Witnesses of the Gospel

Engaging in Relationships by Loving People like Jesus Loved People

In Scot McKnight’s book The King Jesus Gospel, he tells how John Piper once raised the question of whether Jesus preached the gospel.¹ Such a question seems absurd to me as there would not be any good news without the gospel that Jesus lived and proclaimed, which we can read about in all four canonical Gospels. A better question has to do with what we, as disciples, do with the gospel that Jesus lived and proclaimed today.

Such a question pertains to us because after the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to his disciples, he said, according to Luke 24:46-48:

“This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.²

Although these words of Jesus were not spoken to us, they were spoken for us. So we are faced with the question of what it means to be witnesses of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

To address this question a little more, I want to begin by saying that living as witnesses of Jesus is not becoming like the Essenes, Zealots, Sadducees, or Pharisees.

• The Essenes were a Jewish sect that thought the only way God would restore his kingdom was to withdraw from society in order to live a purified expression of true Israel. Yet Jesus remained among society, and any suggestion that Christians withdraw from society seems excluded.

• The Zealots were a group of Jewish people who believed that God’s kingdom would be restored by waging war and overthrowing the Gentile rulers. Yet Jesus Jesus chose the cross rather than the sword, and so any suggestion of using violence or other coercive forms of power as a means seems excluded.

• The Sadducees were a prominent group of Jews, having a privileged status with the Gentile rulers, and were, therefore, very satisfied with the status quo. Yet, by proclaiming the coming of God’s reign, Jesus did not align himself with the Sadducees, and so acceptance of the status quo in society today is not an option.

• The Pharisees were another Jewish sect who thought God would finally restore his kingdom when Israel returned to a strict observance of the Torah. So the Pharisees sought to impose their understanding of the Torah as law on the Jewish people. Yet, Jesus criticized the Pharisees and refused to impose his own teaching as a law, so living as a witness of the gospel cannot mean imposing the Christian faith as a law either in the form of religious legalism or as Christian nationalism.

If imitating the Essenes, Zealots, Sadducees, and Pharisees are excluded from what it means to live as a witness, then what is a witness of the gospel?

The short answer is that living as a witness means following Jesus. Of course, we follow Jesus by learning to embody his character and mission. That means our witness must be a demonstration of what the kingdom of God is like, and the way we do that is by learning to love people like Jesus. Yet, just saying that we are learning to love people like Jesus is way too abstract, so let me offer some more reflection.

Loving people like Jesus presumes a relationship because we can’t love people unless we’re building a relationship with people. Relationships matter because they open space for people to see what the kingdom of God is really about and begin letting go (repentance) of their idols as they enter into the promise of God’s salvation (forgiveness of sins). In other words, relationships open space for change.

I recently read an essay by John Blake called What a Black man discovered when he met the White mother he never knew. Blake tells how he was abandoned by his mother because he was Black, and her racist White family didn’t want a Black child around. Then at seventeen years old, he asked his dad if he could meet his mother. Eventually, Blake met his mother, but that also meant they had a lot of difficult things to work out in order to build a true mother-and-son relationship. What Blake discovered that he thinks people miss in the conversations about racism is this: “Facts don’t change people; relationships do.”³

John Blake offers us some wise advice that pertains to the way we engage in relationships with non-believers. Arguments, debates, etc… don’t change people, but relationships do. While there are likely a few exceptions, we aren’t going argue the so-called “nones and dones” to faith and debates about the latest trending social-political issue doesn’t seem to bear any good fruit for the kingdom of God. This is why we must work to build relationships. The way to build relationships with people is the way Jesus went about building relationships, which happens by loving people—meeting people where they are and loving them as they are. We can meet people where they are and love them as they are without agreeing on everything or liking every decision they make.

Loving people like Jesus loved people means that we build relationships based on self-sacrificial service, believing that God is already at work. So we can give up the perceived need to prove anything or come out as winners. Instead, we’re free just to love people and let our love be the end goal (telos) itself rather than have ulterior motives or resort to forms of coercion and manipulation. In other words, we are not loving people just so that we can try getting them to visit our church gathering or pressure them with a craftily worded sales pitch. Rather, we engage in such a loving relationship by listening to people and learning from them without judgment or condemnation.

Asking questions with a posture of listening and learning allows God to open space for deeper “gospel” conversations. As such space opens, we must also trust God with the results, just like Jesus did. Do we have faith that God will work through our willingness to engage in relationships based on meeting people where they are and loving them as they are? I hope so because living as witnesses of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ is impossible without faith.

At the end of the day, not everyone we love will desire to enter into God’s kingdom and experience the promise of God’s salvation. However, some people will want to participate in this gospel, and that will happen because they have encountered the love of God in the relationships they have with us.

1. Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011, 25.

2. Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

3. John Blake, What a Black man discovered when he met the White mother he never knew, CNN, April 30, 2023, available at: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/30/us/john-blake-more-than-i-imagined-cec/index.html (last accessed Thursday, May 11, 2023).