James 5. final thoughts

As true believers we have been reconciled to God and have the ministry of reconciliation. It’s all of ours. And we must tell the world that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, all of us. 
And I really believe, you know, we can wander around and hope that the Lord will bring somebody across our path we can evangelize, you know where we need to start? You need to sit down and think of anybody you know who used to be a part of the church and used to name the name of Christ and you don’t see them anymore and you ought to go after those people.

Tragically the threat of their eternal judgment is greater than the threat of the eternal judgment of someone who never professed Christ because how much greater the punishment will be, Hebrews 10:29 says, to the person who knowingly trods under his feet the blood of Christ? That’s where our evangelism ought to start. It ought to start with the people who profess to know Christ but they’re gone. What a job, what a task, what a challenge.

Jesus said He came to seek and to save the lost. Is that your desire? To be His ambassador? His emissary? His agent? What a tremendous challenge. In Luke 15 the common thread in all those stories and the point of them all is the joy of God in salvation.

 The sheep was found and everybody rejoiced. 

 The coin was found and everybody rejoiced. 

 The son was found and everybody rejoiced. 

If you want to bring joy to the heart of God, it comes through salvation. Is that your highest joy? To bring someone to Christ?
So, what is our goal? To convert…to convert. It’s used again in verse 20, look at it. “Let him know that he who converts a sinner, turning him from false faith to true faith…” Then another word “will save”, beautiful word, sozo, it’s the word, the commonest word in the New Testament for salvation, the basic New Testament word for salvation. It’s used five times in James and four times it refers to salvation…1:21, 2:14, 4:12 and here. In 5:15 we saw it used for restoring weak Christians but its dominant use is with those references to salvation.

So, what is the goal? To convert, to save. There’s one other goal, to cover. What is the word cover? To cover a multitude of sins, to hide a multitude of sins. What does that mean? Forgiveness…forgiveness. Back in Proverbs chapter 10 and verse 12 we get a helpful insight. Hatred stirs up strife but love covers all transgressions. It’s talking about forgiveness. So what is the goal? We want to convert people, turning them from sin in order that they may be saved and being saved their sins will be…what?…forgiven. We’re talking about evangelism, folks…evangelism.