Evangelism as God’s Work

by Andrew Miller

[Rev. Andrew J. Miller is a Regional Home Missionary in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and coauthor of Glorifying and Enjoying God: 52 Devotions through the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He is on X at @AndrewMillerOPC.]

It is both freeing and empowering to know that God is working ahead of us. Our evangelism joins the harvest that God has already begun. Whenever a person converts to Christ, God has already been working in that person’s heart. The groundwork has already been laid; thus, an evangelist can’t really take credit for conversion. Sometimes all an evangelist does is nudge the last domino. As in the parable of the sower, God has been tilling the soil.

This is important because one reason Christians struggle to evangelize is that we forget that God is out ahead of us. We think we’re alone. We think that people’s response depends on us and our presentation. But as A.W. Pink points out, “When God calls any of his people to go to a place, they may rest assured that he has fully provided for them in his foredetermined purpose.”[1] God’s servant Elijah, for example, went to the brook Cherith with God’s promise: “You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” (1 Kings 17:4). He went to the widow of Zarephath with God’s promise, “Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (1 Kings 17:9). It’s the same in the New Testament; in Acts 18:9–10, God tells the Apostle Paul, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

God is ahead of us: this is a liberating truth for Christians in the great privilege of sharing the gospel. God has already been at work. You don’t know how God will use your witness in a person’s life. It may be at the beginning of God’s work, the planting of seed. It might be at the end of God’s work—the harvest. It might be during God’s work—the watering. But God gives the growth; He gets the glory. We see this very clearly in 1 Corinthians 3:5–9:

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God’s building.

Every stage matters. This means that what you are doing is important and that its effectiveness belongs to the Lord.

Jesus declared in John 10:27–28 that people’s response of faith to His Word is rooted in His first making people His own. He said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). While “Calvinism” unfortunately gets dismissed by many Christians as being deterministic and anti-evangelism, you can’t get around the logic of Jesus’s statement: something makes a person Jesus’ sheep before they believe. The theological term for this is election.

Adolf Schlatter, who managed to hold influential scholarly posts in Germany and produce massively popular devotional material as an evangelical in the days when theological liberalism was taking hold, put it this way in his landmark biblical-theological study Faith in the New Testament: “Faith is preceded by an original relationship to God, which reaches its active conclusion and fruitful result in faith.”[2]

God creates a relationship of love and favor with His sheep, who will in time hear His voice—often through the feeble voices of messengers proclaiming His Word. Long before you or I ever share the gospel with someone, long before we’ve even met them, God has set His love upon them. After saying that God elects some to eternal life “out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works,” the Westminster Confession of Faith says that God has also ordained the means by which they will hear the gospel and be saved:

As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. (WCF 3.6)

In other words, God’s Spirit makes the gospel “effectual.” God’s Spirit must do this: “Convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 31). Whenever you share the gospel, God is at work behind the scenes.

This means that when a person converts and trusts in Christ, credit is not due to the one who shared the gospel.[3] This also answers the objection that people raise to election: that it saps evangelism. I was recently asked why I would church plant knowing that God has not chosen many people in my area. The response is simple: I don’t know whom God has chosen or how many. I know He has chosen some, and He not only chooses people, but He sends out messengers to herald the good news. My responsibility is faithfulness; God will produce fruitfulness. Sean McGever helpfully likens evangelists to mail-carriers’ bringing a great message to people.[4] When you receive a great gift in the mail, you credit the sender, not the mailperson![5] We don’t blame the postal service for delivering bills to us. Yet “in modern evangelism we celebrate, study, and idolize far too many messengers while minimizing the sender.”[6] As two Old Testament figures put it, are we in the place of God (Gen. 30:2; 50:19)? He is the Giver of life.

God not only elects people to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, but He also sends those who proclaim it (e.g., Luke 1:19). The very word apostle means “sent one.” God is a sending God, who sends His Son, His Spirit, His angels, His Word, and His people. As Pink points out, “When God works he always works at both ends of the line.”[7] He elaborates, in reference to God’s providence over the widow of Zarephath being in the right place at the right time:

If Jacob sends his sons down into Egypt seeking food in time of famine, Joseph is moved to give it unto them. If Israel’s spies enter Jericho, there is a Rahab raised up the shelter them. If Mordecai is begging the Lord to come to the deliverance of his threatened people, King Ahasuerus is rendered sleepless, made to search the state records and befriend Mordecai and his fellows. If the Ethiopian eunuch is desirous of an understanding of God’s word, Philip is sent to expound it to him. . . . Elijah had received no intimation as to where this widow resided, but divine providence timed her steps so that she encountered him at the entrance to the city. What encouragements to faith are these![8]

I would add, what encouragements to evangelism are these! The opportunities that we have for gospel conversations are not just because God put us in the right place at the right time, but because He also put others in the right place at the right time. We’re not alone in evangelism: God is out ahead of us.

This should be especially encouraging for pastors who proclaim the gospel each and every Lord’s Day. Your preaching hits home not because of its particular elegance—which might be entirely lacking—but because God’s Spirit worked in your preparation and delivery and because He worked in the hearers, not only during your sermon, but before. Moreover, God’s Spirit will work after your sermon is over. I can still remember hearing sermons that God particularly used in my life though they were probably long forgotten by the preachers who delivered them.

These truths should encourage all of us, pastor or not, to join God’s bountiful harvest by sharing our hope with the lost (Matt. 9:37–38). We share God’s Word, knowing that His activity goes before us and will continue after us. After all, the great gospel commission of Matthew 28 sandwiches the commission in between Jesus’ pledges of His power and presence:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:18–20, emphasis added)

Notes

1. A.W. Pink, The Life of Elijah (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 2024), 46.
2. Adolf Schlatter, Faith in the New Testament: A Study in Biblical Theology (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Academic, 2022), 158.
3. McGever points out that we often fall into “a logical and theological fallacy: correlation is causation.” Sean McGever, Evangelism: For the Care of Souls (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham, 2023), 9–10.
4. “The core of evangelism is being a messenger. The message is not ours, and the effectiveness of the message is not ours.” McGever, Evangelism, 59.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Pink, Elijah, 54.
8. Ibid.