. If he cannot preach the gospel, dare I say, he is not called to preach, it is as simple as that. There are such things in the New Testament as evangelists, who specialise in evangelism. But that does not mean that the pastors, teachers are not evangelists. They must all have as their first priority the seeking and the calling of souls.
We ought to be ready every day. Can we say that we are ready, yes, eager to witness for Christ, but ready. Sometimes we have not prepared at all. We are just not ready for what we will say. We say, ‘I find it difficult to witness. I get so overcome with shyness. I am not a shy person normally, but in witness I find I am.’ People confess it. They say, how would I go about it? What would I say? For some reason we do not think we need to prepare for, but we do! If an opportunity arises for me to speak to that particular person in my business, in my office, wherever it is, what would be my approach? How would I go about it? What should I use to break the ice? What would be an appropriate way? If you think about it, it is much easier to do. In Sunday School, in the pulpit, in witness, let us keep the jargon out, keep the religious words out. Speak to people as perhaps we once had to be spoken to as outsiders, and explain and declare what God has done and the way of pardon and forgiveness and life and light.
I remember reading and hearing Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones talk about this. Many years ago, when he was a doctor of medicine and he was working in a hospital, he longed to preach. He knew what he would preach, he said. He had been to various churches in South Wales. He had heard messages which he did not think would do the people any good, and as he heard preachers, earnest men, but just preaching about the wrong things, he formed very clear ideas of what his aim would be. That fired him and drove him forward. He knew exactly what needed to be said.
What does the word ‘gospel’ mean? Many know that it translates the Greek ‘good news’, ‘good tidings’. But what does it mean to preach the gospel? People often use the word in an inadequate sense; they do not define it correctly. The Roman Catholic church thinks that the gospel simply means the influence of God, the grace of God in their sense of the term. So if you are blessed by the priest, or if you have absolution of sin through a priest, or you go to mass, they say it is the gospel. It is not the gospel at all. For many years, and it has come back today, there were people in this country, who thought that the gospel was social work performed by Christians. They were not Bible-believing churches, but there was a great tendency in this land to think that whatever good works the church does in society, that is the gospel. It is not the gospel. It may be good to do it, and right to do it, and immensely helpful to people, but it is not the gospel. The gospel, as the apostle Paul uses the term, is a very special term. It is the good news of salvation. Whenever he refers to the gospel, he is referring to the soul-saving doctrines of the gospel. I remember a pastor, I have mentioned this example before not long ago, but I remember a pastor being inducted into quite a large church as minister, and he told the people in his message, induction message – ‘I am going to preach the gospel. Now when I say gospel, I mean all the word of God. Whenever I am preaching from any part of the word of God, I am preaching the gospel. My heart sank – wrong! Completely wrong – that is not the gospel. When you are specifically preaching the part of the Bible’s message which has to do with salvation, the fact that you are a sinner, the fact that God is holy and you are under his judgement, the fact that you will be condemned everlastingly, the fact that Christ has come to be a Saviour. He suffered and died to bear away the punishment of sin for all who believe in him, and you must repent and trust him, and undergo a conversion experience, and come to know him and walk with him – that is the gospel. Teaching simply the doctrines of faith, the doctrine of election, or the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints: wonderful for us and encouraging though it is, it is not the gospel. The Gospel is those doctrines that serve the salvation of souls.