HOW COME SOUL WINNING IS ABSENT FROM SO MANY REFORMED CHURCHES? HAVE THEY FORGOTTON SOLO EVANGELICUM?

So what is the true church’s responsibility? Or, as believers, what is our responsibility?

You may say, well:

*We are here to worship the Lord, and that is true.

*We are here to live godly lives, and that is true.

*We are here to minister, and that is true. 

But all of those things we will do perfectly in heaven. We will worship perfectly. We will love perfectly. We will obey perfectly. We will serve perfectly. 

So then why does the Lord leave us here on the earth? The answer is because there is one thing that we are to do on earth that we will not do in heaven, and that is to proclaim the Gospel to sinners. We are to evangelize!

That is why the church was left in the world. Jesus gave us the Great Commission. It is not merely the great suggestion; it is our commission, and that is the reason we are here. Evangelism is not listed anywhere as a gift, nor an exclusive activity for the man of the cloth to perform. It is a command and as believers called to be evangelists we are to:

* Go to the lost – Mark 16:15 “Go into the world, preach the Gospel to every creature.”  

*Tell the Lost – Romans 10:14 “How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them?

*Compel the lost – 2 Corinthians 5:13-14 “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. Luke 14:23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”

*Beg/ persuade the lost – 2 Corinthians 5:20 “We beg you on behalf of Christ, we beg you, be reconciled to God.”  

More than any other single passage 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, best defines for us our responsibility as believers in a world of dying sinners who are headed into eternal punishment. This is a passage that is just rich with insights into our responsibility. So let’s look at verse 18.

“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Now, in this very important passage, we see the word “reconciled” five times. This is the heart of our responsibility as a Christian. God has called us to preach the Word of reconciliation, as it says at the end of verse 19, the message of reconciliation. At the end of verse 18, He says He’s given us the ministry of reconciliation. 

God is the reconciler. He does it by forgiveness. He does it through faith, and it’s possible because the Lord Jesus took the full payment for sin. So God is just. Every sin that all believers have ever committed through all of history has been paid for at Calvary. Now, God can look at you and me and see His Son. He looked at the cross, He saw you. He looks at you, He sees Christ.

This is the staggering, stunning reality of the Gospel. This is the heart of Solo Evangelicum. Can we just obey it and get the message out to the both the religious and pagan lost?