Even Deeper
Ok, so I keep reading in the Christian devotional book mentioned in my earlier post, and, to my delight, Steven Grose has more to say about our indebtedness to the lost.
He makes the distinction between the “Greeks” and “barbarians” to whom Paul feels indebted to share the gospel. He observes that the term “Greek” had lost its racial significance by this point in history, since the the conquests of Alexander the Great had taken Greek language and Greek thought all around the world.
“Greek,” in this sense meant, “educated,” or “knowing the mind of the Greeks.” This is a fitting description as contrasted with the term “barbarians,” which literally translates to “those who say ‘bar-bar’.” These were men who did not know the eloquence and discipline of Greek thought. These were the uneducated, the illiterate, the brutes of the day.
So Paul is literally saying that his obligation is to the educated and to the uneducated, to the reasonable and the unreasonable, to the wise and the unwise. We spend much of our energy in refuting the claims, removing objections, and learning to wield the “sword of truth” to reach those who know about Christianity, but who don’t believe. Have we considered those who are totally ignorant?
Grose goes on to say that these “barbarians” are just too hard to reach, for most people, and are largely left alone. But does their ignorance disqualify them from salvation in Christ? Paul didn’t think so.
Paul seems to be implying that we should be able and willing to share with “the locals”…the people where we live. But how do we share the gospel with someone who has no psychological or historical predisposition to hear it? Grose closes with a great anecdote:
One day, after Grose had finished preaching to around 17 people in the distant outback of Australia, a man came up to him and shouted, “you’re wrong!” Grose acknowledged that he had been wrong many times, and would the gentleman please elaborate. The man said, “In your sermon you said you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. And that ain’t true, ‘cause you can feed him salt.”
Grose ends the anecdote with, “You may be thinking that you can’t lead your neighbor to Christ, because he is too ignorant of the gospel, but you can feed him salt until he listens to you.”
Are we fullfilling our debt to the locals, the barbarians and the ignorant? Are we willing to break through our prejudices to give them what rightly belongs to them? Will we pursue this with joy, energized by God’s immeasurable grace to us, until the debt is paid in full?
