Proclaiming the Gospel in WORD, DEED & POWER

by Steve Neptune amosatm@integrity.com

In 1989, an important summit was held in Manila, Philippines, called the Lausanne II International Congress on World Evangelization. It was the largest gathering of it's kind in the history of the world. More nations were represented than in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea. About 4000 delegates from virtually every denomination, para-church group, and missions agency in the world were present. They gathered together to build relationships, pool information, and develop strategies with the specific goal in view of completing the Great Commission.¹ As he took office, Lausanne's new international director Tom Houston pointed out the need to proclaim the Gospel not only through the spoken word, but through deeds, signs and wonders: "In the last forty years, two great trends have developed. One is proclaiming the Gospel through deed -- seen in the growth of relief organizations who have witnessed to the truth of the Good News of Jesus by deeds of mercy and compassion. The other is proclaiming the Gospel through signs -- seen in the remarkable growth of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements who have one-fifth of the Christians one quarter of the workers, and are responsible for half the growth of the church worldwide. We need both these thrusts, and we also need the spoken word."²

REJOICE OR CRY?

When I first read this quote from Tom Houston, I immediately found myself torn between two reactions -- celebration and consternation. The fact that the Gospel has advanced so remarkably in the last forty certainly gives the sincere Christian cause for rejoicing. At the same time I was troubled by the fact that he said this phenomenal growth -- due to proclaiming the Gospel in deed and in power, as well as in word -- has only been occurring within the last forty years. Questions naturally arise within the thoughtful person like: "What have we been doing in the previous 1900 or so years since Jesus left His disciples here to carry out the Great Commission? What is the Scriptural basis of such a proclamation of the Gospel? Why did the church abandon this powerful three-fold proclamation?"

BACK TO BASICS

Vince Lombardi, famous coach of the Green Bay Packers, used to start every season by holding up a football in front of his players and declaring, "Gentleman, this is a football!" The obvious point he was trying to drive home to these seasoned veterans is that if you're going to be successful, you've got to get back to the basics and execute them properly. We, as the church of Jesus Christ, have strayed from the basics -- from the original mandate and intention of Jesus to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom in word, in deed, and in power (WDP). Without intending to insult anyone's intelligence or spirituality, I would like to hold up the "football" before the church and distinctly declare: "Gentleman, this is our mandate -- to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God in WDP!" I want us to take a look at a few passages of Scripture in the New Testament that highlight this three-fold mandate. There are many scriptures that speak of proclaiming the Gospel in word; there are also many scriptures that speak of proclaiming the Gospel in deed -- in works, in acts of compassion; there are also a multitude of scriptures that talk about proclaiming the Gospel in power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. We're going to look at just a few that weave all three of these together.

WDP IN JESUS MINISTRY

At the inauguration of the ministry of the Lord Jesus, he emphasized these three elements as summarizing His life's mission:

^{18}"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed: ^{19} to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD" (Luke 4:18-19)

It has been fascinating to me over the years to observe different Christian groups who have different emphases all appeal to this same passage of scripture for the justification of their type of ministry. Certain conservative, evangelical churches that emphasize the word appeal to the portion which says "to preach the gospel" as their marching orders. Charismatics and Pentecostals refer to this passage of Scripture and point to the fact that Jesus came to give "sight to the blind" and bring "liberty to the captives" as their mandate for ministering the Gospel in power. Then again, I've heard groups that focus on deeds of compassion and kindness highlight the fact that Jesus placed an emphasized on the "poor" and "oppressed" in His Gospel ministry. The reality of the matter is that we find all three beautifully -- and inextricably -- woven together.

Looking back upon Jesus' earthly ministry, Peter summarizes it by again highlighting these three aspects:

³⁶The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ -- He is Lord of all -- ³⁷that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: ³⁸how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him" (Acts 10:36-38).

Here again we have the three elements: proclaiming the Gospel in word -- "that word you know, which was proclaimed;" in deed -- "who went about doing good;" and in power -- "anointed... with the Holy Spirit and with power....healing all who were oppressed by the devil." I think it is important for us to realize that when we observe Jesus in the Gospel accounts, He seems to "wear" all three of these dimensions, as it were, as a "seamless garment." We rightly marvel at the accounts of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes, yet we must simultaneously remember that Jesus also had one of His disciples carry a bag with money in it specifically to give to the poor. You see, in Jesus' mind there wasn't a tension between, "Do we meet needs in the supernatural or in the natural?" It was all one to Him. God created the heavens and the earth -- the two halves of reality -- the natural and the supernatural. Jesus was 100% God and 100% man -- and He was able to move very comfortably in both the seen and the unseen realms. On one occasion He raised a little girl from the dead. She comes to life and then He says, "Give her something to eat." I mean, right in the moment of the dramatic "spiritual," Jesus was also thinking of the "practical." I think this is very instructive to us. As we proclaim the Word, we need to be simultaneously pressing in to the supernatural to proclaim the gospel with signs fol-lowing while making sure that practical steps are being taken to also proclaim the gospel in deed -- in acts of compassion and kindness.

WDP IN THE EARLY CHURCH

This three-fold chord of Gospel proclamation in word, deed, and power was in evidence not only in the life of the Lord Jesus, but in the lives of his followers. Paul gives us a summary of his min-istry in Romans 15:18-19:

^{18} For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and deed, to make the Gentiles obedient-^{19} in mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jeru-salem and round about to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

Paul, what did you do? "I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." He preached the gospel in it's fullness; he delivered a whole gospel. What did it consist of? WDP! The Lausanne II Congress for World Evangelization -- the umbrella organization for all the various churches, denominations, and ministries that are about the task of the Great Commission to reach the nations -- has as their motto: "The whole church, taking the whole gospel, to the whole world." The whole church -- every denomination, every para-church group, and every individual; taking the whole gospel -- in word, deed and power; to the whole world -- that means every people group, every individual, and also ministering to the whole person -- spirit, soul and body. We don't just bring a word to them and then say "be warm and filled." We come and we bring food to them. We teach them how to feed themselves through agricultural technology. If they don't have water to drink, we dig them wells. If they need healing for their bodies, we'll provide medicine, but we will also pray over them in the name of Jesus to see them supernaturally healed and brought to Christ. If they are demonically oppressed, no amount of bread or medicine will help them. But we can set them free through the authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole church, taking the whole gospel, to the whole world. Paul said he fully preached the gospel. That is our commission as well.

Finally, I want us to look at the first "Ecumenical Council" held in the city of Jerusalem. As the apostles and elders gathered together to discuss the future course of the gospel as it is starting to go into all the world, we again find these three as a standard for proclaiming the gospel:

"All the multitude kept silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul declaring how many miracles and wonders God had worked through them among the Gentiles" (Acts 15:12).

"⁹and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do." (Galatians 2:9-10)

Think of it! Here are these "high wattage players" in the early church -- Peter, James, John, Paul and Barnabas pow-wowing together. There have been some tensions. Some people were kind of wondering about this Paul guy and how he was going about the Gentile mission. But as they talked it through, everybody felt good about it and, in effect, said, "Okay, great! You've got a word to preach to the Gentiles? Go! God is obviously blessing you with signs and wonders. But Paul, just make sure...." What's the third thing? In the midst of all of the questions about doc-trine and practice -- the type of questions we wrestle with (and split over) today -- there was a mentality in the early church that we have often been lacking, which demanded that they include this third part of the Gospel triad in their deliberations: "....that you don't forget to minister to the poor" -- in deed. And Paul said he was eager to do that very thing. WDP! As a reminder, I don't want to leave the impression that these are the only verses that talk about this. This is just a smattering. We find this three-fold testimony throughout the warp and woof of the New Testament.

