And while we who are Christians profess our immortality to be vested Elsewhere, we are certainly not exempt from this desire to be remembered in this age. And while our ambitions might be sanctified to some degree when compared to those of the world, the underlying desire is the same—to be remembered on this earth after we have passed from it.

Therefore, it is not surprising that many of us find ourselves discontent when we find that our lives on this earth are anything but extraordinary. And it is for this reason that when titles such as “The Purpose Driven Life” find their way into bookstores, they fly off the shelf in the millions. We desire purpose, we desire a high calling, and, most of all, we desire the path of remembrance.

Yet in spite of this, we must consider the possibility that we will not be remembered by this world. Even more, we must consider that we might not be called to be remembered by this world. For what if some of us who call ourselves Christians are called to fulfill what the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, namely to live “a quiet and peaceful life, godly and dignified in every way” (1Tim. 2:2)? What if our purpose is to submit to one another, to our governments, and to God in all things so as to make ourselves of little consequence to the worldly system around us? For as the bumper sticker concerning women is true, namely, “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” so it is true of all us, namely, “Well-Behaved People Seldom Make History.” For history loves to remember revolutionists.

This is not to say that the call to discipleship is not an extraordinary call, nor is to say that following Christ is not a revolutionary call, but it is to say that the call to discipleship, as utterly revolutionary as it may be when compared to the world, may not be one that lands our name in the annals of this world. In fact, when we think of it, it is quite revolutionary to desire a life that is quiet and peaceful and desires godliness over remembrance. For even in Christianity we find that we are always on mission or desirous to be on mission about something, whether it be the Great Commission, increasing our church sizes, or conservative politics, so that we scarcely have the time or desire to be quiet and peaceful. Godliness and holiness takes the back seat to greater things, and loving the church—our brothers and sisters in Christ—takes the back seat to that which is bigger, namely the unconverted world and its system.

And this is not to say that these grandiose aspirations are not important or that they have no place in Christian thought, but what if, perhaps, our focus is backwards? What if those grandiose things which we esteem the most should be secondary and a fruit of that which is primary, namely that which is quiet and peaceful? What if those things which are grandiose are contingent upon that which is in our estimations not, and what if our neglect of the lesser, “easier,” and less memorable things is inhibiting the fulfillment of the greater things?

Take for example the Great Commission from Matthew 28. It is a grandiose commission calling for the church to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded us. What we must ask ourselves concerning this commission given by our Lord is is it a commission that stands alone or is it one that is predicated by a certain manner of living? Granting what Christ had taught in the previous twenty-seven chapters and the other Gospels, we see that a certain manner of living must exist prior to the fulfillment of this commission. We must love one another (i.e. the church) as Christ has loved us (cf. Jn. 14:34), we must love God with all our being (cf. Mt. 22:37), we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (cf. Mt. 22:21), we must take up our crosses daily (cf. Lk. 9:23), we must sell our possessions and give to the poor (cf. Mt. 19:21), we must love the least of Christ’s brothers (cf. Mt. 25:40), etc. For how are we going to fulfill the Great Commission that Christ gave to his church, namely to make disciples who observe his commandments if we are not those who are his disciples by following his commandments?

The common problem that exists is that there is a misunderstanding as the what the Great Commission really is. Christ says, “Make disciples who observe my commandments,” and we read, “I am sending you on a urgent rescue mission to save the lost.” For this reason, we often overlook the command for obedience and replace it with a command to preach the Gospel as quickly as possible to minimize the number of souls going to hell. Therefore, we make foreign missions our chief goal, and everything that we do as the church revolves around preaching the Gospel in some form or another, whether rightly or wrongly. Ironically, by doing thus, we thwart the design of the Great Commission altogether. For if we first looked to the church and demanded her obedience to Christ’s commands, then we would first love our brothers and sisters as Christ loved us. By doing so, by loving our brothers and sisters in Christ whether at home or abroad, we would declare to the world we are Christ’s, for he said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn. 13:35). And by doing this, we would pave the way for the Gospel and the Great Commission, for by our love for the church in obedience to Christ’s command, God will draw his people to himself.

