Evangelism Is Messy
Everyone that has ever gotten saved had a messed up life before salvation, which is the whole reason that they needed Christ. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Sin destroys and distorts. It corrupts and tarnishes. It messes up homes, marriages, minds, bodies, and futures!
Since sin brings death and destruction, then the soul-winner must be willing to get messy, to go down into the pit, and help pull people out of the muck and the mire of sin. I remember hearing about a boy whose dog fell into an open sewage pit. The dog was going to drown in the filth. The thought of stepping and reaching down into raw sewage turned his stomach, but the boy loved his dog, so he climbed down a ladder and rescued his dog.
In the same way, Jesus left the glories of Heaven, to enter a sinful, messy world full of pain, corruption, and ruined lives, so that He could bring many sons to glory. Likewise, if we would be used of God to point people to Christ, we must be willing to enter the messy, sinful world where people live. We must deal with the man in Africa who wants to know what happens to his three wives when he gets saved. We must be willing to drink from the same dipper as the adulterous woman at the well in John 4. We must welcome the homosexual, the drug addict, the depressed person, the paedophile, the rapist, the adulterer and show them the love of Christ.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 gives a long list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, and then Paul says, “And such were some of you…” In that church, there were all kinds of sinners who were now washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God because someone was willing to get messy. Someone spend time with the “publicans and sinners”; someone answer the objections and the questions of a doubting Thomas; someone dealt with the pride and religion of a Nicodemus; someone had time for a Blind Bartimaeus; and someone went to the other side of the sea of Galilee to free a naked maniac from demon-possession!
Before I met Christ, my life was a mess. I’m so glad that someone was willing to get their hands dirty and deal with me. Let’s be that “someone” to someone today!