EVANGELISM ARTICLE | Shawn Chancellor | Amarillo, Texas
A man lived in his home for over twenty years. He waved to his neighbor regularly. They talked about the weather, yard work, football, and politics. When the neighbor’s wife got sick, he brought food. When the neighbor retired, he congratulated him.
Then one day the ambulance came.
The funeral was brief. Afterward, the man stood in his driveway and realized something that left him deeply unsettled: in twenty years, he had never once spoken to his neighbor about his soul. He had discussed many temporal things—but never eternity.
He had been friendly. He had been helpful. But had he truly loved him?
In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul demonstrates in great detail that all men stand condemned before God, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). However, because of the great love with which He loves us, God was not willing to allow us to remain in this lost state. Instead, He sent His “Son into the world so that we live through Him” (1 John 4:9).
As we consider our need to love the lost, we must clearly define what we mean by “love.” We are not referring to a sentimental love that focuses on merely seeing the good in everyone. We are talking about an active love that understands death to be the consequence of sin. A love that refuses to be indifferent to the loss of a single soul. A love that drives us to share the Gospel message of repentance. We must love the lost.
Because God First Loved Me
If we are to understand love and how we should love the lost, we first look at God’s love for us. After all, “we love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Throughout his first epistle, John looks to the example of divine love as revealed on the cross to define the love we should have for one another. He consistently shows that this love is a self-sacrificing pursuit of what is good for another (1 John 4:9-10; 3:16-19).
In Romans 5:8-10, Paul offers a similar definition of love. “God demonstrates His own love toward us…” (v 8a). His love for us is active. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (v 8b). His love is self-sacrificing. Furthermore, we see here that His love is not rooted in the value of its object. When His love was shown to us, we were sinners and enemies of God (v 10).
It was love that paved the way for our salvation. In Ephesians 2:1-8, Paul moves from “while we were yet sinners” to “dead in your trespasses and sins.” His point is to emphasize just how helpless we are to overcome the reality of sin and death on our own. We can no more reverse the consequences of sin than we can call ourselves forth from the grave.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ…” (Ephesians 2:4-5)
He goes on to say, in verse 8, that we are “saved by grace through faith.” However, notice in verse 4, the basis of our salvation is the love of God. Without this love, there would be no offer of grace.
When we consider just how hopeless and desperate our situation is without God’s loving intervention, we are, or certainly should be, overcome with a sense of gratitude. We deserve eternal punishment, but we have the hope of heaven in our hearts because God loves us enough to send His Son to die for us that we might be redeemed. Such gratitude compels us to a tangible response. By sharing the gospel of God’s grace, we share in His love for His creation and demonstrate our gratitude for His redeeming love.
I Was Once Lost
In Romans 1:14, Paul states that he had an obligation or a debt “to both Greeks and barbarians.” The context in which he makes this statement has to do with the Gospel that he was charged to preach “to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles…” (Romans 1:5). The obligation that he felt drove him to proclaim the Gospel (Romans 1:15). To understand this feeling of indebtedness, we need to think about Paul’s life before Christ.
In 1 Timothy 1:12-16, Paul speaks of his past hostility to the cause of Christ. He was “formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.” In Acts 9:4-5, we find that these actions were directed at Christ. By persecuting Christians, Paul in fact persecuted Jesus. As a result of this, Paul calls himself “the foremost of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).
Despite this hostile attitude, he was “shown mercy because (he) acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). Furthermore, he realized that it was by God’s loving grace that he was granted the opportunity to repent and live his life in service to God (1 Timothy 1:14). This realization, that he had persecuted the Messiah and yet had been forgiven, became the driving force behind his preaching and teaching.
“For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another” (Titus 3:3).
While we may have never persecuted the Saints, there was certainly a time in all our lives when we lived for self and not for the Lord. As a result, we were separated from God, deserving eternal death. Fortunately, godly people reached out to us, taught us His word, encouraged us in the faith, and shared His grace with us. I hate to think where I might be now if it were not for those loving people then?
Each one of us who has experienced the saving grace of God has this same debt. While we can never repay the gift we have received, it creates a sense of stewardship that drives us to serve the Lord. This sense of indebtedness informs our efforts to evangelize. It leads us to approach the lost with concern and compassion rather than seeking to win an argument or prove someone wrong. We must recognize that all sin is worthy of death and that no sin makes one more of a sinner than any other. When we properly assess our own need for God’s grace, loving the lost becomes a natural response to the cross.
Because Souls are Eternally Precious
In Luke 15,
“the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’”
To them, the fact that Jesus showed compassion and mercy to those considered sinners was
beyond reprehensible. In response, Jesus presented three parables that explained His view of the lost. He began by telling of a man who left ninety-nine sheep to find one that was lost. Next, he told of a woman who lost a coin, and when she found it, she rejoiced with her friends and neighbors. Finally, He told of a man who rejoiced when his son, whom he thought dead, returned home. All three parables focus on one theme: God rejoices when sinners repent. If heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents, how can we remain silent?
In Luke 19, Jesus encountered a tax collector named Zacchaeus. Tax collectors were perhaps the most hated men in Jewish society because they colluded with the enemy and often defrauded their brothers to enrich themselves. However, when Jesus met this man and heard his penitent plea, He said,
“Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
God assigned a value to every soul at the cross:
“You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)
To be redeemed is to be purchased, in this case, from slavery to sin. John 3:16 tells us that this price is applied to every soul.
When we consider the value that God has placed on every soul and all that He has done to redeem man from our sin, we cannot help but assign the same value to the souls of the lost. To love the lost is a divine imperative, through which we can busy ourselves in His service for His purpose.
Conclusion
One day, the man in the driveway realized that friendliness is not the same as love. He had been kind. He had been neighborly. But he had never spoken about the one thing that mattered most. Now the opportunity was gone.
We all encounter people who will one day stand before God. Each of us works beside people, visits with family members, and speaks with friends who are traveling toward eternity. We talk easily about work, politics, the weather, and sports. But do we speak about Christ?
To love the lost is not merely to feel concern. It is to speak. It is to teach. It is to warn. It is to plead. Silence may preserve comfort, but it does not express love.
One day, each of us will look back over the relationships God placed in our lives. May it never be said of us that we discussed everything temporary but never eternity. If we truly love the lost, we will open our mouths and share the message that once saved us.
_____________________________
GROW magazine | April 2026 PDF
a work of the Limestone Church of Christ
Study Links: YouVersion | Bible Gateway | Blue Letter Bible