This is not to say that there is no place for preaching the Gospel where there is no church, but it is to say that it should flow from our love for Christ’s church. And to bring this back to the original subject, this love that flows from our obedience to Christ may not be the path for remembrance or glory. Our part in obeying Christ might be simply (“simply” meaning “humanly impossible”) to live a quiet, godly life, submitting to one another in all things, and loving the church as best we can in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We may never be granted the opportunity to be at the forefront of the “mission field,” and we may only be granted the small sphere to which we are presently assigned, loving our brothers and our neighbors as best we can, being salt in that place that lacks salt. Whether we are called to remain where we are or are commissioned to “grander” things, we should be content in eating and drinking to the glory of God (cf. 1Cor. 10:31).

And thus, to jump to the point, you will find efforts in the Southern Baptist Convention to unite with one another within the denomination over issues such as Calvinist / Arminian understandings of the Gospel for the sake of what is being called the Great Commission Resurgence whose chief end is to get the Gospel out to the Nations. The problem with such an endeavor is that despite pious sounding mantras to “Just give the world the name of Jesus,” it neglects the very Gospel that is to be delivered to the Nations. Its practice would be tantamount to rounding up medicine and sending it to a country that is perishing from smallpox, when it is not merely medicine that the country needs, it is the particular medicine of a smallpox inoculation. Sending aspirin would not do, and neither would a measles vaccine, but they need the pure, unadulterated cure of a smallpox vaccine. Likewise, when we speak of a Great Commission Resurgence, we do not merely need to send to them the name of Jesus (for the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as well-equipped to do that), but we need to send to them the pure, unadulterated Gospel that was delivered to the prophets and apostles.

And so it will be asked, “What has all this to do with Calvinism and Arminianism? Do they not preach the same Gospel?” My answer is a resounding, “No!” for the Gospel is not something that can be merely assigned to a single phrase, but it is the whole corpus of the doctrines of what Christ has done for his people. And as a friend so rightly put it, “Doctrine is not something that can be neatly relegated into tiers, but its ramifications can be felt in all spheres of Faith.” In other words, doctrine directly affects and influences practice, and since the call of the Great Commission is not, “Go and make believers,” but it is, “Go and make disciples,” correct doctrine is not something that is merely an added bonus, but it is essential to the Great Commission.

Therefore, since proper doctrine is essential to discipleship, and discipleship is essential to the Great Commission, and we claim that our goal is to fulfill the Great Commission, the Calvinist / Arminian discussion cannot be something that is cast by the wayside. For the two understandings of the Gospel do not differ merely in semantics, but they differ in essence and substance. And since they differ so greatly, one or both of them is a wrong understanding of the Gospel. And while I could directly go into a discussion on why Calvinism is the Gospel and is called Calvinism by haters of the Gospel and why Arminianism is a false gospel, I shall instead address it indirectly by addressing the destructiveness of the Arminian heresy.

Arminianism Despises and Destroys the Word of God and the Gospel Given by our Lord Contained Therein
Arminianism at its core is a system of doctrines that is so enamored with the free ability of men to seek after God so that its adherents can claim that they are able by their own free ability to save themselves from destruction by accepting Jesus Christ. Its foundational doctrine is the free will of man, and it is a doctrine that is assumed by human reason before it ever encounters the Word of God. It says to itself, “In my experience, I know that I make free decisions every day, therefore my will must be free.” And thus it is through this sieve that they strain the Word of God, accepting that which seems to accord with their understanding of the will of man and explaining away and rejecting that which does not.

The problem with this assumption of man’s will is that the Scriptures tell a different story. They declare, “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God” (Rm. 3:10, 11). And, “So then, [salvation] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy” (Rm. 9:16). And our Lord himself declares, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn. 6:43, 44). And he also declares to Nicodemus concerning those who are shall enter the Kingdom of God:

Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8).

The problem with Arminian adherents is that they have no answer to these clear declarations of Holy Scripture. They, instead of expositing what these verses mean according to their contrived system of doctrine, explain them away by proof-texting. They will say, “Look at John 3:16, it says, ‘Whosoever believes in him will not perish,’ and thus it intimates that men have the ability to believe or not believe in Jesus.” The problem is that this is mere assumption of the text not the fact of the text. The simple fact of the text is that whosoever believes in Christ will not perish. It says nothing of men’s ability to believe in Christ in their natural state or that all men will be given the opportunity to believe, but it simply says that those who do believe will not perish.

