Phillip A. Bishop,
Exercise Physiology,
Alabama
[March 21, 2010] —

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” an expert in Jewish law asked Jesus in Luke 10.

If one of your colleagues or students asked you that, what would you say? I might launch in to the Four Spiritual Laws, the Bridge illustration, or even the old Roman Road to Salvation. I would want to make sure that person knew exactly how to “get saved.”

Jesus, I notice, did not do any of these things. He asked two questions: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

The Terrible Evangelist?

Now Jesus’ questioner knew a LOT of Scripture, so he replied to Jesus by quoting Deut. 6:5, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” and from Lev. 19:18, “and thy neighbor as thyself.”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

What’s up with that? Is Jesus saying that we get to heaven by following the Law? This appears to be terrible evangelism. I once heard Peter Kreeft (Philosophy, Boston College) explain that Jesus typically answered the questioner, rather than the question. So what did Jesus perceive about this questioner?

When he talked with Jesus, that religious scholar, perhaps more than anyone, knew he could never keep the law. Once he finally recognized his own incapacity to keep the law, who would be there to tell him about grace? Jesus never seemed too worried about this possibility.

I have a colleague who used to be on our faculty. He and I were running buddies and spent hours together. He was handsome, intelligent, witty, well-traveled and a good conversationalist. He was hostile towards Christianity, so a head-on evangelistic approach wouldn’t do much good.

One day I asked him, “How do you make decisions about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’?”

“That’s simple”, he said. “I live by five moral principles.”

“Wow, five is pretty good, ” I replied. I was curious how they might compare to the 10 “moral principles” of Exodus 20, so I asked, “What are they?”

He delineated three of them. “So what are the other two?” I continued.

“I can’t remember!” he said. To his credit, he laughed at himself- his failure to recall 40% of the principles that were supposedly guiding his life.

Posing Questions

He did not come to Christ that day. But in the spirit of the great American writer Flannery O’Connor, I had raised some doubts regarding his own doubts about God.

For some people, simply posing questions will cause them to pause and reflect, and that is always good. Jewish believer Randy Newman used this recently as the basis for his book “Questioning Evangelism.”

Sometimes, as Jesus did, we can use what people know to bring them to the point of realizing what they really need.

© 2010 Phillip A. Bishop