WDP IN CHURCH HISTORY

In light of the foregoing, one has to wonder how anyone can read the New Testament and not see this pattern of proclamation. Yet we read church history and find that, in fact, the church has failed many times in weaving this beautiful three-fold cord together. Thankfully, we can find isolated instances of those who did walk in this testimony, and they stand forth as shining lights. We think of some of the greats like, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. He was certainly a man of the word. As a matter of fact, in his later years, he actually had book shelves built into his carriage so he could have books to read even when he was riding in his bumpy carriage. He told his young ministers to READ or get out of the ministry! Wesley read voluminously and wrote a number of books and theological treatises. At the same time you can read in his journal how he received a dramatic infilling of the Holy Spirit after his conversion. On some occasions when he preached, people would cry out for mercy under the power of God, and many would fall over as though they were dead. He proclaimed the Gospel in power. And yet, Wesley was also very careful to proclaim the Gospel in deed by supporting orphanages and reaching out to the poor. As with the writer who attempted to catalogue the great heroes of the faith, I must opine as he did in Hebrews 11:32 "And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of ...." Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, D.L. Moody, and William & Catherine Booth -- men and women of WDP. But unfortunately, the reason why we think of their names and why they made such an impact on their generations, is because they are the exceptions. For most of her history, the church has presented, at worst, a distorted gospel, or at best, a truncated, incomplete one.

WHY THE CHURCH FAILED

I think it is important for us to understand why the church has failed, by-and-large, to weave this three-fold cord together so that we can avoid the same pitfalls that have obviously been so tempting to previous generations. First of all, even a cursory reading of ecclesiastical history reveals that while the church started out in power and glory, it rather quickly began to deviate from New Testament patterns of ministry. Eventually, she went into a period that both secular as well as Christian historians have recognized as the Dark Ages. The word of God had all but been supplanted by unbiblical traditions imposed upon the people by a corrupt church hierarchy. The true power of God was eclipsed by superstition. And although a portion of the church proclaimed the Gospel in deed, the opulence of the papacy often overshadowed the humble acts of charity done by the rank and file. The church continued to slide into apostasy until the time of the Protestant Reformation about 500 years ago, when men such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox began challenging the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the errors she espoused.

One of the ways Rome justified her claim of being the one true church was by appealing to the "miracles" which occurred through her "saints" and "official relics." Supposedly, people were getting healed by drinking some of Mother Mary's breast milk which was kept at various shrines. In other places one could touch a fragment of the cross Jesus died on and get healed. There were stories that monks would come into the presence of the Pope and begin literally flying in ecstasy. Of course there was no way to verify most of these "miracle" stories, but certainly the hierarchy of that day wanted to bolster its claims, so they gladly received them as true. The Reformers performed an invaluable service to the true Church of Christ in reestablishing the Bible as the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and in articulating such foundational biblical doctrines as justification by grace through faith and the priesthood of all believers. For their faith, courage, and dedication all future generations of Christians would forever be grateful. However, they made a serious mistake in the way they attacked Rome's miraculous claims to authority. Rather than pointing out that Satan can perform counterfeit miracles and therefore, miracles in and of themselves offer no proof as to their origin, most of the Reformers, with a few exceptions, in essence said, "Hey, there are no miracles for today. Miracles were only for the first century. Miracles were only for the apostles to get the church founded and after that there would be no miracles. Therefore any claims to anything supernatural must be false, and thus all the authoritative claims that you -- the Roman Catholic Church are making -- to be the true church of Jesus Christ on the earth are patently false."³ Although this tactic worked to some extent to undermine the claims of the Roman Catholic Church and to establish the various reformation churches like the Lutherans and Presbyterians, nonetheless, it did ultimate damage to the work of extending the Gospel of the Kingdom throughout the earth. We lost a key thread in the three-fold cord of proclaiming the Gospel in WDP.

