A Christ-centered Witness: Putting Christ Back at the Center of Our Apologetics and Evangelism
Welcome to my personal website, Christotelic.faith. In theological terms, that word has to do with Christ (Greek: Christos) as the “end” or “goal” (telic) of the entirety of the Old Testament (Rom 10:5). The Bible has one uninterrupted storyline that crescendos into the cross and resurrection of Jesus. I genuinely think that a human being has no higher privilege or goal than to reflect worshipfully and deeply on Christ who is “the image of the invisible God and the exact representation of His being” (Heb 1:3; 12:2). Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Christians captures this profound truth with several striking claims:
“That their hearts may be encouraged, being united in love, into an abundant certainty that accompanies the full comprehension of God's mystery—namely Christ, in whom are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col 2:2-3).
Now, admittedly, that’s a BIG statement about Jesus and Paul’s desire for Christians. Paul communicates two simple but profound ideas here. Let’s break it down. First, he prays for…
An Unbreakable Bond of Unity and Joyful Encouragement: The secret to encouragement among believers is our unity expressed through Christ’s love. God demonstrated his love for us, and we, in turn, are to love one another and so fulfill the law of Christ. I would argue that there has never been, in the history of Christianity, a church that fractured and broke apart because everyone just had an abundance of Christ’s love. In another very similar letter, Paul gave the Ephesian Christians the key to living a life worthy of our calling and election: “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph 4:1–3). Can we really say that we are making “every effort” to maintain our bond in Christ? Practicing love for one another requires us to “bear with each other,” and this includes the people we think are sometimes insufferable or unbearable.
Secondly, he hopes that Christians will experience…
An Abundance of Certainty Through Knowledge and Understanding: The heart that goes after Jesus takes possession of a surprising “certainty” that is otherwise inexplicable. Occasionally, I’ve had church members come and tell me that they’re struggling mightily with doubt or disinterest in the things of God. As I probe a bit further with questions, I almost always discover the problem: Christ is not the blazing center of this person’s pursuits and thoughts. They are hopelessly distracted and lost in the American cult of leisure. They are tragically shallow, and the seed of the gospel just doesn’t have sufficiently good soil in which to grow.
Now, read that Colossians passage above again, and zoom in on that last sentence. Paul here tells us that Jesus is the cipher key to the mysteries of God. Why? Because those mysteries were hidden in Christ, now revealed in the gospel and in his written Word. English Puritan minister John Owen famously stated,
“It is enough for us to stand in holy admiration at the shore of this unsearchable ocean, and to gather up some parcels of that Divine Treasure, wherewith the Scripture of Truth is enriched (John Owen, Christologia, 23).
May I encourage and challenge you with something? If you attend a church where the pastor or leaders are constantly encouraging you to find “the practical keys” to the Christian life, all while downplaying growing in your knowledge and understanding of Christ through his Word, grab your kids and run out of that place! Listen, we may never arrive at maximal certainty or clarity of God’s revelation in Christ in this life before resurrection glory. But as we seek Christ through his Word, God will deliver to us that which was hidden from the inner eye of the blind Pharisee who diligently studied the Scripture but refused its solemn and unerring witness—new life that is found only in the pursuit of Jesus. A bond of unity that is found only in practicing his love. A deep understanding that is found only as we seek to grow in our knowledge of the one who holds the mysteries of God.
A Christ-centered, Contextualized Approach
If this is what it means to have a Christotelic or Christ-centered approach to my Christian life, then how do I share it with others?
Since my teenage years, when I rededicated my life to Jesus, my passion for biblical studies and Christian apologetics has been unwavering. “Apologetics” is just a technical name that describes that branch of Christian Theology that provides a rational justification for Christian belief. I’ve always been enamored with sophisticated “arguments” and have always been drawn to the evidence for the Christian faith. However, I've often felt a certain discomfort with the clinical and detached approaches prevalent in both academic and popular Christian literature. As I reflect on over three decades of personal witness and guiding numerous individuals to faith in Jesus, I've come to the realization that many apologetics curriculums lack a crucial focus and a clear order in their approaches.
