A Call to Repentance

 

In 1994, the Billy Graham Center put out a book edited by Robert Coleman.  Dr. Coleman gathered some powerful words from a legendary preacher, Horatius Bonar, on evangelism.  He called it Words to Winners of Souls.  I have been greatly blessed by it.  A few days ago, I was reading it (been reading it slowly, because it really is a lot to absorb) and was blessed and convicted.

Bonar recounts that in 1651, the Church of Scotland made a confession of ministerial sin, acknowledging that the sins of the nation and God’s judgment upon it fell on their feet.  Elsewhere, someone has noted that the Methodists of England, in a period of decline, acknowledged their failings and developed a plan.  See Chris Ritter’s summary of it here

Bonar suggested that those who would be soul-winners need to repent.  He laid out, based on the Scottish confession, some sins to repent of:

1.       We have been unfaithful. “The fear of man and the love of his applause have often made us afraid.  We have been unfaithful to our own souls, to our flocks, and to our brethren: unfaithful in the pulpit, in visiting, in discipline, in the church…. Instead of the particularization of the sin reproved, there has been the vague allusion. Instead of the bold reproof, there has been the feeble disapproval.”

2.       We have been carnal and unspiritual “The tone of our life has been low and earthly.  Associating too much and too infinitely with the world, we have in a great measure become assimilated to its ways.”

3.       We have been selfish.  “We have shrunk from toil, from difficulty… We have been worldly and covetous.  We have not presented ourselves unto God as ‘living sacrifices’ laying ourselves, our substances, our faculties, our all, upon His altar.  We seem altogether to have lost sight of that self-sacrificing principle on which even as Christians, but much more as ministers, we are called upon to act.”

4.       We have been slothful. “Precious hours and days have been wasted in sloth, in company, in pleasure, in idle or desultory reading [tv, social media, video games], that might have been devoted to the closet or the study or the pulpit or the meeting!”

5.       We have been cold.  I think particularly of my own sense that if we do not share the Gospel to perishing sinners, we are cold, heartless, and ruthless.

6.       We have been timid. “Fear has often led us to smooth down or generalize truths… we have shrunk from reproving, rebuking and exhorting with all long-suffering and doctrine. We have feared to alienate friends or awaken the wrath of enemies.”

7.       We have been wanting in solemnity. We lack the seriousness demanded byt the task, as shown to us Methodists by Wesley or Nelson or Asbury.

8.       We have preached ourselves, not Christ. “We have preached too often so as to exalt ourselves and not Christ; so as to draw men’s eyes to ourselves instead of fixing them on Him and His Cross”

9.       We have used words of man’s wisdom.  We have acted “as if by well-studied, well-polished, well-reasoned discourses, we could so gild and beautify the Cross as to make no longer repulsive, but irresistibly attractive to the carnal eye.”

10.   We have not fully preached a free Gospel.  That is, we have not preached that we are saved by grace through faith ALONE, insisting on the sinner’s immediate repentance and turning to God.

11.   We have not duly studied and honored the word of God. “We have given a greater prominence to man’s writings, man’s opinions, man’s systems in our studies than to the WORD.”

12.   We have not been men of prayer. “We have allowed business or study or active labor to interfere with our closet hours.”

13.   We have not honored the spirit of God. “We have grieved Him by the dishonor done to His person as the third person of the Trinity.”

14.   We have had little of the mind of Christ. “We have had little of the grace, the compassion, the lowliness, the meekness of God’s eternal Son. His weeping over Jerusalem is a feeling in which we have but little heartfelt sympathy. His seeking of the lost is little imitated by us.”

I am  praying that the United Methodist Church, if only in Kentucky, could adopt this confession and repentance and get back down to the business of conversion and discipleship.  One of the things Robert Coleman has said has really stuck with me and revitalized my own faith-sharing is that "evangelism is an internal struggle."  That is, do I love Jesus enough to obey Him and go where He says go and speak what He says to speak?  At least I can repent and get up and move forward!