Faithful in Commitment to the Lost (1984)

message delivered at Urbana 84
by Mariano Di Gangi

"Are we conscious of our obligation to share the gospel with this generation, using the means and resources the Lord has put at our disposal? The willingness and faithfulness with which we commit ourselves to this task is a sure index of our conviction of the lostness of the world and the saving power of Christ."

The letter to the Romans is a Scripture through which the Holy Spirit of our Lord has spoken repeatedly for the evangelization of the world and the upbuilding of the church. In the fourth century a talented philosopher who dabbled in all kinds of speculative and heretical views and who found himself immersed in the morass of immorality heard the words of Paul's letter to the Romans and turned from the way of death to a new life in Christ and leadership in the church. His name was Augustine. In the sixteenth century Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Knox rediscovered and applied the message of the letter to the Romans so that it brought to people relief from guilt and an experience of grace. In the eighteenth century John Wesley listened to the reading of Luther's preface to the Roman letter and his heart was strangely warmed, and the course of history was thus radically changed. What does the Spirit of God have for us at this time and place from the letter to the Romans? The epistle can be summed up in five familiar verses:

"I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, 'The righteous will live by faith.' The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness" (Rom 1:14-18).

Here God reveals to us some tremendous realities. We learn about God's wrath, God's grace and God's mission.

God's Wrath

Today, being considered "judgmental" is like having some loathsome disease. Mutual acceptance and affirmation are warmly commended, but negative criticism is taboo. Some even suggest that passing judgment on sin is hardly a first-rate occupation for a first-rate God. But if our theology is derived from Scripture rather than spun out of sentimentality, then we must reckon with the reality of the wrath of God which "is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."

From Paul we learn that God's holy anger is directed against "the wickedness of men." In this chapter Paul gives us a whole catalog of wickedness: sinful desires, sexual impurity, shameful lusts, unnatural relations, indecent acts, perversion, depraved minds; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice; gossips, slanderers; insolent, arrogant, boastful, senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless and so on (Rom 1:24-32).

Humankind adds to its faults by suppressing God's truth. They disregard and deny what God reveals to them about himself through the created universe. They blind themselves from seeing how the heavens declare the glory of God and how the firmament shows his handiwork. They also suppress the voice of God in their consciences. They do not learn from the judgments of God in the course of history. They may worship gods, but they are described nonetheless as being godless. In their decadence, they do not revere the true and living God as the source of life. And so the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness of men.

This wrath of God is not a vehement, irrational, vindictive, arbitrary, capricious venting of some supernatural spleen. It is the manifestation of the repugnance of a holy God against all who defile, disrupt and destroy the world that he has made. God is holy. God is just.

But isn't it true that God is love? Doesn't Scripture say that he wants us to avert judgment through repentance? We should never forget that the same apostle who said "God is love" also wrote "God is light" (1 Jn 4:8; 1:5). In him is no darkness at all. We cannot have fellowship with him as long as we refuse to confess our moral failures and let him cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Sin must either be pardoned or punished.

God uses several ways to reveal his wrath. Sometimes it is revealed through the state, which exercises justice. Sometimes he reveals his wrath by allowing those who want to sin to keep right on sinning, right to the very end, and then lets them reap their reward. Sometimes he brings shame and guilt and fear into our conscience that we might be driven back to him. The final revelation of his wrath will be when the heavens shall open and the Son of God shall return in power and great glory and sit upon the throne of his majesty, and all mankind shall appear before his judgment seat to receive from him according to the record.

God reveals his wrath against human sinfulness. But we must never speak of the wrath of God without the tears that choked the throat of God and dimmed his eyes: "As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ezek 33:11 KJV). And that lament of the Lord is echoed in the words of Jesus over Jerusalem. We dare not think of the wrath of God as a mere doctrine. It is an awesome reality that ought to have a powerful impact on our prayers for the unconverted.

God's Grace

If this text in Romans reveals God's wrath, it also makes known God's grace. Beneath our surface differences there is one underlying and gruesome reality: we are all affected by ignorance, iniquity and mortality. We may know more than previous generations about computers, satellites, space shuttles and organ transplants. Yet we are ignorant concerning our real duties, ignorant concerning the depth of our depravity, ignorant concerning the nature and the will of the Deity, ignorant concerning the dignity that we might reclaim, ignorant concerning the destiny that yet awaits us. This ignorance is aggravated by the reality of iniquity. We are sinners whose wills are diseased so that we choose what defiles us. We disrupt interpersonal relationships and dishonor God. We are also oppressed with a sense of our mortality. We have extended human existence, but have we enriched its quality? The discoveries of science, in the hands of selfish men and aggressive nations, hold the potential to destroy this planet, but they cannot ensure more abundant life. As George Buttrick has noted, "man is constitutionally ignorant, endemically wicked, irrevocably mortal." That is the bad news.