I believe that Paul lays before us a Christ-centered apologetic, which is best observed in the life of every believer in the community. I would call this Christ-centered apologetics. This way of reasoning is not merely:
Evidentialism—an approach that seeks to prove something about Jesus (like the evidence for the resurrection).
Presuppositionalism—presupposing the truth of Christianity and then dogmatically proclaiming it, which is surely appropriate in some contexts.
Cumulative Case or the Classical approach— where Jesus is tacked onto a suite of evidences, including arguments for the existence of God, the historical resurrection, the reliability of the Bible, etc.
But it’s something more and a bit different than all of those approaches.
It's a Christocentric and contextualized apologetic, primarily focused on the salvation of our friends, family, coworkers, and culture, rather than solely winning arguments in defense of the truth. This approach comprises three essential and distinctive elements crucial for success in evangelism:
(1) Life and Gospel—Paul told the Thessalonians, “We cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us” (1 Thess 2:8). The essence of this approach is a contextual witness that seeks to share the message of the good news and the evidence of a transformed life. We do this in several steps: (1) Embedding our lives into our communities in a multiplicity of ways. As we share our lives and care for our neighbors, we live out the gospel in front of them. This means that we avoid retreating from the culture no matter how dark and insane it becomes. (2) By “testifying,” which means to witness truthfully and competently about our personal salvation. (3) We boldly challenge our friends, family, and neighbors to trust in Christ for salvation. (4) We choose to sojourn with unbelievers in the face of persistent indecision or unbelief. This brings us full circle back to step 1. We live out our Christian witness in spite of cultural opposition, rejection, and personal suffering as we offer an ever-extended invitation to unbelievers. As we’ll see, that “invitation” involves reasonable defenses of God’s Word, warnings to escape the coming judgment, and a positive or affirming case for the truth of the Christian faith.
(2) Reasons for the Hope—Admittedly, this is where just about every apologetics curriculum starts. Most books and materials immediately seek to help the believer with answers to common or difficult objections or maybe to go on the offense and provide an affirming case for the Christian Faith. However, if we bypass the first step, which is sharing deeply our lives and the gospel, our defenses of the good news can just come off as defensiveness, and we will likely never get through. We need both. Without a solid grounding in God’s Word and reasons for our hope, we remain defenseless to cultural pressure or ridicule. Without an ongoing relationship with unbelievers, our apologetic answers come off as dogmatic fundamentalism. Nevertheless, we are commanded in Scripture to be prepared to give an answer for our hope. In a context where first-century believers were undergoing extraordinary persecution for their faith, Peter wrote the following,
“Do not fear them or be intimidated, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.” (1 Peter 3:14–16).
What hope? Peter doesn’t say that we are to be prepared to give a defense for our hope in six-day, or old-earth creationism. He is not here referring to our passionate views on the sequence of end times events, or the ongoing use of spiritual gifts or church polity, none of which is the blazing center of our message to unbelievers. Instead, we are to be prepared to answer questions and challenges regarding our faith in the one who is “the blessed hope—our great God and Savior—Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Again, the discipline of apologetics was never designed to be an end in of itself, but to have a ministerial relationship—that is, to be in service to the Great Commission of making disciples.
(3) Fearless Conversations—We choose to boldly stand on the truth of Christ while also refraining from putting unnecessary barriers between a sinner and Jesus. Paul summed up the entire message of Christ as “the word of the cross.” He referred to Jesus’ cross as a scandal (1 Cor 1:18) and an offense (Gal 5:11). Peter wrote that as the rejected cornerstone, Jesus is the stone that makes men stumble and the rock that makes them fall (1 Pet 2:8). Here’s the shocking truth: The cross of Jesus is offensive enough all on its own and needs no additional help from me. This is why Paul instructed the Corinthians in this regard,
“Give no offense to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I also try to please everyone in everything, not seeking my own benefit, but the benefit of many, so that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:32–33).
Paul’s highest value for the Corinthians was not the inviolable or sacrosanct freedoms they enjoyed in grace but the responsibility to put no obstacles between non-Christians and the cross or between weaker Christians and their spiritual progress.
