Lloyd-Jones on Evangelism and Conviction

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Saints,

It has become common place not to mention sin, the judgment of God on sinners, hell, holiness, conviction, law, the blood of Christ, righteousness, and the list could go on and on. Evangelism, some how, has been down-graded to the simple repetition of a prayer and the signing of a card with no biblical demands. Battling the same issue in his day, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), in his series of sermons on The Sermon on the Mount, said in regard to evangelism and conviction of sin:

[i]There is no true evangelism without the doctrine of sin, and without an understanding of what sin is. I do not want to be unfair, but I say that a gospel which merely says “Come to Jesus,” and offers Him as a Friend, and offers a marvelous new life, without convicting of sin, is not New Testament evangelism. The essence of evangelism is to start by preaching the law; and it is because the law has not been preached that we have so much superficial evangelism…evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man and the eternal consequences of evil and wrong-doing. It is only the man who has been brought to see his guilt in this way who flies to Christ for deliverance and redemption.

False teaching does not emphasize repentance in any real sense. It has a very wide gate leading to salvation and very broad way leading to heaven. You need not feel much of your sinfulness; you need not be aware of the blackness of your own heart. You just “decide for Christ” and you rush in with the crowd, and your name is put down, and is one of the large number of “decisions” reported by the press. It is entirely unlike the evangelism of the Puritans and of John Wesley, George Whitefield and others, which led men to be terrified of the judgment of God, and to have an agony of soul sometimes for days and weeks and months.[/i]