‘Him we proclaim’

Nothing has clarified and encouraged my evangelism more than these three words: ‘Him we proclaim’ (Col. 1:28).

The ‘Him’ is of course ‘Christ’, the One who is in you (v.27). Christ is even in the Gentile Colossians. Christ has come to outsiders like us through the wonder of the gospel and now, says Paul, Christ will spread even further – to the uttermost ends of the earth. How? The One who is in us will come out of us through proclamation.

What should we proclaim? It turns out that this is the wrong question. We should be asking Who? And the answer is Christ. We must proclaim Jesus Himself.

This is what has been so transformative for my evangelism. Our role together as proclaimers – both corporately and individually, both formally and informally – is to speak of Jesus. There, that’s it. That’s my revolutionary thought. And perhaps you say: Obviously, Glen, what’s the big deal? What else would you proclaim?

That’s the problem. I’m tempted to talk about all sorts of other things. Here are three things I’m tempted to proclaim instead of Christ: The Scriptures; A System; and Your Decision.

It is a very good thing to talk about the Bible. But here’s what we need to watch: is it possible to talk about the Bible and not to ‘proclaim Him’? Yes. And it’s not just the Christ-less Old Testament lesson that falls foul of this. I could speak of New Testament topics like the spread of the church in Acts or the fruit of the Spirit or the destruction of the temple or the parables of Jesus and not actually proclaim Jesus. The warning of John 5 still stands: ‘You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life’ (John 5:39-40). I must proclaim Christ Biblically, but unfortunately it’s possible to proclaim the Bible Christ-lessly, and this is a danger I must always guard against.

I believe in systematic theology. I believe in gospel outlines, (I’ve written some myself). But there’s always a danger of proclaiming a system and not Jesus Himself. It’s very possible – in fact it happens all the time – that evangelists are more eager to walk their hearers through a presentation than introduce them to a Person. We can talk about concepts like God’s existence, like guilt and grace, like judgment and salvation, like death and hope, like repentance and faith, like substitutionary atonement, or many other topics. Again, this can be good and true and necessary. But do these topics help us do the main thing: proclaim Him – i.e. the Person of the Lord Jesus?

There is a response to be made to the gospel. But human response is not the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Christ and His doing, not of us and ours. The Bible is insistent on this: ‘We do not proclaim ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord’ (2 Cor. 4:5). Some evangelism is all about choice yet tells us almost nothing of the Christ we are meant to choose. We are urged to repent and believe, but not told Whom we are meant to trust. And the reasons given have little to do with Him – with His trustworthiness, His attractiveness, His glory.

But if we would truly be evangelists, let us be like the Biblical evangelists. Think of those original four: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What is the consuming obsession of these evangelists? They tell us of Jesus, in story and in song, His words, His works, His wonders and His passion. The original evangelists paint Christ in bold and Biblical colours until we see Him – really see Him – and then, how else can we respond except to call Him Lord?

This, then, is our task – so clarifying, so simple, so challenging. Whether to many or to one, whether from a pulpit or over a garden fence, in a thousand ways we finish the sentence: ‘That’s what I love about Jesus…’. And to Him be the glory.