Indeed we see elsewhere that this is consistent with the declaration of Romans 3, namely that “No one understands, no one seeks for God,” for it is God who gives men the ability to believe (cf. Eph. 2:8; Rm. 3:22). Men in their natural state cannot believe on Christ and live, for men in their natural state are blind to the Gospel (2Cor. 4:4). Therefore, a supernatural impartation of what the apostle Paul calls, “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Cor. 4:6) must be granted to men before they can believe on Christ and be saved. God must call out, as he did at the Creation, “Let light shine out of darkness,” before any man can see Christ and live.

And we see this clearly in the life of Christ where he dwelt among the Israelites and performed many great and miraculous deeds, yet they still rejected and crucified him. The apostle John is so bold as to write:

When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

….“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
….….and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

….“He has blinded their eyes
……..and hardened their heart,
….lest they see with their eyes,
……..and understand with their heart, and turn,
……..and I would heal them” (Jn. 12:36-10)

And this disbelief and hardening of the Israelites by God is contrasted with the belief of the Gentiles (cf. Rm. 9:30-33). Luke writes:

For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,

…. “I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
……..that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed (Acts 13:47, 48).

And so, these things are not obscure teachings that are debatable issues, but they clear, undeniable truths. Arminians simply do not like these teachings by our Lord, the prophets, and the apostles, and they instead spit on them. They say, “I will never believe in a God like that. A God like that is unjust.” All the while, the apostle Paul declares, “Is there injustice on Gods part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion’” (Rm. 9:14, 15). For God alone is the Dispenser of mercy, and man has only ever merited destruction for himself, therefore God can give his mercy to whomever he wills; he owes no man nothing.

And yet they cry out, “What of, ‘The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, now wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance’ (2Pet. 3:9), and, ‘This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1Tim. 2:3, 4)?” In these texts, these have only shown their disposition to proof-texting without expositing what these verses mean in their context so that they might cling to the filthy rags of their unrighteous doctrines. I have dealt with these texts thoroughly elsewhere (2Pet. 3:9, 1Tim. 2:4, see also Jn. 3:16), and it would add little to address them here.

Therefore, when it comes to laboring alongside an Arminian in the Great Commission, I refuse to do it, for no Arminian can stay faithful to the Scriptures upon which the Great Commission is built. They must distort them, they must twist them, they must spit in their venomous philosophies so as to rip and mangle that which the very Spirit of God has breathed forth. And for what? So that they might have their free will. Such a man does not love God and God’s Salvation, but he loves himself and his personal claim to righteousness.

Next: Why I Refuse to Labor beside an Arminian in the Great Commission, 2. Ramifications of a Distorted Gospel

For Southern Baptists, the final words of Christ and its implications have been the words that the denomination has trumpeted for decades: “Go and make disciples”; “Go and preach to a lost world”; “Bring the Word of salvation to the Nations.” All of which are true and good words, but do the lives of those who preach those words line up with what they claim is their heart’s desire?

First, what must be made clear is not that there are none who are Southern Baptists who live lives that demonstrate that the Nations are their heart’s desire, for there has always been a faithful remnant, but the great majority of those who preach thus as Southern Baptists contradict their words by the way in which they live their lives. These Southern Baptists are the modern-day Pharisees, who recognize the goodness and truthfulness of God’s Word with their minds, but their hearts are far from God, and they preach for the approval of men.

“These are strong words,” one will object, and they are strong words. However, the fact that the Great Commission is preached over and over again and is contradicted by the lives of those who preach it is a stronger word to the world. For if the Great Commission were in fact the greatest concern of Southern Baptists, our lives would look drastically different than they do.