But the last word is not with sin and wrath. The last word is with grace and salvation. Where we are ignorant, God gives us the light of truth. What is truth? Jesus tells us, "Thy word is truth" (Jn 17:17 RSV). The seemingly impenetrable darkness of ignorance is dispelled as the light of the Word-written in the inspired Scriptures and made flesh in Christ Jesus illumines our lives. We come to know the truth that sets us free as we read the Bible and contemplate the revelation of God in his unique Son. And the Holy Spirit is given to help us understand this truth, and so to overcome our ignorance (Jn 16:1314). But not only does he remove our ignorance, by his grace he also deals with our iniquity.

A few years, ago I had the opportunity to return to the land of my forebears in Sicily where I visited my father's only surviving sister. My father had left fifty-five years before and never returned. And here I was on her doorstep. Now she knew that I was in some kind of religious work. But she had never seen a real, live flesh-and-blood Protestant, let alone an evangelical. And she said, "Isn't it great to have a priest in the family?"

"Well," I said, "Auntie, I'd prefer that you called me a minister."
" All right, when are you going to celebrate mass?"
" Auntie, my main emphasis is preaching the Word of God."

I knew this was going to be difficult and I thought I'd better get it over with and resolve all her doubts. So I whipped out the picture of my wife and three children. She called her husband and said, "Great! In America they even let the priests get married!"

Later on that day, she took me to see some of the scenic and cultural attractions of the western end of the island of Sicily, which has far more to it than merely being the matrix of the Mafia. We went to a medieval cathedral built by the Normans at a place called Monreale. There we saw green and gold and blue and crimson life-size mosaics depicting episodes from the Scriptures.

I asked my aunt, "Tell me, what do you see?"
" Oh, that one I can see pretty easily. That is Adam and Eve."
" What about the next one?"
"Cain and Abel, and the next one is Noah and the ark."

Then she came to one that stumped her.
Noticing her furrowed brow, I said, "All right, just tell me what you see, and I'll try to tell you what it means."

She said, "I see an old man. I see a little boy. I see a bundle of wood. Why is the old man trying to kill that young boy? What's the angel doing there? Why doesn't he try to stop him?"
"What else do you see?"
"A ram ... caught in a thicket."

And so I told her the story of Abraham, whose faith was tested, and of Isaac, who was spared because another was substituted and offered in his place. I said, "Auntie, that's the meaning of Good Friday, That's the meaning of the cross. That's the meaning of the gospel. Isaac was spared and the ram was slain. But you and I were spared because God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for our offenses."

To answer the problem of our ignorance, God gives us the knowledge of his Word which is truth. To answer the problem of our iniquity, God, provides his own Son to be the sacrifice and to bear away the sins of his people. And to our mortality, he gives the corresponding reality of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, who shall at his return take these bodies of our humiliation and refashion them into the likeness of his own glorious resurrection body. And even now, by the indwelling of his Word and Spirit, he helps us to know the power of his resurrection.

These are the great elements of the Christian gospel, according to the Scriptures. The benefits of the gospel are offered to Jews and Gentiles, without distinction or discrimination, since "God our Savior ... wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4). But faith is the condition of experiencing the salvation of which the gospel speaks.

What is faith? In a fascinating book on Bible translation God's Word in Man's Language, Eugene Nida includes many descriptions of faith. The Karrir people of equatorial Africa, for example, think of faith as "hearing and taking into the soul." It is more than merely listening. It demands openness to receive the truth that is heard. The Mossi of west Africa describe faith as "leaning on God." It is an attitude of confidence, a constant dependence, a complete commitment to the Savior. The Loma of Liberia say that to have faith in the gospel means "to lay your hand on the good news," signifying by that act an open confession of identification with the Lord our Savior.

