Is the personal testimony alone enough for evangelism? (Part I)

By Dan Rieke

Since we know the ultimate hope of evangelism is salvation for the hearer, I think the root level question that undergirds that question is what does it take for someone to obtain salvation?

Personal testimonies are great for demonstrating how someone’s life changed as a result of Jesus, but on their own, they have no power for salvation.

In Romans 1:16 Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” [emphasis added].

Notice Paul doesn’t say, “I am not ashamed of my testimony, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” This is because his testimony only has power if it is enveloped in the gospel. A testimony void of the gospel is just a “neat story.”

What are the aspects of the gospel that a testimony needs to point to?

1.       The universal sinfulness of man

·         Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s standard (Rom. 3:23) and no one is good or righteous or truly seeks after God (Rom. 3:10-12). A person must recognize this (about the world in general and about themselves personally) or they can never respond to the gospel because they will not see their need for God’s forgiveness.

2.       God’s love and mercy balanced with God’s holiness and justice

·         There is a saying that most heresies in the history of the Church have stemmed from an overemphasis on God’s love or on God’s holiness and an under-emphasis on the other. We want to avoid either extreme and be certain to explain that God is loving and doesn’t want us to die in our sin (John 3:16) and that God is a just judge who cannot leave the guilty unpunished (Exod. 34:7).

3.       Jesus’ life, death, burial, and resurrection

·         In order for someone to put their faith in Jesus, they must first know who he is, what he did, and why they should trust in him. Jesus must be identified as God the Son who lived a sinless life on earth, died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, rose from the dead three days later, and that faith in him is the only way to be saved from eternal separation from God (1 Cor. 15:1-4, Rom. 10:9-10, John 3:16, 6:47, 14:6).

4.       Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone

·         Ephesians 2:8-9 sums this up perfectly: “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

·         Although good works are important and a necessary fruit of salvation, they cannot save us from the penalty of our sin because even our “good” deeds are like polluted garments before God (Is. 64:6). We must point to the necessity of faith in Jesus’ work to count for us rather than faith in our own efforts to make us right before God.

·         Our increasingly postmodern world makes absolute statements a taboo, but scripture is clear that Jesus is the only way to the Father and the only way to be saved from Hell (John 14:6). We cannot avoid this fact regardless of our culture’s affinity for “tolerance” and relative truth.

Come back tomorrow to read Part II of the three part series which answers the question; How can a testimony be used effectively?

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