Take for example the pastor of the narrative, whose capital building campaign has been fulfilled, and a new building has been constructed for his church. What is the case in his example, though fictitious, is very true of pastors throughout the country, namely that his church could have, with little inconvenience, survived and even thrived in its old building, but in the name of convenience, in making a name for himself, etc. the pastor has gone to great pains to have a new building constructed to house “worship” services on Sunday. And though he might preach the Great Commission in his new building, the building itself preaches that the Great Commission is not the church’s greatest concern, for exponentially more money went into constructing the building than went to reaching the Nations with the Gospel. Add to that fact that the Scriptures never instruct churches to build larger buildings (or to build buildings at all–for the people, not the building, are the temple of the Holy Spirit), the pastor’s capital campaign, which he poured his life and soul into, is a hypocritical and God-dishonoring endeavor.

Beside the testimony of the building, the pastor contradicts his preaching by the luxurious life that he lives. He drives a new, expensive vehicle and lives in a home that would make the middle-class in America envious. The majority of his salary from the church goes to paying for his cars and house, while his tithe (the only part that he believes is God’s) goes directly to the church’s building campaign. Instead of living a life that validates that the fulfillment of the Great Commission is his heart’s desire (i.e. a life of sacrifice that would manifest itself in a much cheaper car and smaller and meager home so that a majority of his income could go to the Nations), he lives a life that demonstrates that when it comes to his money, the Nations are not on his radar.

As for the Southern Baptist seminary that lies just miles away from the pastor’s home and church, they are the producers of such men as our pastor in the narrative. For they teach future pastors of the importance of the Great Commission, yet they construct multi-million dollar buildings that act more of a demonstration of American wealth than they do of a love for the Gospel. For if the seminary’s heart was truly for the Nations, their buildings would be bare-bones buildings that act merely as weather-proof classrooms (as are seminaries in other countries), yet they are buildings that are vain and decadent through and through. For they house great monuments as the exorbitant globe in the narrative, fine décor and upholstery, and the latest technological innovations–all of which are unnecessary and rob funds from that which they preach is preeminent in their hearts. Yes, the Great Commission may be written in rich, gold letters upon the building’s inner walls, but the Great Commission never leaves that building, for the seminary’s money was exhausted on that building.

Countless other examples could be given regarding the hypocrisy of American Christians and particularly of the Southern Baptist Convention in general, but those examples do nothing more than expose more of that which has already been evinced. What we need is not more Great Commission conferences or more signatures on some Great Commission Resurgence pledge, but we need complete overhaul from the top down. It must begin in the pastors and in the seminaries, and it must be manifested in their lives, in their buildings, and upon their campuses. For if the Great Commission is preached as preeminent, it should never, never be the case that missionaries cannot be sent out to the Nations for lack of funds, while we somehow still have enough funds to erect our golden calves here in America. It is hypocrisy and wickedness, and God and the world are not fooled by it.

His jubilation is interrupted as his eyes are cast down at the passenger seat of his Lincoln Navigator at a report from the International Mission Board that he has decided to share with his church that morning. He first heard the terrible report at a meeting that was held in the newly constructed foreign missions building at the Southern Baptist seminary that lies just few miles from his home. As he looked at the report, a plethora of images rushed through his mind as he recalled the announcement by the representative of the Board that no new missionaries would be sent out because of the lack of American giving. He recalls the huge, golden globe surrounded by fine mahogany that that acts as the centerpiece of the great building as a reminder of the world that has yet to hear Christ. He thinks upon the Great Commission passage from the Gospel of Matthew that is upon the wall across from the globe, that in gold-fashioned letters proclaims the heart of Southern Baptists to all who come in. And then he thinks upon the great number of flat-screen televisions that fill the whole of the building that incessantly flash the names of people groups in the world that have yet to hear the Gospel.

As he bears these images in his mind, he becomes enraged at those members in his church who he knows have not been faithful in giving their tithe. “It is because of them,” his heart murmurs as he pulls into his assigned parking spot outside of his office, “that the Board has had to stop sending out missionaries.” In a moment of holy rage, he jumps down from his Navigator and slams its door so hard that the chrome plate that frames the door handle loosens and falls to the ground. “American vehicles…” he murmurs under his breath, as he picks the plate off the ground and places it in his brief case alongside the report from the Board.

