Featured Ministry The Alban Institute builds up congregations and their leaders to be agents of grace and transformation to shape and heal the world through publishing, workshops, online activities, education, consulting, research etc. More Current Articles in Holistic Ministry: • Desmond Tutu Announces Retirement by Al Tizon • Nonviolence in an Age of Terrorism by Al Tizon • To the Foul-Mouthed, I Became Foul-Mouthed in Order to Win Them by Al Tizon • Edinburgh 1910: 100 Years Worth of Changes by Al Tizon

(We may enjoy the widespread acceptance of "holistic ministry" today, but we must not forget the road paved by those who have gone before us, lest the ugly debate that pitted evangelism against social action and vice versa dares to reassert itself. To prevent this, we want to keep the archives of holistic ministry literature open before us and regularly reprint classics in the holistic vision. Let us not forget. – ed) 

(Part III of) Evangelism and the World

by C. Rene Padilla

            The Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. Eschatology has invaded history. God has clearly expressed his plan to place all things under the rule of Christ. The powers of darkness have been defeated. Here and now, in union with Jesus Christ, man has within his reach the blessings of the new era.

            However, the Kingdom of God has not yet arrived in all its fullness. Our salvation is "in hope" (Rom. 8:24). According to God's promise, "we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (II Pet. 3:13). Ours is the time of the patience of God, who does not wish "that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (II Pet. 3:9).

1. Evangelism and Repentance Ethics

            The Gospel is always proclaimed in opposition to an organized lie-the Great Lie that man realizes himself by pretending to be God, in autonomy from God; that his life consists in the things he possesses; that he lives for himself alone and is the owner of his destiny. All history is the history of this Lie and of the destruction it has brought upon man-the history of how man (as C.S. Lewis would aptly express it) has enjoyed the horrible liberty he has demanded and consequently has been enslaved.

            The Gospel involves a call to repentance from this Lie. The relation between the Gospel and repentance is such that preaching the Gospel is equivalent to preaching "repentance and forgiveness of sins" (Lk. 24:47), or to testifying "of repentance to God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). Without this call to repentance there is no Gospel. And repentance is not merely a bad conscience-the "worldly grief" that produces death (II Cor. 7:10)-but a change of attitude, a restructuring of one's scale of values, a reorientation of the whole personality. It is not simply giving up habits condemned by a moralistic ethic, but rather laying down the weapons of rebellion against God, to return to him. It is not simply recognizing a psychological necessity but rather accepting the Cross of Christ as death to the world in order to live before God.

            The call to repentance throws into relief the social dimension of the Gospel. It comes to man enslaved by sin in a specific social situation, not to a "sinner," in the abstract. It is a change of attitude that becomes concrete in history. It is a turning from sin to God, not only in the individual's subjective consciousness, but in the world. This truth is clearly illustrated in John the Baptist's proclamation of the Kingdom (Matt. 3:1-12, Lk. 3:7-14), concerning which I will simply make the following observations: (i) It has a strong eschatological note. The time of fulfillment of God's promises given through his prophets has come. The presence of Jesus Christ among men is the evidence that God is active in history to accomplish his purposes: "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 3:2). (ii) This new reality places men in a position of crisis-they cannot continue to live as if nothing had happened; the Kingdom of God demands a new mentality, a reorientation of all their values, repentance (Matt. 3:2). Repentance has an eschatological significance-it marks the boundary between the old age and the new, between judgment and promise. (iii) The change imposed involves a new lifestyle: "Bear fruits that befit repentance "(Lk. 3:8). Without ethics there is no real repentance. (iv) Repentance ethics is more than generalizations-it has to do with specific acts of self-sacrifice in concrete situations. To each one who becomes convicted by his message, John the Baptist has a fitting word, and in each case his ethical demand touches the point at which the man is enslaved to the powers of the old age and closed to God's action. To the people in general he says, "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." To the tax collectors, "Collect no more than is appointed you." To the soldiers, "Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages (Lk. 3:11-14). The crisis created by the Kingdom cannot be resolved by accepting concepts handed down by tradition ("We are descendants of Abraham"), but rather by obedience to the ethics of the Kingdom.

