Methods of Evangelism: Part 6

One of the methods of evangelism we haven't touched on yet is one of the more difficult ones to use, and that is debate. Debate can easily go in the wrong direction, it can often lead to more animosity than learning, but when used correctly there is no better way to prove the superiority of Christ.

For the Christian debate is simply reasoning with the scriptures. God's word can be felt and it can be emotional but the best way to understand scripture is to actually reason with it, to question it and search for the answers within it. When God said "Come let us reason together" in Isaiah 1:18, he was imploring his people to come to him for the forgiveness of sin, but he was also showing the world that he is a reasonable and logical God.

In the first five books of the bible God gives his people a law, in the prophets we see God often debating and reasoning with his people (e.g. Ezekiel chapters 18 and 32) and in the New Testament we see God calling everything to be done "decently and in order". God is a logical God and the Christian debater simply uses one of God's qualities and uses that to declare God's truths.

Knowing that God is such an orderly God helps us use the scripture effectively. We can assure ourselves that the Bible is a logical book. We can be confident that everything in the bible makes sense and every question we have has an answer. God wants us to use our reason to understand his word and apply that to the world around us.

The Christian debater is motivated by this reason, and he has a burning desire for the truth. He takes the words of Jude to heart:"...contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." There are times when it is necessary not just to proclaim the truth but to prove why the lie is indeed a lie; the time may come to "expose the unfruitful works of darkness" by carefully revealing the dangers of unbelief and showing the excellence of scripture.

And that's really what debating is - we can't do it effectively without replacing our words with God's words and our thoughts with God's thoughts. Jesus said: "The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood" meaning that the one who speaks from his own resources, his own mind, his own truths and morality is speaking for the benefit of his own glory. But the person who takes on God's thoughts, God's truths, and speaks the words God gives him to speak is seeking the glory of God.

To debate effectively we have to recognize this: God's word is infinitely more powerful than our words. There is no weapon like the holy scripture, it divides soul and spirit, it opens the hearts and minds, it speaks directly to the heart, and obeying it leads to salvation and a relationship with the God of the Universe. For the debater scripture isn't just the best tool, its the only tool worth having. Every single point we make has to be based in scripture and backed up by scripture.

And when we keep our thoughts firmly fixed on the scripture we'll focus on what the bible focuses on: the person of Jesus Christ. When Paul(Saul) was first learning the faith it says "Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ." The entire point of his debating was proving that Jesus was Christ.

Paul was aggressive, he would go right to the synagogue, the place where the Jews he knew would disagree with him would go to worship, and once there he would "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints". Some people didn't appreciate his honesty, they didn't like the light Paul brought into their darkness but Paul wasn't intimidated by their displeasure, he was motivated to save souls.

So lets be like Paul and study the scriptures until we can prove that Jesus is the Christ. Let's be like Stephen so that when the enemy brings those that would try to stop us from delivering the word of God it can be said of us that "they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking".