Our Debt to Share the Gospel
At Eastridge, we’ve recently re-launched the Who’s Your One initiative, where we challenge people to pray for (at least) one person to pray about sharing the gospel with. After just a couple of weeks, we’re starting to see people come to faith in Jesus.
One of the toughest things for anyone who wants to share the gospel is overcoming a natural nervousness about having a super-serious conversation about eternity with someone we know and love. That anxiety can lead us to find ways to avoid sharing the Gospel.
I believe that, as Christians, deep down we all want to share the Gospel, but we often make excuses. Time, nervousness, and fear are just a handful of the many excuses we make for not sharing — or hesitating to share — the good news of Jesus. And I’m not calling people out, because I’ve made those exact same excuses myself.
We know that Jesus commands us to share the Gospel, and we know that it’s our calling from Him. But I recently read something that opened my eyes a little more to why we should share the life-changing truth of Jesus.
In Romans 1, Paul tells the church:
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
Romans 1:14-15 (ESV)
The word obligation kind of hints at those ideas of calling and command, doesn’t it? There’s more. In his wonderful commentary on Romans, Tim Keller tells us this:
“Obligated” can also be rendered “indebted.” Yet Paul has never met the Roman church, far less the greater population of Rome. So in what sense is he in debt to them? It is illustrative to think about how I can be in debt to you. First, you may have lent me $100—and I am in debt to you until I pay it back. But second, someone else may have given me $100 to pass on to you—and I am in debt to you until I hand it on. It is in this second sense that Paul is “obligated” to everyone, everywhere. God has shared the gospel with him. But God has also commissioned him to declare it to others. So Paul owes people the gospel.
Keller, T. (2014). Romans 1–7 for You. (C. Laferton, Ed.) (p. 17). The Good Book Company.
That’s a fascinating way of looking at it. I owe it to those who don’t know Jesus to share the Gospel with them much like I would owe it to you to give you the $100 that somebody asked me to pass on to you.
Thinking about the command to share the Gospel with others as a debt can change the way we approach our “ones.” There’s an urgency to owing something to somebody, isn’t there? If we consider the command and calling to share eternal good news with somebody as a debt, it just might lead us to share more passionately.