Romans 10:13-14 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary” is a quote that has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi—founder of the Franciscan Order. It is intended to say that proclaiming the Gospel message of Christ is more virtuous in the way we live our life than actually speaking the words. As nice as that sounds, it is not a Biblical concept and it was never said by St. Francis of Assisi.

As Christians, we are called to live differently than the world. We are to set aside the desires of our flesh and take on the desires of Christ. Off with the old and on with the new… It is certainly a testimony to the people we work with, play with, and are neighbors to. But no one will ever come to Christ by simply watching you! It doesn’t happen. The modern church recently has been so afraid of offending people that we have now begun to tell the congregants to simply live like Jesus and people will come to Christ through your transformed lifestyle.

If we take a simple look at statistics, the men and women in the church appear to have the same divorce rate, unemployment rate, drug and alcohol abuse rate and so on… Though this sounds like a great concept, we are not even living up to “living a better life” than the people around us. So living the Gospel has proven to be a way to silence the believers and give them a false idea that how they live will lead people to Christ.

Paul tells us in Romans 10, “how are they to hear without someone preaching?” How will our family members and friends hear the Gospel message if we keep our mouth shut? Words have power and are filled with meaning. Though we are told that they are empty and void of meaning in our postmodern culture, the Bible says something quite different.  Jesus commanded his disciples to “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” In order to proclaim we need to be bold and speak. If people never hear about Jesus, learn about their need to turn from their sin, and have faith in Christ to save them, then they will never believe. Living a Christ-like life is definitely a good start to bridging the gap with people, but until they hear the Gospel message, they will never come to faith in Christ alone.

Be blessed today as you proclaim the gospel to all creation…
Keith