A Master’s Seminary Professor named Jesse Johnson gave a
lecture last March at the 2012 Shepherd’s Conference titled “The Way(s) of the
Master.” The lecture was a critique of
the evangelistic method promoted by street evangelist Ray Comfort called “The
Way of the Master”. If you have ever
seen a YouTube video of Ray such as the 180 movie or the occasional video of
Kirk Cameron sharing the gospel then you are probably already familiar with the
evangelistic approach. The approach
always starts out the same,
“Do you think you are a good person?”
99% of people say something like, “yah I think so, I’ve
never murdered anyone, I’m faithful to my wife, I help the old lady cross the
street…” To which the Way of the Master
evangelist says, “Did you know that Jesus said that if you get angry at your
brother you have already committed murder in your heart? Have you ever lusted after a woman? Then you
have already committed adultery. Ever lied? Ever used God’s name as a curse
word? You have already broken half of the
Ten Commandments. By your own admission
you are a murderous, adulterous, lying, blasphemer. If you were to die right now and stand before
God how do you think you would do if He judged you according to the Ten
Commandments?”
That is a simplified version, but I think you get the gist
of it. The motto is “Law to the proud,
Grace to the humble” and the strategy is to use the Ten Commandments, aka
“Law”, as a mirror to show people that they are sinful before God. Since most evangelistic methods avoid sin and
judgment, the Way of the Master has appealed to many conservative evangelicals,
especially those in the reformed crowd.
This is why many people found it strange that Jesse Johnson
would give a negative critique of The Way of the Master. Johnson’s criticism focused on two aspects,
1.) An overemphasis on the Law, and 2.) The method is a single approach to
evangelism making it a divisive issue in churches. Under those two headings Jesse Johnson listed
about a dozen problems with The Way of the Master. Here’s his written critique:
http://thecripplegate.com/concerns-with-the-way-of-the-master/
Jesse has a lot to say, which I actually think is a
problem. Some of the concerns he brings
up are whether or not Martin Luther used the Ten Commandments in evangelism,
whether or not there is something you can do to be saved, and whether or not
people go to hell for breaking the Law or rejecting Jesus. These are important questions, but they can
be distracting. When you shoot a shotgun
of arguments against a position, your opponent will simply pick the weakest
arguments to refute. This is exactly
what happens. When Ray Comfort responds
he picks a bunch of Jesse’s arguments and shoots them down one by one. Jesse Johnson doesn’t respond (I suspect
because it was getting out of hand and was becoming divisive). This becomes confusing because it gives the
impression that Comfort has soundly won the argument. From the audiences’ point of view, Comfort writes
a long blog about how Jesse’s critique is incorrect and then Jesse Johnson
doesn’t respond. Unfortunately the
discussion ends there.
I was hoping there would be more of a discussion between the
two parties on the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law
(rather than whether or not Martin Luther used the Ten Commandments in
evangelism). Personally, I like using
the Ten Commandments in evangelism, but it is not about what you like, it’s
about being accurate. From what I can
tell, the Ten Commandments are part of the Mosaic Law and not independent from
it. If this is the case then verses like
James 2:10 “
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles
in one point, he has become guilty of all” and Galatians 5:3 “And I
testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under
obligation to keep the whole Law” seem to indicate a specific unity of the
law. In other words, the O.T. Law is not
separated into different categories, but rather the Mosaic Law is a single unit
as a whole.
It should not be controversial for me to say that we are not obliged to follow
the Mosaic Law today. Have you ever been
insulted that your family eats hot dogs, shrimp, and seafood? Have you ever
rebuked your sinning brother for wearing a t-shirt mixed with linen and
wool? Ever objected to crazy Uncle Ben
boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk? No? Why not? Because the Mosaic Law was given to Israel
and we Gentiles are not under them.
Moreover the Mosaic Law was done away with - Romans 10:4;
Galatians 3:23-25; Ephesians 2:15, Hebrews 7:11-12, 8:13, so even Jews who
recognize that Jesus is the Messiah are no longer obliged to follow the Mosaic
Law.
If this is the case, then why do we act like the Ten
Commandments is still binding? The
answer is because there is something of an overlap. The Ten Commandments is not binding today,
but many of the values that the Ten Commandments advocate are still commanded
by the New Testament. Try this
illustration. When you are in California
you are under California laws such as stopping at a red light. If you run a red light in New York, are you
guilty of breaking California Law? No, you are out of that system. Of course, you are still guilty of running a
red light, just under New York laws.
The same goes for the Bible. Almost every one of the Ten Commandments is
repeated in the New Testament (eg. Lk 4:8, 1Cor 6:9-10, Romans 13:9, Ephesians
6:1-2). However there is at least one
commandment that is missing. The Forth
commandment of keeping the Sabbath holy (Ex 20:8-11) is nowhere repeated as
obligatory in the New Testament. If we
were to believe that the Ten Commandments are still binding, then we would have
to move church service from Sundays to Saturdays and stop all weekend
activities.
So as Christians we do not follow the Mosaic Law (which
includes the Ten Commandment), but we follow the New Testament. With that said, I actually do not have a problem with using
the Ten Commandments in evangelism. They
are helpful and concise and I think they can be used to point out the law that
we already have on our hearts. Moreover,
in my experience most people cite the Ten Commandments without me even bringing
it up. When asked if they think they
will go to heaven, a lot of people instantly start judging themselves according
to the Ten Commandments, “well, I’ve never murdered, I’ve never committed adultery,
I honor my parents…” and so on. All you
have to do is show them that their own standard will condemn them. The problem I do have with this sort of evangelism is that
some people really will act as if the Ten Commandments are still binding in and
of themselves which is false. But otherwise,
I find a lot of benefit in the Way of the Master and their form of evangelism.
p.s. watch the 180 movie! It's interesting and if for no other reason you can watch Ray Comfort evangelize at Cerritos College and Huntington Beach.
On September 18, Professor Karen L. King announced at a conference in Rome that she had come into the possession of a papyrus fragment that included the shocking words "Jesus said to them, 'My wife.'" Dr. Karen King is Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She says she obtained the fragment from an anonymous source who in turn acquired it from a German artifact dealer. The New York Times gives this description of the fragment:
So what are we to make of this great revolutionary discovery? Absolutely nothing. For one, the fragment is thought to date to the fourth century, about three hundred years after the life of Christ. Two, it contains only fragmented sentences consisting of eight separated lines and totaling thirty words with no surrounding paragraphs or context. Three, it is the only surviving text that suggests that Jesus was married which means that it was not a believable idea to those closest to the historical Jesus. Moreover, it is written in Coptic (an Egyptian language) which means the most that this fragment can prove is that a small sect of Egyptian Christians made it a part of their religion to believe that Jesus had a wife. "This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century."*
