Proclamation vs Exhortation
By John Gavazzoni

The seasoned student of scripture is characterized, among other things, by his or her immersion into the whole body of the Bible's message. He or she comes away from that immersion with a true sense of who God really is, and what He's all about, and does not suffer from a proof-text mentality to which the novice is more inclined. Imagine, as an example, a young person who has been raised in a family atmosphere of prejudice against persons not of their "kind." Then that young person has the opportunity to hear someone of that other "kind" speak at length in such a way as to reveal the wonderful commonality of his humanity. It becomes clear in the course of his discourse, that he shares, for instance, a sense of moral and ethical decency that has been a thread even in the young listener's upbringing.

Yet the young listener does not come away with an accurate sense of what kind of person the speaker really is from the whole of his discourse, but focuses in on certain words, phrases, or sentences, that could, by stretch of prejudicial imagination, support the bias of his upbringing. Likewise, theological perspectives are, more often than not, woven together by an arrangement of individual proof-texts, so as to present a view seriously in contradistinction to where the Bible is coming from, starting in Genesis, and where it arrives at in Revelation. The factor of bad translation certainly exacerbates this conundrum.

One form of this is the tendency in Western-style evangelistic preaching to focus upon the feature of exhortation in scripture to the detriment of the very obvious prominence of the core feature of proclamation. The mature student of the Bible understands the latter to be the basis of the former. The hermeneutics of modern evangelistic preaching aims at getting men to act in response to the message, in contrast to the apostolic mode of proclaiming a gospel of God's action in Christ which calls forth by its power, "the obedience of faith." In effect, with modern evangelical preaching, the effectiveness of the gospel becomes dependent upon man's allowance. This utterly denies the truth as testified by God Himself: "So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." (Isa. 55: 11 KJV)

Thus we end up with really a man-centered, rather than Christ-centered, gospel, that is, it is man's action, where the rubber meets the road, that makes the gospel salvifically functional. Until man adds his agreement, the gospel remains a mere potential to be realized only in accordance with man's permission. Besides this content in evangelistic preaching, over and over again, in devotional literature, we find the same thing. On one hand, what God has provided for the believer in Christ is extolled, but on the other hand, that provision lays, as it were, dormant until the believer "allows" it to spring to life. Long is the list of nationally-prominent evangelists, and many thousands lesser known, who have effectively made the will of God dependent upon the will of man. Over and over again, man is exhorted to act, while the truth that GOD HAS ACTED is not accorded its proper place.

I will dare to name names, while respecting the fact that God, in His sovereignty has used the following to point many to Christ: George Whitfield, Charles G. Finney, Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, among others, along with ministries such as Youth for Christ, Youth with a Mission, and Campus crusade, stand out as representative of how exhorting men to action has been the tonic chord of especially American evangelism. The emphasis has been the need for men to act, in contrast to the wonderful gospel truth that GOD HAS ACTED. At the heart of the gospel is the rock-solid basis of our salvation: GOD HAS ACTED. From colonial days onward to today, the weaker gospel has been mistakenly understood to be evangelistically normative.

I remember reading the story of a conversation between the late, and beloved, Billy Graham, and Karl Barth. Each of the two had their own perspective regarding what makes the gospel effective in lives. Billy constantly came back to the need and requirement for man to act, to make his or her "decision for Christ," whereas Barth delighted to elevate the truth that GOD HAS ACTED in Christ. In Barth's commentary on Paul's epistle to the Church in Rome, is a sentence so rich in insight. Barth, in recognizing the fact that there is a sense of a demand-factor in the nature of the gospel, wrote that the gospel demands obedience, AND SUPPLIES WHAT IT DEMANDS. Ahh, yes! The gospel does not need man's action to be effective. It is intrinsically effective, for, "Of HIS OWN WILL begat he us with the word of truth..." (James 1:18 KJV; Emphasis mine). The decisively relevant decision has been made, OF HIS OWN WILL.

The well-known hymn, "Draw Me Nearer," has the line, "let my soul look up with a steadfast faith and my will be lost in Thine." Yes, that is where our will is finally to be found, lost in respect to its independence, to be found within the finally determining will of God. It has been determined, that " Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we MUST be saved."(Acts 4:12 KJV; Emphasis, mine). Please note, salvation is not optional. God has not said, "...whereby there is the possibility of salvation if approved and sealed by the will of man." It does not allow for our rejection. Our attempts at rejection are rejected by God. It is the imperative of the divine will. We MUST be saved. That name, under heaven, given among men for our salvation, has not been given to bend its knee and bow before man's stubborn insistence on remaining lost. Man's willful obstinacy will bow finally to the intrinsic effectiveness of the proclamation of the gospel.

Check out by careful and prayerful reading, how throughout the Book of Acts, we find the apostolic message to be heavy on proclamation and light on exhortation. GOD HAS ACTED salvifically in Christ, without dependence upon any contribution of human agreement. God's action is not dependent upon the agreement of man's will, but rather DELIVERS the human will from its deeply contrarian obstinacy.