We are declared righteous by a holy God, and stand both acquitted and accepted in his sight, if we have faith in the Christ whom the gospel presents. Saving faith includes knowing Christ, trusting Christ, receiving Christ. It requires relying on him alone for our salvation, and the renunciation of any other ground of acceptance before God. What we cannot merit by ritual or resolve is realized when we put our faith in him alone. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31).

God's Mission

Paul speaks of God's wrath and of his grace, and he also speaks to us of God's mission in the world. Paul says that he is confident. Confident concerning what? His ability to impress people? His ability to manipulate people? His ability to exploit people's religious sensibilities? Not at all. He is confident in the power of the gospel to save. For the veteran missionary who wrote our text, the gospel is no untested theory but the very dynamic of God designed to change lives for the better. Recalling his experience in a Macedonian seaport, Paul describes the practical impact the gospel has on people:

"Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction: ... You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath" (1 Thess 1:5, 9-10).

Paul the evangelist also remembers what the good news achieved in Achaia, among the people of Corinth. He mingles stem warning and grateful wonder when he writes,

"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor 6:9-11).

Paul's confidence in the power of the gospel is also related to his personal experience. Reminiscing, he writes: "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst" (1 Tim 1:15). Have we experienced this saving power of the gospel for ourselves?

Paul is not only confident in the power of the gospel, he is also "eager to preach the gospel." Imagine the audacity of this little man - without a PR firm or a string of attendants, he takes on the capital of a vast pagan empire. Are we just as ready to take on the strongholds of secular humanism today? Too often, instead of challenging Rome, we retreat into our Christian ghettos and subcultures. Too often the love of convenience and the quest for affluence have dampened our zeal to evangelize those "without hope and without God" (Eph 2:12). Too often we have run in fear from the crowded cities which are blighted by crime and filled with people whose ways differ from ours.

When we look at Paul, we see a person who was eager to communicate the gospel. Surely he was concerned that the sick should be healed. Surely he was concerned that the hungry should be fed. He was not against social concern. He did not treat man as a disembodied ghost with a soul to be saved for eternity. But Paul knew the truth of the saying of Jesus, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world of social, political and economic well-being and still lose his own soul?" And so he was eager through preaching, through writing, through visiting, through counseling, to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul was confident and eager, but he was also indebted. "I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish." We have come to take debts for granted. Buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like, has become a way of life. Governments faced with deficits usually borrow more, rather than enhance revenues and reduce expenditures. There was a time when a debt represented not an option but an obligation. Scripture speaks of the debt we owe to those who have legitimate authority in the state and in the church. We have a duty to love one another. Spouses have a conjugal duty of anticipating and meeting one another's emotional and sexual needs (1 Cor 7:3-4).

Paul feels indebted to the unevangelized. He knows that the gospel is for all, without distinction of nationality or culture. Are we conscious of our obligation to share the gospel with this generation, using the means and resources the Lord has put at our disposal? The willingness and faithfulness with which we commit ourselves to this task is a sure index of our conviction of the lostness of the world and the saving power of Christ.

Like Paul we must feel an obligation to reach the lost, an obligation to reach the seventeen thousand people groups who have not heard the gospel, an obligation to reach the almost three billion men and women who have not had the opportunity to choose Christ. And let us hope that one day we can feel this obligation so deeply that like Paul we could wish that we were cursed and cut off from Christ that others might be saved (Rom 9:1-3).

Don Curry, serves in the Sind desert region of Pakistan with the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship., He is a physician with a keen interest in community health and tribal evangelism. With his wife, Nancy, he recently visited a village of animists and told them the story of Jesus. They were intrigued with Christ's teaching about love and forgiveness, deeply moved by his compassionate ministry, stirred at the mention of our Lord's death and resurrection. Someone asked Don, "When did this happen? Ten or fifteen years ago?"

Don replied, "No, it took place almost two thousand years ago." Saddened, the man asked, "What terrible thing have we done, that God should have kept this wonderful story from us for so long?" Shouldn't the question be, "What have we failed to do that so many should still be unreached with the saving gospel of Christ?"

Jesus says, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age" (Jn 20:21; Mt 28:18-20).

[The following was written in 1984] Mariano Di Cangi is Canadian director of the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship and chairman of the BMMF International Council. Professor of pastoral studies at Ontario Theological Seminary, he is a frequent radio and television speaker and the author of Word for All Seasons, Understanding Handel's "Messiah" and Twelve Prophetic Voices.

Faithful in Commitment to the Lost (1984)

God's Word

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