As he makes his way up to the building that houses his office–whose path had been recently elongated in the name of landscaping–he thoughtfully cycles through his keys looking for the one that will open the door to his office. As he reaches the door, he pauses for a moment and thinks about the task at hand, and wonders what words he can use to quicken the hard hearts of his congregation to be faithful and generous in their giving. He breathes a deep sigh and opens the door to the beeping of security. He pounds in the code to disarm the office’s security system, and he makes his way down the hallway to his office which overlooks the pond beside it. He throws his briefcase down upon his large, oak desk and sits down in the lush, leather chair that unmistakably bears the mold of his bottom.

The pastor loosens his tie, pulls up the chair to his desk, and places his elbows upon it. He looks down at his diamond-framed, gold watch one last time, folds his hands, and prays, “Here I am Lord, send me.”

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Mt. 28:19, 20).

Now the desire to fulfill the final command given by our Lord to his apostles is a great one indeed, and being that it was the final instructions given by Christ, the Great Commission should have a profound impact on how we operate as a Church. And I do not make the case of some, who argue that this command was issued to the disciples alone, but that it is effective till “the end of the age,” when Christ returns as our Champion, and all things are made new.

However, I believe that a great misunderstanding has occurred with regards to the final command of our Lord, expressly in the latter part where he declares, “Make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The apostle Paul expresses Christ’s meaning this way in his letter to the Romans, “Through [Jesus Christ] we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rm. 1:5). The key phrase is, “the obedience of faith,” which reiterates our Lord’s desire in the Great Commission that our discipleship should revolve around teaching our disciples to observe all that the Lord has commanded us. In other words, we are called as those who spread the Gospel to preach the whole Gospel, not merely a sales pitch that offers Jesus Christ as an eschatological Savior, but one that makes him our present Savior, who frees us from our slavery to sin now and our consequent worldliness and makes us obedient to the commands that he has given to us.

However, I sincerely believe that our present goal (particularly in the Southern Baptist Convention) is not that of our Lord’s, for we have neglected the disobedience which we find in the American church and think ourselves capable of preaching the Gospel which we have not ourselves obeyed to a world that is unevangelized. We presume that we have our act together with regards to all things save one, viz. the Great Commission, but in reality we have yet to see the Great Commission fulfilled on our soil.

Yes, there is the guise of Christianity in our churches and the verbal name of Jesus Christ is known here, however we have filled our churches with people who are more concerned about living life to its fullest in this age and pursuing the American Dream than they are about pursuing by faith holiness and righteousness for the sake of Christ. We preach Sunday after Sunday on making Jesus our personal Savior by letting him into our hearts (language that cannot be found in the Scriptures), but we do not teach them repentance and to observe all that Christ has commanded. Instead our pews are filled with those who do not love God with all their hearts, those who do not love each other as themselves, and those who do not love the glory of God and wish to see his Name made great in their lives and throughout the world. Our churches are rather filled with those who think Christianity is “family-friendliness,” that the church exists to make our marriages and children “good,” and that the Gospel is something that only saves us from future damnation and that our present lives do not matter in the grand scheme of eternity. We have lost the Gospel in America, and it is therefore not surprising to find Korean Christians sending missionaries to our shores and to hear of Chinese Christians praying for America’s economic collapse for the sake of their American brothers and sisters.

As many have rightly determined in the Southern Baptist Convention, there does need to be a Great Commission Resurgence, but the Great Commission must be fulfilled in us before we can even think about carrying it to other nations. If God were gracious and were to raise up a number of prophets and teachers who would cleanse the American church of its ungodliness and worldliness, we would find a church that lives much more like the Macedonians than like the Corinthians, and, as the Macedonians, would gladly give up worldly pleasures and riches for the sake of the Kingdom rather than lavishing its wealth on itself. Therefore, a Great Commission resurgence that teaches obedience, sacrifice, and suffering and that delights in Eternity rather than in this world must take place in the American church before the American church can effectively preach the Gospel which it does not know to the nations. Until our present, unholy state is remedied, we will forever sit on the sidelines while the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is heralded by others.

However, contrary to the popular belief that those who hold to a more Reformed view of theology are less apt and motivated to preach the Gospel and to reach the Nations than those who are not, I believe that the opposite is true, namely that those who are truly Reformed in their theology are better equipped both doctrinally and historically to be about the work of the Great Commission. Therefore, I hope that this post will not only adequately answer the question, “Why do Calvinists do missions?” but will also demonstrate that those who are genuinely Calvinists cannot help but “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among the Nations” (Rom. 1:5).

