I was
recently asked what it means to defend the gospel and is it really necessary
for Christians to defend the gospel?
My hope
is that this will be a helpful response—and who knows? Maybe even an interesting
response—for my friends who are believers:
There is
a sense in which it could certainly be argued that Jesus doesn’t need anyone to
defend Him. And the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ will endure forever,
whether any Christians ever stand up for it, or not.
God never
stands in need of people. It’s one of the benefits of being God.
However,
there is a verse in the Bible from which knowledgeable people who speak of
defending the gospel are typically deriving the idea. The verse is found in 1
Peter 3:15. It says…
“…but
sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with
gentleness and reverence…” (NASB)
The word
“defense” in this passage is the Greek word “apologia” which gives us our
English word “apologetics.”
Apologia
has to do with defense. In the biblical Greek usage it can mean a verbal
defense in a court of law. The field of Christian apologetics is a very deep,
thoughtful, intellectually sophisticated category of theology which involves a
reasoned explanation and defense of the Christian faith drawing from theology,
philosophy, logic, history, archaeology, and science.
Some of
you may be familiar with Ravi Zacharias, who passed away recently. Ravi was,
among other things, a brilliant apologist for the Christian faith.
There are
people who want to know if the Christian faith can be defended or justified
from the standpoint of intellect and reason or is it just a religious belief
system that must be accepted with no basis in careful thinking or reason. I can
testify from personal experience that I came to a point in my early adult life
in which, even though I was already a Christian, I needed to know that
Christianity was not just a blind leap of faith. The fact that Christianity
could stand up to hard questions and penetrating scrutiny was an important
discovery for me.
An aspect
of Christianity that sets it apart from other religions is that Christianity
welcomes questions and investigation. Christianity makes claims that certain
events happened in human history and these events can be investigated. We can
know with a reasonable degree of certainty whether they are true, or not.
Whether a
person knows the word “apologetics”, or not, if a person is providing sound answers
to the fair questions of people who are seeking and wondering about the truth
of the Christian faith that person is engaging in apologetics, a reasoned
defense of the faith.
Followers
of Jesus are called, in Scripture (1 Peter 3:15), to be prepared to give a
defense of the faith.
Dan
Marler
Oak Lawn,
IL
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