We all need great mentors—even if we know them only by their public example and writings—and few have influenced me more than the late John Stott.
I grew up in a church where telling people about Jesus was far more important than living like Jesus. Giving someone a tract had a greater priority than meeting a tangible need. In fact, simply caring for or doing good to other human beings was disparaged as “the social gospel”—what “liberal” churches did. By contrast, in their view, what true “Bible-believing” Christians were supposed to do was aggressively confront as many as possible with some packaged gospel script (the “Roman’s Road,” the “Four Spiritual Laws,” questions from “Evangelism Explosion,” “The Bridge,” etc.) and get them to say “the Sinner’s Prayer.” All else, including actually showing love, was superfluous to preaching the gospel.
It was against this backdrop that I first encountered Stott.
It was 1990 and I was reading Dying For Change by Leith Anderson. In his book, Anderson argued for the balance between revelation and relevance in what Stott referred to as “two worlds.” In the incarnation, for example, heaven (revelation) kissed earth (relevance). Indeed, Jesus is God (revelation) revealed in flesh (relevance).[1]
In interacting with Stott’s thought, Anderson pointed out that “liberal” Christians have often sacrificed revelation for relevance, while “conservative” Christians have often sacrificed relevance for revelation. Stott’s view was that both should be held in tension, and that neither relevance nor revelation alone was consistent with Jesus’ incarnation. In other words, revelation was important but so was relevance. To be like Jesus, then, we must not compromise supernatural truth, nor can we fail to flesh it out to the needs of the world.[2] Stott’s insight was rich; he had my attention.
In 1992, in preparation for a move to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, I wrestled with the exact text for a “goodbye” message to the church I was serving in Southern NJ. Having recently picked up Stott’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, I chose to share his take on the salt and light imagery from Matt. 5:13-16:
“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.
“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (NLT)
Stott pointed out that this passage speaks of our two-fold responsibility as Christians:
- being salt (social action or social justice as it’s often called today)
- being light (evangelism—sharing the gospel)
In other words, we’re called to not only preach the gospel (evangelism), but to “do justly” (Micah 6:8) and show God’s love in practical ways (social action). Both are needed and neither is to be disparaged. Indeed, to minimize either is to truncate our calling and, as mentioned above, misrepresent the character of the Incarnate Christ.
Social action fleshes out what God looks like. It helps people “taste and see” God’s love. As Rick Warren said, “You can’t preach the gospel [evangelism] to people who aren’t listening. Love gets their attention.”
Again, growing up in a church where there was little love and everything was about militant, non-relational, and disrespectful forms of evangelism, Stott’s teaching reoriented and expanded my whole view of the gospel and what it means to follow Christ.
As I reflect on the above, almost thirty years later, we’re now living in a time of barbarian speech. We celebrate shock, despise nuance, and play fast and loose with the facts. Yes, when it comes to social action, talk is cheap, but it’s not irrelevant. As we’ve learned post-Westboro Baptist, if we don’t want Christianity to be associated with hate, our attitude and speech matter. Added to Stott’s insights on our two-fold responsibility of being salt and light, then, we need to add a third: heart-felt civility. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that that humility, meekness, and mercy must animate our salt and light efforts. In other words, our beliefs (orthodoxy) must be linked to our lifestyle (orthopraxy) as well as how we communicate (civility). If we disconnect any of these, prioritizing, for example, correct belief or legislation over public example or humble, gentle, respectful conversation, we distort the gospel.
Next week: What I Learned from John Stott, Part 2 of 3
[1] The Incarnation of Jesus refers to the mystery of God becoming fully human (John 1:14).
[2] Leith Anderson, Dying for Change (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany, 1990), 119.