Quote:
Originally Posted by jaybird0827  Don, you missed my point. You cannot tell just any one "Christ died for you." because there are no Scriptural grounds to make such an inference. You can say "Christ died for sinners. You are a sinner. If you believe, then you will be saved." There is a difference.
Matthew 1:21, Acts 13:48, Acts 17:30-31. |
Precisely. And this is the trouble with almost all tracts I've ever seen (which is why I never seek them out to hand out... of course whether tract-passing is a proper fulfillment of the Great Commission is a different story entirely), even those which are otherwise alright in their presentation. Why we feel as though we have to sell Christ with the line "God loves you" and "Christ died for you" I don't know.
"Christ died for you" is something, as Jay points out, that you simply cannot say at random to a person on the street. You just don't know that. "God loves you" is another thing that isn't appropriate to say - because even if it is true in ANY sense that God loves every person (he does HATE Esau, after all - that "loves less" interpretation of Romans 9 is simply WRONG) you don't know in a given case whether a person is loved with electing love by God. Yet when we proclaim to someone that "God loves you", electing, saving love is PRECISELY what the person hears us saying. We are in error when we say something that is true in one limited sense, but know the hearer hears in a way that MAY NOT be true. We are thus in danger of bearing false witness, and at best we are saying something misleading with "God loves you" just as much as we are by saying "Christ died for you".
I like Jay's approach. It is the Biblical gospel after all - Christ died to save his people from their sins and reunite them to a relationship with God. Believers in Christ are his people. All people are born in a broken relationship to God. Will you believe in Christ and therefore be saved?"
Todd