Because we want all men to be saved, we refrain from giving offense as we show them the hospitality and mercy of the gospel. We are to befriend the sinner and let the cross offend the sinner. If we stop and think about it, the message of a crucified Savior and Lord poses a significant obstacle to belief. Why? What does the cross tell us?
It tells us that we are condemned sinners. The cross tells me that as an image-bearer of God, I have fallen hopelessly into sin—it shows the fate that would have been mine had Christ not been punished in my place (Isa 53). Try telling someone they are a condemned sinner and plead with them to escape the coming wrath on the day when God judges all our actions and thoughts before the bar of his justice, and see what response you get. This aspect of the cross is inherently offensive to the self-righteous and self-justifying.
The extent of God’s love on display. No doubt, the first thing the cross communicates is my judicial condemnation. But the cross is also God’s way of demonstrating his love for me in that while I was a sinner—that is, an enemy and a rebel to God’s Sovereign rule, spurning his love and despising his grace—Christ died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6–8). Jesus said that there is no greater expression of love than this: that a man would lay down his life in sacrifice so that others could live. For God loved the world in this way: He sent his one unique Son from eternity so that anyone who believes in him will not perish in judgment, but instead would have everlasting life (John 3:16). The good news of God’s love is a response to the bad news of our eventual and otherwise inescapable condemnation. And Jesus’ cross is God’s proof of his love for us. The cross demonstrates the full extent of Christ’s compassion for sinners, revealing the profound extent of that love.
The victory of God over death. The cross reminds me that the punishment of death is the fate we all share. And the only way to be saved from this fate is to accept Christ’s fully sufficient work in crucifixion and his resurrection. Jesus is, therefore, victorious over sin and the otherwise permanent states of death, and hell—our greatest enemies. Paul made this startling claim to the Corinthian Church about the end times:
“Then comes the end, when he [Jesus] hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death” (1 Cor 15:24–26).
Think about that for a second. Here’s the good news: your enemies are also Jesus’ enemies. Sin defaces God’s image in us. Like a Rembrandt splotched with graffiti or Michaelangelo’s “David” hacked with a machete. The judgment of death halts God’s original design for us, that we would live forever in relationship with him as his children, his heirs in the world. Hell finalizes sin’s victory and leaves us in a state of permanent exile from his glory and paradise. Now, if ever there was such a thing as having a “mortal enemy” that’s it. And the cross tells me that Christ is victorious over those otherwise permanent threats.
How Can a Rational Person Believe in the Cross?
But how can a person believe such an outlandish message? If the cross is God’s message of salvation, then the Holy Spirit is the agent who makes it come alive in the heart of the unbeliever. Consider this fact—for an ancient Greco-Roman or a Jew in the first century, belief in a crucified savior would have been a near psychological impossibility. This scandalizing message would have been appealing to exactly no one in that world (which is exactly why no one would invent such a message). Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the mind the truth, the message of the gospel is crazy talk to the unbeliever.
So, how do we come to experience the certainty of belief in the face of such an incredible claim? It is through Spirit Baptism into the body of Christ and Spirit filling as an ongoing experience as we regularly engage in corporate worship. Jesus said to the Apostles, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses…” (Acts 1:6). Paul told the Ephesians to continually be filled with the Spirit, allowing Christ’s Word to dwell in them richly in the singing of songs, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph 5:18–19; Col 3:16). The Spirit’s role is to convict the sinner of his/her sin, God’s standard of righteousness, and certain and unavoidable judgment (John 16:8) bringing the transgressor to repentance.
It is in the worshipful reflection and study of Christ (Christologia) that we are transformed and equipped for this vital work within our communities. All of this requires that we be bold but kind, firm but sympathetic, fearless and friendly. We dare to share our gospel and our lives, discipline ourselves for a ready defense of our hope, and engage in fearless dialogue with those for whom Christ died in the hopes that some might be saved. All while praying that God will give our neighbors a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and that their eyes would be enlightened to the truth (Eph 1:17, 18).