The End Determines the Means and Motivation
A question that is seldom asked is “Why do we as Christians, regardless of doctrinal persuasion, evangelize and do missions?” In other words, “What is our chief goal in doing missions?” To such a question, the overwhelming response, I believe, would resemble something like this: “We evangelize and do missions so that people might hear the Gospel and be saved.” This is indeed a noble endeavor–to preach the Gospel so that souls might be saved–but is this our chief goal? I believe that this is for many their chief goal, for it is from this goal that the question arises, “Why, if you believe in the sovereignty of God over the salvation of souls, do you preach the Gospel?” If one’s belief is that the chief end of evangelism is to win souls to Christ, then that question is the natural one that one would ask of those who believe in God’s fore-ordinances.

However, I am convinced that our chief goal in and our driving force behind the Great Commission should not be the salvation of souls but it should be the proclamation of the name of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Yes, I do believe that we are called like the apostles to be fishers of men and harvesters of the ripe fields, but I believe that salvation of men is the result of our endeavor not the endeavor itself.

Romans 1:5, in its brevity, packs in several profound declarations, but I only wish to look at one those. In it, the apostle writes, “Through [Jesus Christ] we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for his name’s sake among all the Nations.” In this verse, Paul declares that the reason of his journeys, the very core of his work is the name of Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul did his evangelism and his missionary work just as he did his eating and drinking, viz. to the glory of God (cf. 1Cor. 10:31). And lest I be accused of building a theology off a single passage, the apostle writes elsewhere:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ (2Cor. 2:14-17).

In this text (one of my favorites, by the way), the apostle likens the spreading of the Gospel around the world to a victory march. He declares here that our business in our labors is to spread the fragrance of the victorious Christ around the globe, not to save souls. Notice the language that he uses concerning men: “To one [Christ is] a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” In other words, Paul intimates that the chief end of his labors was not to save the souls of men, but it was to spread the aroma of Christ. This is not to say that Paul was ignorant or apathetic to the effects of the Gospel, but it is to say that he knew his role in the salvation of souls. He said it elsewhere in these words: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1Cor. 3:6). Paul understood it is God who saves men, not Paul, and he therefore preached the Gospel to the glory of Christ recognizing that to some it would be a fragrance from life to life, and to others it would be a fragrance from death to death.

The Consequences of the Wrong End
In the same passage where I demonstrated the end of Paul’s apostolic work was the glory of Christ, he writes this sentence: “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.” A profound problem arises from our evangelism and our missions when the salvation of souls is at its center and not the glory of God and his sovereignty, namely, we become peddlers of the Word of God. For this reason, the salvation of God is presently warped and twisted from its orthodox view–the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit who brings about faith through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to a sales pitch and a prayer. This wrong end manifests and has manifested itself in thousands of different ways throughout the Church’s history. For example, today, we print thousands of different “Gospel” tracts every year that work in the same way that a travel brochure does–it lures someone in and makes the sale. On the academic side, we find those who become really smart by studying philosophy so that they argue with atheists and persuade them that they are wrong, and then they brag about how they can give a Gospel presentation in under three minutes as supplement to their “evangelism.”

What have we become? We are not prophets and preachers of the Gospel of God promised beforehand in the Scriptures, we are salesmen and debaters who think little of God’s part in salvation and much of our part. We, rather than boldly proclaiming repentance and belief in Jesus Christ, slither and snake people into coming to our churches and praying some concocted prayer. We lure them with our music, our feel-happy preaching, and our open doors, all for the sake of saving their souls when in actuality we a killing them. Our churches are malnourished and dying from all the fluff that has been preached for decades for the sake of bragging about sales numbers, so much so that the church is now filled with people who think that they are saved because they bought the sales pitch and said the magic words. And people wonder why the American church looks no different from the rest of the world!

Paul continues this same theme a couple of chapters later is his letter to the Corinthians, and I think it is fitting passage to conclude with:

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2Cor. 4:1-6).

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