Shall We Be Mute?

by Jim Brown

haring the Gospel is a privilege and a joy, not a duty. Sharing the Gospel and witnessing for Christ does not stand upon a compulsive "Thou shalt" but rather upon a heart felt "Thank God that I may!" It indeed follows that our primary need, if the Church is to be girded for its missionary task and great commission, is not more information or appeal, not better or more elaborate techniques, but a deeper sense of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Suppose you or I were a biological chemist, and we found a cure for some disease, which has ravaged the human race. In addition, suppose that experiment proved it to be the long looked for and infallible remedy. Could we hide that discovery from others in such need? It is against all the ethics of the kingdom of science to withhold any such discovery that would alleviate the sufferings of humanity.

It is against all the ethics of the Kingdom of God to hold up the discovery of a Redeemer! Then why is it that this is precisely what we do so often? Can it be that we have not truly understood what the incomparable wealth the Gospel of Christ holds? Can it be that we have been thinking of Christianity as an ideology to accept rather than as a Person to adore?

Jesus Himself spoke of the good news of the Kingdom as a priceless treasure. He told of a poor laborer toiling in the fields, whose plough suddenly struck buried treasure. Picture the man careening wildly down the road, bursting into his house, babbling incoherently till all wondered if he was mad and finally getting out his news - "We are rich beyond the dreams that anyone can conceive of!" This, said Jesus, is what it means to find the Kingdom. Moreover, this is the realization which some of us followers of Christ are desperately needing to recapture.

"It is always upon human weakness and humiliation, not human strength and confidence, that God chooses to build His Kingdom."

It is a tragedy that the Christian way is in many minds identified merely with pious ethical behavior and a vague theist belief submerged with aesthetic emotionalism and a mild glow of humanitarian benevolence. We always feel better about out evangelism around Christmas because we give to the lost and poor of this world. This, beloved, is not how the first believers in the book of Acts awakened the world like a thousand trumpets. Men knew back then what to be a Christian really was - the entrance into history of a force of immeasurable range, the lifting of human existence to a new supernatural dimension, the imparting to men the very life of God, even as the vine injects its very life into the branch.

No wonder the New Testament throbs with excitement from beginning to end. No wonder Paul speaks vociferously about "unsearchable riches" and "unspeakable gifts". The glorious news of God's great plan of redemption made Paul a missionary who spread the Good News tirelessly across the earth. The great frowning mountain ranges of Asia and the wide estranging seas were no barrier to this man, for beyond them were men dying without Christ! And still after nineteen hundred years, all the springs of witnessing and bringing others to the knowledge of our Blessed Savior along with power and passion are concentrated in these three words: "Jesus, priceless treasure!"

The Earthen Vessels

Moreover, for our reinforcement let us also reflect, as Paul himself reminds us, that it is God's way to entrust the treasure to earthen vessels. We have seen how self-trust can inhibit personal evangelism and cripple the Church's mission to "Go out and bring the lost in and disciple them." Who are we that we should be charged with the mission to convert the world? No doubt, humanly speaking, it is frightfully inappropriate and absurd that a priceless jewel should be enclosed in a box of clay, a lovely picture in a crude frame, a royal diadem in a cracked and dingy case in a dusty museum. Yet, this is precisely the strategy of God. And there is a reason for the shattering discrepancy: the purpose, as Paul declared, is that the world should know that Christianity - all the triumphs of the faith and the onward march of the mission of the Church - is not to be explained by anything in man or of man. Any virtue or prowess or ability must therefore be supernatural and divine. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the exellency of the power is of God and not of us."

This is the answer to the melancholy moods which often overcome us as we look at the Church with its crippling divisions, its bourgeois complacency and its pathetic failures. It would seem fair to ask ourselves a very serious question: "Is this indeed the instrument of outreach, the very Hand of Christ to a dying world? Is this collection of seeming "nobodies" to go out among the lost of our generation as the arm of Christ's strength, the tongue of Christ's Spirit, the visible token of Christ's presence?

It is the answer also to the despairing moods in which we turn upon ourselves and ask, "Am I the ambassador of this royal Jesus? Am I to speak the Christian testimony to a lost and hopeless world? God pity me- poor earthen vessel - utterly unworthy!"

Let us settle it. This is indeed the answer - that it is always upon human weakness and humiliation, not human strength and confidence, that God chooses to build His Kingdom. And, furthermore, that He CAN USE US, not in spite of our helplessness and disqualifying infirmities, BUT PRECICELY BECAUSE OF THEM! It is a thrilling discovery to make, my brothers and sisters, and it can revolutionize our witnessing and missionary outlook completely. Clearly, if this fact is true, the Church that believes it will be irresistible anywhere and the individual Christian will be undefeatable. Nothing can defeat a body of believers or an individual that takes, not its strength, but its weakness, and accepts that to be God's weapon! It was the way of William Carey and Francis Xavier and Paul the Apostle.

Let us pray: "Lord, I come, not with my strength, talents and ability, but in my weakness. I dedicate it to You for Your glory. I believe that your strength will now be made perfect in me. I accept your principle that when I am weak, then am I strong."