            Where there is no concrete obedience there is no repentance. And without repentance there is no salvation (Mk. 1:4; Lk. 13L3; Mt. 21:32; Acts 2:38, 3:19, 5:31). Salvation is man's return to God, but it is at the same time also man's return to his neighbor. In the presence of Jesus Christ, Zacchaeus the publican renounces the materialism that has enslaved him and accepts responsibility for his neighbor ("Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold" – Lk. 19:8). This renunciation and this commitment Jesus calls "salvation" ("Today salvation has come to this house" – Lk.19:9). Zacchaeus' response to the Gospel call could not be expressed in more concrete or "worldly" terms. It is not merely a subjective, but a moral experience-an experience that affects his life precisely at that point at which the Great Lie had taken root; an experience that brings him out of himself and turns him toward his neighbor.

            The Gospel message, since it was first proclaimed by Jesus Christ involves a call to repentance (Mt. 4:17). Repentance is much more than a private affair between the individual and God. It is the complete reorientation of life in the world-among men-in response to the work of God in Jesus Christ. When evangelism does not take repentance seriously, it is because it does not take God seriously. The Gospel is not a call to social quietism. Its goal is not take a man out of the world, but to put him into it, no longer as a slave but as a son of God and a member of the body of Christ.

2. Evangelism and "Otherworldliness"

            To "secular Christianity," obsessed with the life of this world, the only salvation possible is one which fits within the limits of this present age. It is essentially an economic, social and political salvation, although sometimes (as in the case of the Latin American "theology of liberation") an attempt is made to extend the concept to include "the making of a new man," author of his own destiny. Eschatology is absorbed by the Utopia and the Christian hope becomes confused with the worldly hope proclaimed by Marxism.

            At the other extreme is the concept of salvation as the future salvation of the soul, in which present life has meaning only as a preparation for the "hereafter." History is assimilated by a futurist eschatology and religion becomes a means of escape from present reality. The result is a total withdrawal from the problems of society in the name of "separation from the world." It is this misunderstanding of the Gospel which has given rise to the Marxist criticism of Christian eschatology as the "opiate of the people."

            That this concept of salvation is a misunderstanding of biblical soteriology should not need to be demonstrated. Unfortunately, it is a concept so deep-rooted in the preaching of so many evangelical churches that we must stop to analyze the question.

            In the first place, for Jesus Christ himself the mission entrusted to him by the Father was not limited to preaching the Gospel. Matthew, for example, summarizes Jesus' earthly ministry in these words, "And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people" (Mt. 4:23; cf. 9:35). Even if evangelism is defined solely in terms of verbal communication-a definition that would leave much to be desired in the light of the psychology of communication-we still must add, on the basis of the text, that evangelism was only one of the elements of Jesus' mission. Together with the kerygma went the diaconia and the didache. This presupposes a concept of salvation that includes the whole man and cannot be reduced to the simple forgiveness of sins and assurance of unending life with God in heaven. A comprehensive mission corresponds to a comprehensive view of salvation. Salvation is wholeness. Salvation is total humanization. Salvation is eternal life-the life of the Kingdom of God-life that begins here and now (and this is the meaning of the present tense of the verb "has eternal life" in the Gospel and the letters of John) and touches all aspects of man's being.

             In the second place, Jesus' work had a social and political dimension. The individualism of "culture Christianity" to which I have referred above sees the Lord with only one eye and consequently sees him as an individualistic Jesus who is concerned with the salvation of individuals. An unprejudiced reading of the Gospels shows us a Jesus who, in the midst of many political alternatives (Pharisaism, Sadduceeism, Zealotism, Essenism) personifies and proclaims a new alternative-the Kingdom of God. To say that Jesus is the Christ is to describe him in political terms, to affirm that he is king. His kingdom is not of this world, not in the sense that it has nothing to do with the world, but in the sense that it does not adapt itself to human politics. It is a kingdom with its own politics, marked by sacrifice. Jesus is a king who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk. 10:45). This service to the point of sacrifice belongs to the very essence of his mission. And this must be the distinctive sign of the community that acknowledges him as king. According to the politics of man, "those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them;" in the politics of the Kingdom of God, he who wants to be great "must be slave of all" (Mk. 10:43-44). Thus Jesus confronts the power structures by denouncing their deep-seated ambition to rule, and by proclaiming another alternative, based on love, service, self-dedication to others. He does not take refuge in "religion" or "spiritual things," as if his kingdom had nothing to do with political and social life, but he demythologizes the politics of man and presents himself as the Servant-King, the creator and model of a community that submits to him as Lord and commits itself to live as he lived. The concrete result of Jesus' sacrifice for the sake of others, whose culmination was reached in the Cross, is this community patterned after the Servant-King: a community in which each member gives according to his means and receives according to his needs, since "it is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 2:45, 4:34-35, 20:35); a community in which racial, cultural, social, and even sexual barriers disappear, since "Christ is all, and in all" (Col. 3:11; Gal. 3:28); a community of reconciliation with God and reconciliation among men (Eph. 2:11-22); and a community, finally, that serves as a base for the resistance against the conditioning by "the present evil age" and makes it possible for Jesus' disciples to live in the world without being of the world.

