How Do You Preach Salvation to People Who Don’t Think They Need Saving?

There was a time when preaching the gospel in America often began with a number of assumptions. Even people who were not Christians generally understood what Christians meant by words such as sin, salvation, repentance, judgment, heaven, and hell. They might have rejected those teachings, but at least the categories themselves were familiar.

That can no longer be assumed. Increasingly, Christians are speaking to people who do not merely reject the biblical definition of sin; they reject the very concept that sin exists. Many do not believe the Bible is the Word of God, do not accept God as the source of moral authority, and do not believe that human beings will ultimately answer to Him. When that is the worldview of the hearer, simply announcing, “You are a sinner and need to be saved,” may sound like an answer to a question that person has never considered asking.

This creates an important challenge for the church: How do we preach salvation to people who do not believe they need saving? The answer is not to abandon Scripture, soften the gospel, or redefine sin so that it becomes more acceptable. The answer is to recognize that many people today must be taken farther back in the biblical story before they can understand the meaning of salvation.

The Gospel Assumes a Story

The statement “Jesus died for your sins” contains an enormous amount of theology. It assumes several foundational truths that many modern hearers may no longer share:

·   There is a God.

·   God created humanity.

·   God has the right to define good and evil.

·   Human beings are morally accountable to Him.

·   Humanity has violated His will.

·   This rebellion has consequences.

·   Those consequences cannot be removed merely through human effort.

·   God Himself has acted in Jesus Christ to provide reconciliation and forgiveness.

For someone raised around Christianity, those ideas may already be familiar. For someone living entirely outside the Christian worldview, almost every one of those assumptions may first need to be explained. That does not mean we are changing the gospel. It means we are telling enough of the story for the gospel to make sense.

Sometimes We Must Begin Before Romans 3:23

Romans 3:23 declares that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That truth remains essential to the gospel. Yet a person who does not believe in God, moral accountability, or sin may immediately respond, “Sinned against whom?” In such cases, the evangelistic conversation may need to begin much earlier.

Sometimes we must begin with Genesis 1 before we arrive at Romans 3. The Bible begins not with human guilt but with God: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Everything that follows rests upon that foundation. If God is Creator, then humanity is not self-created, self-defining, or morally autonomous. We belong to Someone. Human life has meaning because it originates in God, and morality has authority because it reflects the character and will of the One who made us.

The Christian message of sin therefore cannot be separated from the Christian doctrine of creation. Sin is not merely breaking an arbitrary religious rule. Sin is the creature rejecting the Creator’s rightful authority. It is humanity attempting to define good and evil independently of God, which is precisely the pattern introduced in Genesis 3.

People May Reject the Word “Sin” While Recognizing Its Effects

One of the interesting contradictions of modern culture is that people may reject the concept of sin while speaking constantly about injustice. They still recognize the realities produced by human evil:

·   Cruelty

·   Exploitation

·   Dishonesty

·   Abuse

·   Greed

·   Hatred

·   Betrayal

·   Racism

·   Oppression

·   Corruption

·   Violence

Very few people actually live as though there is no such thing as right and wrong. They may disagree dramatically over what belongs in each category, but they still make moral judgments every day. That provides an important point of contact.

The Christian need not begin by demanding, “Do you believe in sin?” It may be more useful to ask, “Do you believe there are things human beings ought not do?” Most people will answer yes. From there another question follows: “Why?” Where does moral obligation come from? Why ought anyone behave one way rather than another? Why is cruelty truly wrong rather than merely unpopular? Eventually the question of morality leads beyond human preference. Christianity gives a coherent answer: good and evil are grounded in the character of God.

The Problem Is Not Merely Around Us

Most people have little difficulty recognizing what is wrong with other people. We can quickly identify corruption, greed, selfishness, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and injustice when they are displayed by someone else. The gospel, however, presents a far more uncomfortable diagnosis: the problem is not merely out there; it is also in us.

Jesus taught that evil proceeds from within the human heart. Paul declared that all have sinned. Scripture does not divide humanity into two categories consisting of good people and bad people. It presents humanity as one fallen race in need of reconciliation with God.

This is where Christianity differs sharply from many modern ways of understanding human problems. A number of human tools can address real needs, but none can solve the deepest spiritual problem:

·   Education may improve knowledge.

·   Government may restrain behavior.

·   Therapy may help people understand themselves.

·   Social reform may correct genuine injustice.

·   Medicine may treat disease.

·   Technology may solve practical problems.

·   None of these can reconcile a sinner to God.

The deepest human problem is spiritual.

Salvation Makes No Sense Until the Problem Is Understood

Imagine offering someone medicine for a disease he does not believe exists. He is unlikely to take it. That is the difficulty Christians increasingly face when speaking about salvation. People naturally seek solutions that match the problem as they understand it:

·   If the problem is ignorance, they will seek education.

·   If the problem is economic inequality, they will seek political or economic reform.

·   If the problem is low self-esteem, they will seek affirmation.

·   If the problem is social oppression, they will seek liberation.

·   If the problem is psychological trauma, they will seek healing.

There may be truth in some of those diagnoses, and Christians should never dismiss genuine suffering or injustice. Yet Scripture goes deeper. Human beings are alienated from the God who created them. That alienation is what makes salvation necessary. The gospel is not merely an invitation to become religious. It is God’s announcement that reconciliation has been made possible through Jesus Christ.

Paul Faced This Problem in Athens

Acts 17 provides one of the clearest biblical examples of communicating God’s truth to people who did not begin with a biblical worldview. When Paul entered Athens, he encountered a thoroughly pagan culture. These people did not share Israel’s Scriptures, covenant history, or expectation of the Messiah.

