Who is God?
In 1 John 4:19. we read that “We love because he first loved us.” (ESV). And so we reach out to love God and our neighbors – especially our international neighbors. But what is it to truly love God and our neighbors?
To love God is to trust Him and the fruit of genuine trust is seen in obedience to God, not out of duty but out of delight. And while there are many good ways to love our neighbors, we read a little earlier in 1 John this, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16)
The first way we love our neighbor as ourselves is by obeying God to tell them the Good News, as Mark Dever aptly put it, “The good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in his image and to know him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. in his great love, God became man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust in Him. He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice and that God’s wrath against us had been exhausted. He now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are bron again into a new life, an eternal life with God.” (Dever, 2007, p. 43)
But how can we do that if we cannot speak the same language?
We live in America, and so we seek to help our international neighbors learn English so that they can thrive and assimilate here well. And we also live in God’s world, so we share the Good News so that they might have the opportunity to make an informed response to the Gospel.
At the same time, we also recognize that genuine community is where great heart conversations happen and as creatures made in God’s image, we long for genuine community. Ultimately the best visibil demonstration of the Gospel is seen and experienced through the Church. But stepping into “church” is not as easy as we think, nor is our “church” jargon easy to understand.
Through evangelistic studies, we introduce the “ABCs” of Biblical language and concepts and as seekers grow, we pray that God will grow their desire to see and experience more fully the Good News preached and lived out within the local church.
References:
•Dever, M. (2007). The Gospel and Personal Evangelism. Crossway.