            In the third place, the new creation in Jesus Christ becomes history in terms of good works. In Paul's words, God has "created [us] in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10). Jesus Christ "gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds" (Tit. 2:14). The New Testament knows nothing of a Gospel that makes a divorce between soteriology and ethics, between communion with God and communion with one's neighbor, between faith and works. The Cross is not only the negation of the validity of every human effort to gain God's favor by works of the law; it is also the demand for a new quality of life characterized by love-the opposite of an individualistic life, centered on personal ambitions, indifferent to the needs of others. The significance of the Cross is both soteriological and ethical. This is so because in choosing the Cross Jesus not only created the indicative of the Gospel ("By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us" – I Jn. 3:16a), but also simultaneously provided the pattern for human life here and now ("And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" – I Jn. 3:16b). Just as the Word became man, so also must love become good works if it is to be intelligible to men. This is what gives meaning to "worldly goods"-they can be converted into instruments through which the life of the new age expresses itself. This is what John means when he says, "If any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth" (I Jn. 3:17). God's love expressed in the Cross must be made visible in the world through the church. The evidence of eternal life is not the simple confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, but "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6). Jesus said, "Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Mt. 7:21).

            In the light of the biblical teaching there is no place for an "otherworldliness" that does not result in the Christian's commitment to his neighbor, rooted in the Gospel. There is no room for "eschatological paralysis" nor for a "social strike." There is no place for statistics on "how many souls die without Christ every minute," if they do not take into account how many of those who die, die victims of hunger. There is no place for evangelism that, as it goes by the man who was assaulted by thieves on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, sees in him only a soul that must be saved and ignores the man. "What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (Jms.  2:14-17).

            Only in the context of a soteriology that takes the world seriously is it possible to speak of the oral proclamation of the Gospel. If men are to call on the name of the Lord, they must believe in him; "and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?" (Rom. 10:14). But the "word of reconciliation" entrusted to the church is the prolongation of the act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Cor. 5:21). It was thus-from within the situation of sinners, in an identification with them which he carried to its final consequences-that God in Christ reconciled the world to himself, once and for all. This was the heart of the Gospel. But it is also the standard for evangelism. If God worked out reconciliation from within the human situation, the only fitting evangelism is that in which the Word becomes flesh in the world and the evangelist becomes "the slave of all" in order to win them to Christ (I Cor. 9:19-23). The first condition for genuine evangelism is the crucifixion of the evangelist. Without it the Gospel becomes empty talk and evangelism becomes proselytism.

            The church is not an otherworldly religious club that organizes forays into the world in order to gain followers through persuasive techniques. It is the sign of the Kingdom of God; it lives and proclaims the Gospel here and now, among men, and waits for the consummation of God's plan to place all things under the rule of Christ. It has been freed from the world, but it is in the world; it has been sent by Christ into the world just as Christ was sent by the Father (Jn. 17:11-18). In other words, it has been given a mission oriented toward the building up of a new humanity in which God's plan for man is accomplished, a mission that can be performed only through sacrifice. Its highest ambition cannot and should not be to achieve the success that leads to triumphalism, but rather faithfulness to the Lord, which leads it to confess, "We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty" (Lk. 17:10). The confession can be made only by those who live by God's grace and desire that all their works result in the glory of the one who died for all, "that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised" (II Cor. 5:15).

(Taken from Let the Earth Hear His Voice: International Congress on World Evangelization, ed. J.D. Douglas [Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975], 127-133)