God Needs Witnesses More than Lawyers
“You will be my witnesses.” Acts 1:8
The life of faith can be ironic at times. During an on-going conversation with an Indian graduate student, Priyanka, I became the student and my student the teacher. Priyanka had initiated the conversation because she wanted to know more about Christ and The Jesus Way. She had brought to our table that day Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones.
Jones was a British Methodist missionary of the 1920’s and a friend of Gandhi, a fact that resonated with Priyanka. Jones’ principal thesis pointed out that Christ was not a member of the United Kingdom or an American, and that missionaries fail to do the gospel justice when they present him in such a light.
Christ is universal, transnational, a lover of the whole world where each person can see him in the context of his own culture and ethnicity.
An Idea that can free us
But it was another idea from Jones’ book that captivated me and in many way liberated my thinking and my conversation with Priyanka. Too often, I feel inadequate as an apologist to argue persuasively for the gospel. Jones, a missionary to India, recalled a great transformation in his own thinking when he went from lawyer to witness. Jones wrote:
“As God’s lawyer I was a dead failure; as God’s witness I was a success. That one night marked a change in my conception of the work of the Christian minister—he is to be, not God’s lawyer, to argue well for God; but he is to be God’s witness, to tell what Grace has done for an unworthy life.”
As Christ-following faculty, we are not eloquent enough to be convincing defense attorneys for Christ, but we can be expert witnesses of grace in our lives.
Fewer Lawyers, More Witnesses
Some individuals are powerful advocates for Christ. Yet, many of us recoil from the task of making a case for Christ in the courtroom of our daily lives. Of course, all thoughtful humans to some extent consider critically the ultimate issues of life; we can’t help but be part philosopher or theologian or even lawyers weighing evidence. Yet, even though most of us are not physicians, we practice personal health—though not professional orators, we lecture almost daily or attempt to communicate clearly in the committees we lead. All this we do without much fear of failure.
Ironically, the well-articulated and precise syllogism of an attorney making his case is not as persuasive to the aching heart as the simple story of grace, of how God reconciled us to Himself. Though we ought to encourage those whom God has gifted and called to be His lawyers, we can take heart and fear no contradiction in speaking personally the reality of God’s work in our own lives.
We are in many ways like the original disciples, who were notably unlearned men and who replied, when tempted to refrain from proclaiming Jesus, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20)–even to a very thoughtful graduate student.
— Sam Matteson, UNT