Connecting Through Apologetics

1 Peter 3:15

By Michael Licona

Gary Chapman’s best-selling book The Five Love Languages has helped many marriages. The thesis of the book is that there are five basic ways in which people like to be loved and that each of us has a primary love language. These are:

(1) words of affirmation,

(2) physical affection,

(3) quality time,

(4) acts of service, and

(5) gift giving.

Marriages often go awry because we tend to love our spouses in our own primary love language rather than theirs. The result is that we fail to communicate love to them because we are loving them the way we want to be loved rather than the way they want.

A similar mistake is often made when sharing the gospel.

In his book Choosing Your Faith, Mark Mittelberg describes six ways in which people prefer to receive truth.

We tend to communicate truth in the manner we prefer to receive it. If the person with whom we are talking prefers to receive truth in a manner different than we are communicating, they may not hear us, just as your spouse may not hear you communicate love to him or her if you’re not speaking in their love language.

In an increasingly secular culture in North America, including evidence that supports the core beliefs of the gospel, such as Jesus’ death and resurrection, is becoming more important.

In 1 Peter 3:15, the apostle tells us to be ready always to provide a defense to everyone who asks us to give an account for why we are Christians.

The Greek term for providing a defense is apologia, from which we get the English term apologetics.

I think that every Christian should become familiar with apologetics because it provides three priceless benefits.

It informs seekers.

It inoculates the saved.

It impacts society.

1. It informs seekers.

Those who outright reject the gospel usually do so for one of two reasons: intellectual or volitional.

If the latter, no amount of evidence will persuade them to accept the gospel.

However, if their objection to accept the gospel is intellectual in nature, evidence can provide the answer.

Whether Paul was speaking to Jews or Gentiles, he provided the resurrection of Jesus as evidence that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God.

And notice that he did not even appeal to the Scriptures when speaking to the philosophers in Athens, since they would not have accepted them as being divinely inspired (Acts 17). Now that we have entered the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is easy to recognize that we live in a post-Christian culture that is far different than it was in the 1950s.

A large percentage of Americans have never read the Bible and don’t recognize it as God’s Word.

Quoting it to others will often have little impact.

For example, if I were to say to someone that the Bible teaches that all have sinned and come up short of God’s moral standard for them and that this will result in my eternal separation from God apart from God’s grace, that person might respond simply that he doesn’t believe the Bible.

At that point, without compelling evidence for why the Bible should be regarded as historically trustworthy, it will be difficult for the discussion to proceed further.

However, if I were to provide a solid case for the historical trustworthiness of the Bible and the person is open-minded, the discussion may proceed.”

2. It inoculates the saved.

American football is a sport that is often brutal on the human body.

Teams spend a lot of money purchasing protective equipment, the most important of which is the helmet.

If one were to play without shoulder pads, an injury could sideline them for the season.

However, if one were to play without a helmet, an injury could end their life.

So, the greatest precautions must be taken to protect the head.

Isn’t it interesting, then, that we often send our children off to a secular university without head protection?

Should we be surprised when we learn they are questioning or even abandoning their faith?

A 2007 report by two Jewish researchers, “titled “Religious Beliefs & Behavior of College Faculty,” revealed that 53 percent of American college faculty had unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians, the highest percentage of all religions. Only 22 percent had unfavorable feelings toward Muslims.21

It is becoming more common to learn of Christian students to whom the professor has openly said during class that his or her objective that semester was to see the Christian student abandon his or her faith.

This would never happen to Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist students without severe warnings being issued to the offending faculty member.

But no actions are usually taken against the professor when Christian students are the target.

Of course, only a fraction of faculty members are so bold. But with more than one-half of American faculty thinking unfavorably of evangelical Christians, doesn’t it make sense to provide our Christian students with head protection?

Apologetics can do just that!

3. It impacts society.

Nearly a hundred years ago, J. Gresham Machen was a professor at Princeton who recognized a trend toward liberalism at Princeton.

As a result, he and a few others formed Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929.

A few years prior, Machen wrote the following: “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation . . . to be controlled by ideas which . . . “prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion”22

Machen said that our evangelistic efforts would yield increasingly meager results as our culture moved toward regarding Christianity as only a pragmatic system of beliefs not necessarily true.

His words have become somewhat prophetic. If the Christian church were to begin adopting a robust use of apologetics, we could begin to turn this cultural trend. The results will be greater fruit in evangelistic efforts.

In conclusion, we have seen that every Christian should familiarize themselves with apologetics because it provides three priceless benefits: It informs seekers. It inoculates the saved. And it impacts society.”

Excerpt From

Nelson's Preacher's Sourcebook

Thomas Nelson

https://books.apple.com/us/book/nelsons-preachers-sourcebook/id6443651804

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