The Protestant Reformation brought a resurgence of charitable works, but its overriding emphasis on the word, i.e. the rational, eventually played into the hands of the spirit of the Enlightenment. So starting in the latter half of the 18^th century, with the rise of higher criticism and liberalism, people began to question the truth of the Bible. The stories in Genesis and Jonah being swallowed by a great fish were viewed as myths. Even the miracles of Jesus and the resurrection came under fire. Virtually all of the major denominations and their seminaries capitulated to the spell of Liberalism. Since those in the liberal churches did not believe the Word, and since they certainly didn't believe in the supernatural, i.e., the power, they were left with only one strand of the three-fold cord to justify their existence -- deed. In effect they said, "Let's be good-deed-doers! Let's follow the teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount." Thus they reduced the gospel to moralisms. This was the basic message of liberalism going into the 20^th century. Meanwhile, Bible believing Christians were appalled at this. For many, their reaction to liberalism amounted to saying something like this: "We're not going to follow you in your apostasy and unbelief; we're going to remain true to the Bible. You liberals are preaching a social gospel. You're saying that the gospel is doing good deeds and works. But the Gospel isn't that, the gospel is 'For God so loved the world....' We're going to preach the word, the word, the word. We're not going to embrace your social gospel with all of its good works. Those are dead works apart from a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and we'll have none of it!" Now we can understand why the "Fundamentalists" did that, can't we? But what did they do? They removed one of the key strands to the Gospel proclamation. As you look at the fundamentalist church through the early part of this century - 1920's/1930's/1940's - it was hammering on the Bible with no signs and wonders and no deeds of charity and acts of kindness. So they were playing a one-stringed fiddle and not too many people were listening. But thank God, in His mercy and His grace He is reweaving this three-fold cord. And it's not just happening through a few ministries, but now He's bringing it down to the local churches and He's calling every member to be involved in varying degrees to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom in WDP.

WDP TODAY

I recently read about a church in Aukland, New Zealand, which the Lord graciously drew into practicing this glorious three-fold proclamation of the Gospel. For years it had been a conservative, evangelical church that had made little impact evangelistically on the city. But in the mid 1980's, as God began to sovereignly move in their midst and people began being filled with the Holy Spirit, those in leadership had to reexamine their theological positions on issues such as gifts of the Spirit, healing, and deliverance. Happily they came to the conclusion that, yes, God does want to heal and restore. As they began to take their eyes off of themselves and reach out to the drug addicts and prostitutes in their community, they began to find the power of God being able to deliver these people and bring them into the Kingdom of God. Yet these were people who had no concept of living a disciplined life, how to balance a check book, how to live in family relationships, etc. Many of these people were homeless. The church soon discovered that even though you could deliver them of a drug addiction by the power of God, that doesn't necessarily give them a place to live. So they were forced, out of necessity, to enter into charitable acts of kindness. The pastor of the church Brian Hathaway summarizes their experience:

"What the devil has so neatly done is to put Evangelicals into one camp--mainly emphasizing words, Liberals into another camp -- mainly emphasizing deeds, and Pentecostals and Charismatics into the third camp -- mainly emphasizing signs. As a congregation, we are committed to proclaiming the gospel to our community by words, deeds and signs -- as Jesus did. We have a long way to go. But God is at work in our lives, and for this we give Him praise."⁴

May this also be our testimony, as we endeavor to proclaim this glorious Gospel of the Kingdom of God in the way it was intended by its author--in word, in deed, and in power. SELAH!

1 The risen Christ's final commission given to His church before His ascension into heaven. See Matthew 28:18-20.

2 "Diversity Produces Unity" Lausanne II Newsletter, August 1989, p. 2.

3 For a thorough, scholarly refutation of the view that "miraculous gifts of the Spirit" ceased with the apostles, see former Dallas Theological Seminary professor Jack Deere's book "Surprised by the Power of the Spirit" (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993).

4 "All the fullness of God for the fullness of evangelism" Lausanne II Newsletter, November 1989, p. 1.