John 13:20 “I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

This verse is at the same time challenging, encouraging, and frustrating for anyone who is actively involved in evangelism. It all hinges on what Jesus meant by “accepts” here. We set up all sorts of formulas for how people are saved, how they pass from death to life, but on the face of it, this blows all of that out of the water. We have the famous formula in Romans, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) This seems even more simple than that! We put all sorts of doctrinal barriers in people’s way, when God “wants all men to be saved and to come to a know­ledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) We need to be careful we don’t fall into a simplistic, “Into bliss and out of blister” picture of salvation, (as one of my grandfathers expressed it) but we aren’t to complicate it unnecessarily. Jesus certainly doesn’t mean something casual, but we definitely need to let Him define in each case just what acceptance means. We tend to think of Christians in terms of church members, but there are manifestly some church members who have never made Jesus their Lord, and there are some outside the organized church whom the Lord counts as His. We are back to needing to be faithful to share the Good News of salvation with all who will hear, and leaving the rest in God’s hands.

This is an especially acute issue for me since I serve in Japan, which has by far the lowest “rate of return” of anywhere in the world when it comes to evangelism. As I have written before, my father once prostrated himself on the floor and cried out, “God, if I’m standing in the way of revival in Japan, then take me out of the way!” I understand and empathize with him completely! We have been in Omura for fully 42 years now, since I arrived in September, 1981. Some people have accepted the Gospel and been baptized and a few have gone through the motions and just gotten wet, but not so many total. However, there have been many who have seemed to genuinely accept us, which is not a small thing in this xenophobic culture. Given this verse, I cannot say definitively what their eternal destiny is. I am not to dilute the Gospel in any way, but neither am I to push people away. Jesus Himself accepted the people who came to Him, but He also said some very strong things that caused many to drop away, as came up in the readings a few days ago. I am not to sugar-coat the Gospel, but neither am I to set barriers in people’s way. All I can do is be faithful, and pray that the results will be exactly as God desired, for His glory.

Father, thank You for this reminder. You know the people I’m thinking of right now. I pray that acceptance would blossom to full commitment leading to active discipleship, building up the Body of Christ for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!