Paul did not change the message, but he changed where he began explaining it. He began with their religious environment and their altar “to an unknown god.” From there he led them through a sequence that rebuilt the worldview necessary for them to understand the gospel:

·   Creator

·   Humanity

·   Idolatry

·   Repentance

·   Judgment

·   Resurrection

Paul’s method should teach the church something important: faithfulness does not require beginning every gospel conversation at exactly the same point. The destination remains Christ. The starting point may differ.

Jesus Did the Same Thing

Jesus also addressed people differently according to where they were spiritually. He never changed truth to suit His audience, but He did not approach every person with an identical script:

·   Nicodemus was a Pharisee and teacher of Israel, so Jesus spoke to him about being born again and drew from Israel’s history.

·   The Samaritan woman had a very different background, so Jesus began with water, worship, relationships, and her spiritual thirst.

·   The rich young ruler came convinced of his own righteousness, so Jesus confronted the idol of wealth in his heart.

·   Zacchaeus needed grace that transformed his relationship with money and those he had wronged.

That distinction is crucial. The church must never change the gospel, but we must learn how to explain the gospel to the person actually standing in front of us.

The Authority of Scripture Does Not Depend Upon Human Recognition

There is another danger we must avoid. When someone says, “I do not believe the Bible is God’s Word,” Christians may begin acting as though Scripture therefore has no relevance to that person. But Scripture’s authority does not depend upon human approval.

A law does not cease to exist because someone refuses to recognize the legislature that enacted it. Gravity does not suspend itself because someone does not believe in gravity. Likewise, if Scripture truly is God’s Word, its authority does not disappear because the hearer rejects it.

We should therefore continue to use Scripture, but we can do so wisely. Rather than merely saying, “The Bible says it, therefore you must accept it,” we can explain what Scripture says about reality and allow the hearer to consider whether the biblical explanation actually makes sense of the world he experiences. The Bible explains:

·   Human dignity.

·   Moral obligation.

·   Our longing for justice.

·   Human selfishness.

·   Guilt.

·   Our capacity for both astonishing compassion and horrifying cruelty.

·   Why humanity repeatedly creates systems intended to improve society only to discover that sinful people carry human corruption into those systems.

The Christian worldview has extraordinary explanatory power.

Conviction Is the Work of the Holy Spirit

Recognizing these challenges should also relieve Christians of a burden God never placed upon us. We cannot make someone recognize his sin. We cannot argue someone into conviction or manipulate someone into repentance. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Our responsibility is faithful witness. In practice, that means we:

·   Explain.

·   Reason.

·   Answer questions.

·   Confront falsehood.

·   Demonstrate the character of Christ.

·   Proclaim Scripture.

·   Testify to what God has done through Jesus.

Somewhere between the spoken Word and the human heart, the Holy Spirit must do something only God can do. He awakens, convicts, opens understanding, and draws people toward Christ. That reality should produce both humility and confidence. We do not have to manipulate people, because conversion does not ultimately depend upon our rhetorical skill. At the same time, we should never conclude that speaking truth is useless simply because someone appears unmoved.

We May Be Sowing Before Someone Else Reaps

Jesus sometimes described spiritual work using agricultural imagery, and Paul later used the same pattern of planting, watering, and God giving the increase. That is particularly helpful in a post-Christian culture. A conversation that does not end in conversion may still be spiritually significant:

·   Someone begins questioning whether morality can exist without God.

·   Someone recognizes that humanity’s problems are deeper than politics.

·   Someone admits that guilt cannot always be explained away.

·   Someone begins wondering whether Jesus truly rose from the dead.

None of those moments may look like conversion, but they may be part of the journey toward it. The church must resist measuring every gospel conversation solely by whether someone immediately prays a prayer of salvation.

·   Some encounters are planting.

·   Some are watering.

·   Some are removing stones.

·   Some are breaking hardened ground.

·   Occasionally God allows us to participate in the harvest.

The Church Must Recover the Whole Story

Perhaps one reason evangelism sometimes feels ineffective is that Christians have attempted to reduce the gospel to a few statements detached from the larger biblical story. But Christianity is not merely a technique for getting people into heaven. It is the story of reality:

·   God created.

·   Humanity rebelled.

·   Sin corrupted.

·   God promised redemption.

·   Christ came.

·   Christ died.

·   Christ rose.

·   Christ reigns.

·   Christ will return.

·   Human beings are called to repent, believe, and be reconciled to God.

That story explains both what is wrong with the world and what God has done about it. When someone says, “I don’t believe in sin,” the Christian does not need to panic. That may simply tell us where the conversation needs to begin.

We begin with God. We explain creation. We talk about human dignity and moral responsibility. We address the brokenness people already recognize. We help them see that the brokenness of the world runs through every human heart. Eventually we arrive where every faithful gospel conversation must arrive: Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Speaking the Word of God in a culture that rejects biblical authority is not a waste of time. In many ways, it makes faithful Christian witness more necessary than ever. But we must recognize the world in which we are speaking. We cannot always assume people understand what Christians mean by sin, recognize their accountability to God, or understand why salvation is necessary.

So we patiently tell the whole story:

·   There is a God.

·   He created us.

·   We belong to Him.

·   He is holy.

·   We have rebelled against Him.

·   That rebellion has separated us from Him.

·   We cannot rescue ourselves.

·   God has acted in Jesus Christ.

·   Jesus entered our world, bore our sin, died, and rose again.

·   Through Him sinners can be forgiven, reconciled to God, and given eternal life.

The church’s task is not to make the gospel acceptable by removing its difficult truths. Our task is to make the gospel understandable without compromising its truth. Then we trust the Holy Spirit to do what only the Holy Spirit can do: open blind eyes, convict sinful hearts, and awaken people to the realization that they really do need a Savior.

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