Thriving In Babylon By Larry OsborneSample

Seeking to Persuade

Daniel and his friends never treated their captors as enemies. They followed the advice of Jesus long before it was given. They loved their enemies and did good to them.

We’re supposed to do the same thing. Our great assignment is to go out into all the world and recruit Jesus followers, teaching them to obey everything he taught us. Jesus never told us to create a Christian nation, impose our standards on nonbelievers, or preserve a particular culture.

He told us to win over the lost.

Those who trade the persuasion paradigm for a warfare paradigm often forget the awful cesspool that the New Testament church was birthed in. The Roman Empire knew nothing of political freedoms. There were no family values. Sexual perversion was the norm. Life was cheap. Justice was available only for the rich and powerful.

And even though Rome tolerated most foreign religions, it didn’t tolerate Christians. The early church suffered fierce persecution. All but one of the apostles died a martyr’s death.

Yet the focus of the New Testament is entirely upon changing hearts, not changing governments or culture. When the biblical authors speak of spiritual warfare, it’s always framed in the context of our personal spirituality.

The warfare model focuses on the wrong enemy. Non-Christians are not the enemy. They’re victims of the Enemy. Victims need to be rescued, not wiped out.

The apostle Paul spelled out the response we’re supposed to have in 2 Timothy 2:24-26.

The goal of our interactions is not to see God pour out his judgment upon them. It’s to see him pour out his grace and mercy, granting them repentance and knowledge of the truth. In other words, our primary goal is persuasion.

Frankly, it’s here that many of us can miss the boat. The more Babylon-like our culture becomes, the more our resentment builds, resulting in bitterness, slander, rumormongering, and harsh critiques that no one would characterize as a kind and gentle rebuke.

Many excuse their words by pointing to Jesus’s harsh rebukes of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his day. But they miss the point. Jesus didn’t rail on the sinners of his day. He pursued them. It was the religious hypocrites who were attempting to keep the sinners at bay that he blasted.

*What is the goal of your interactions with unbelievers? Judgment, or persuasion?