What is Evangelism?

The Four Components of Biblical Evangelism

What is evangelism? Evangelism is the announcement, the proclamation, the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news. Evangelism is made up of four primary components, a warning, a message, a call, and a counting.

First the warning. We need to warn people about their sin, the fact that they have sinned against God. We need to warn them that they will one day stand before God to give an account, that they will face His justice and His wrath, and the punishment for sin is eternity in hell.

The message, the gospel proper, that God the Father sent His Son to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man and without sin. He lived a perfect sinless life that we cannot live. And about 33 years into that earthly existence, He voluntarily went to the cross.

He suffered and died a horrible death that He did not deserve, taking upon Himself the punishment we rightly deserve for our sins against God. And then three days later, He forever defeated sin and death when He rose from the grave.

He is alive today and He will return at a time of the Father's choosing. And then a call. Jesus' first sermon was to repent and believe the gospel. We must call people to repent, to turn from their sin, to turn from their sin and toward God and by faith and by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and their Savior.

We should stop telling people that they need to accept Jesus. Jesus doesn't need their acceptance. Sinners need His acceptance. And then there must be an accounting. We need to tell people that they need to count the cost for following Jesus Christ.

Counting the Cost of Following Christ

Jesus said, unless you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me, you are not worthy to be My disciples. I once met a missionary to China. His primary mission was to train Chinese Christians how to share the gospel so that they could go across the border to North Korea and share the gospel with North Koreans and further equip the North Korean underground church.

Not only do North Korean Christians warn people about their sin and God's judgment and the eternity in hell as the consequences for those sins, not only do they share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not only do they call people to repentance and faith, but they also tell their fellow North Koreans that if they turn to Christ, they could be dead in a year.

Now that certainly doesn't apply all over the world, at least not today. But we must be telling people to count the cost wherever they are. That God calls them to deny themselves. That God calls them to die to their self and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to tell them that what Jesus promised in this life is tribulation and persecution and sorrow. Does that mean that God does not bless His people? Of course not. He does. But we should not hold out those blessings to unbelievers as if they're some type of game prize.

We need to tell them to count the cost. So again, four primary components to evangelism, a warning, a message, a call, and accounting. What isn't evangelism? Evangelism is not service. Now before you shut off the video, hear me out.

Evangelism Is Not the Same as Service

We should serve people. We are called by God to serve other people. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We're not only to love our neighbors, but we are to love our enemies. If we have an opportunity to feed someone, we should.

If we have an opportunity to clothe someone, we should. If we have an opportunity to house someone, we should. If we have an opportunity to employ someone, we should. If we have an opportunity to simply encourage one another and show kindness to someone, we should.

But none of that is evangelism. You see, my friends, if we serve people, and again, we should. If we serve people, if we feed them and clothe them and house them and encourage them and act kindly toward them, but we do not share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we do not warn them, we do not share the message of the gospel, we do not call them to repentance and faith, we do not tell them that they need to consider the cost for following Jesus Christ, then we are simply making them warm and filled and loved on their way to hell.

Now, maybe that might offend you, but I encourage you to see in scripture that the gospel is a spoken message, it is a communicated message, either with words or in writing. No act of service, no act of kindness is evangelism without the gospel.

What am I saying? Am I saying we should stop serving? For the third or fourth time, no. It is a both and, not an either or. We should take every opportunity to serve people, to serve the lost, as a means of communicating the gospel to them.

That's what evangelism is.