Our Witness to the Gospel

The Christian faith “once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3) depends upon how God worked through Jesus of Nazareth in His life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return. As Christians, we maintain complete conviction regarding the truth of this Gospel as faithfully representing actual historical events, corroborated by many witnesses.

Christians do, and should, make much of the eyewitness testimony of those who saw, heard, and experienced Jesus in His life and ministry. Jesus commissioned them to go out and serve as His witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, and they did so (Acts 1:8). We consider them authoritative for our lives in faith and practice precisely because they experienced Jesus in His life and resurrection and He gave them the power and commission to testify regarding all God had done and was doing in and through Him (cf. Matthew 18:18, John 20:21-23). No one has ever seen God; no one living today can experience Jesus the way they did in the first century (cf. John 1:18, 1 John 1:1-3). Therefore, everything we can know about Jesus is based upon their witness preserved by and in the Spirit in the New Testament.

Yet, from nearly the beginning, witness regarding Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return was not limited to those who had physically seen and been with Jesus. Saul of Tarsus would have an experience of the Risen Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and was commissioned by him to go and preach the Gospel to those among the nations (cf. Acts 9:1-31, 22:1-21). Ever afterward Paul would testify regarding his personal experience with Jesus as the Christ but also would make appeal to what Jesus had done beforehand, appealing to those who witnessed such things (cf. Acts 13:30-32). As Paul, Peter, and many others would go around proclaiming the witness they themselves had or had received regarding all God had accomplished in Jesus, many more who also had no personal experience of Jesus would come to believe. One such man was Timothy of Lystra, born of a Greek father and a Jewish mother, raised in the hope of Israel, and who came to believe in Jesus as the Christ according to Acts 16:1-3. Timothy began to accompany Paul in the latter’s work of proclaiming the Gospel, and Timothy himself would grow active in this ministry. After many years, Paul would commission Timothy to entrust the witness of the Gospel which he had heard from Paul to other faithful people who could, in turn, entrust that same witness to others as well (2 Timothy 2:2).

Witness to the Gospel, therefore, has never been restricted only to those people who personally experienced Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Jesus is Lord; God’s manifold wisdom continues to be displayed within the church to the powers and principalities (Ephesians 3:10). God’s eternal purpose in Christ remains as valid, and as active, today as it was almost two thousand years ago. Jesus’ return remains imminent; therefore, we also must give consideration regarding our witness to the Gospel.

Our first thought regarding our witness to the Gospel will almost invariably feature words: how we might go about preaching and teaching the message of Jesus. This impulse is quite understandable: when we consider the New Testament, we see Peter, Paul, and others going out and around, preaching and teaching regarding Jesus as the Christ. The Christian faith has been spread and handed down by this kind of preaching, and by hearing the message and accepting it (cf. Romans 10:17). We should understand ourselves as within the tradition, and therefore the commission, of Paul and Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2: as we have heard and received the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return from faithful people in the presence of many witnesses, so we should strive to entrust that same message in the presence of many witnesses to others who can teach it as well. Our witness will primarily be derivative, very much like Paul’s and Timothy’s: we bear witness to the apostolic witness, making an appeal to what the Apostles and their associates experienced regarding Jesus, and commending their testimony to others (e.g. Acts 13:30-32).

Our witness to the Gospel, however, must go well beyond words. The story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return cannot, and should not, be seen as some ancient relic with little relevance for today. Jesus may have lived, died, was raised again, and ascended to the Father two thousand years ago, yet He is Lord to this very day. The body of Christ endures to this very day on earth in the form of His people, the church (cf. Romans 12:3-8, 1 Corinthians 12:12-28). We can well understand the New Testament as the Apostles and their associates grappling with what it meant for Jesus to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and to live according to the pattern of His own life, death, and resurrection, and seeking to explain and apply the message to the lives of the Christians of the first century. Their legacy endures for us today; we should be striving to the same end regarding living in the twenty-first century.

For this reason, Jesus considered His disciples to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16): they should maintain distinctiveness in the world, not living according to the world’s standards, but seeking to embody the life, death, and resurrection of Christ in all ways and toward all people. What Paul maintained in confidence regarding the Corinthian Christians in 2 Corinthians 3:1-4 should be true of all of us: we should all be letters of recommendation regarding those who have taught us in the ways of Jesus, a letter of Christ written by the Spirit on the heart, seen by all. People should be able to get a good idea of what Jesus is all about from how we talk and how we act.

“Testimony” has a fraught heritage in Christianity: plenty want to make far more of it than anything revealed in the New Testament, and as a result, many others want to suppress the idea or make little of it. Ultimately, however, we cannot escape how our words and our actions do represent a testimony, bearing witness to what we prioritize and emphasize in our lives. All of us should be able to bear witness to what God has done for us in Christ through the Spirit and make much of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return. Those around us should be able to perceive the life of Christ in us even without a word, although we should also give explicit voice to all which our lives are bearing witness.

Yes, the truth of the Gospel has been assured by the witness of the Spirit in the testimony of the Apostles and their associates recorded in the New Testament. That faith was indeed delivered once for all the saints (Jude 1:3). And may God be true, and every man a liar (cf. Romans 3:4): the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return has persevered despite the repeated and continual faithlessness and rebellion of those who claim to be Jesus’ faithful followers. But we should not easily and quickly dismiss the importance, power, and value of our witness to the Gospel. God in Christ has continually expected His people to bring the good news of His life, death, and resurrection to life, empowered in and by His Spirit, in and as the church, always looking forward to the day when Jesus will return and restore all things. May we bear effective witness to the Gospel of Jesus in our words and our deeds so we might also share in His life now and forevermore!

Ethan R. Longhenry