Biblically Speaking

Introducing People To Themselves
 
By Joe Graber
 
As Christians we sometimes want to believe that when we speak the word of God it always leads to a softening of the heart and a germ of love towards Christ is always planted, but scripture says that the Word of God does not return void (Isaiah 55:11).  The scripture continues and says that it accomplishes that thing God pleases and what it is sent to do.  The scripture doesn't say that it drives everyone to Christ, but rather scripture says that God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and harden whom He wills to harden (Romans 9 and Exodus 33).  God's word never returns void. 
 
Percy Shelley wrote a great line in Act 1 of his play Prometheus Unbound....
 
"The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the Garden."
 
Charles Williams, one of the Inklings (a group of Oxford Christians including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien), used the above line as a focal point in his book Descent Into Hell.  Williams writes about death as truly a meeting of ourselves.  For the first time, we truly meet ourselves face to face and see us as God sees us.  We see the horrific sinfulness, the depravity, and the rebellion as it appears to God.  For the non-Christian, this awesome meeting takes place at the moment of physical death.  They meet themselves.  No wonder non-Christians are terrified of physical death.  It is no wonder that we hear tales of avowed atheists crying out in terrific realization on their deathbed.  They have met themselves for the first time.
 
As Christians, we meet ourselves in death as well.  We died with Christ and we are raised together with Him.  In our death to ourselves, we see who we really are (albeit, through a glass darkly) and we are driven to our knees in desperate repentance.  We meet ourselves and are propelled to Christ by the fear of God.  In fact, as Christians we are to examine ourselves in scripture to see ourselves as in a mirror.  As we see our hopeless state outside of Christ, we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and strive to faithfully obey him. 
 
As we evangelize and speak the word of God to people we are the savor of live to those who believe and the savor of death to those who reject the message (2 Corinthians 2:16).  The word does not return void, but it brings sinners to meet themselves.  Either the word brings us to meet ourselves in this life and thereby draws us to Christ, or the word is rejected and stands as an instrument of righteous conviction of the sinner on his deathbed.  Not only does all of the world cry out of our God, but when we speak His word to the heathen they either turn or are left clearly with no excuse when they do meet their image.
 
As we evangelize in this comfortable, postmodern (i.e., truth is what I say it is) age we must not only speak of salvation, but we must have a ready answer when the sinner asks, " Saved?  From what?"  We must endeavor to help them meet themselves.  We must lovingly and firmly hold up scripture and show the sinner how we all stack up outside of Christ.  We must show them their filthy rags of self-righteousness and that their "good works" are actually sin done without faith in Jesus Christ.
 
Let us be evangelists who go about our duties like a gentle host introducing people to themselves.