What did Jesus mean when he said he came to bring us the ‘full life’ (John 10:10)? We evangelicals rightly focus on eternal life with Christ in glory, and the need to be justified by faith by trusting in Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection. But in the process, we often forget how godliness is surprisingly good and healthy for life in this world. We shouldn’t be surprised about that. Christ is the ultimate image of God, which means he is the ultimate human being (Gen 1:26–28; Col 1:15; cf. Heb 2:5–18), who can therefore show us the best way to be human.
A recent TGCA article encouraged us to include these benefits as an aspect of our apologetics. One way we can demonstrate the goodness and rightness of Christianity is to point to its numerous positive benefits for life in this world, and demonstrate how it answers many of the things this world yearns for. I am in favour of this kind of non-combative, ‘positive’ apologetics. But it has one major disadvantage. It can reinforce the perspective that the only real value of Christianity, and religion in general, is to improve our life in this world.[1]
The Possible Pitfalls of Perpetual Positivity
Taken in isolation, positive apologetics ignores the reality of God, his authority, holiness, justice, and love; the way sin contradicts his authority, holiness, justice and love; the reality, justice, and fearfulness of his divine wrath against sin; the need for Christ’s supernatural work of redemption to save us from that wrath; and the reality of final divine judgment at the end of this age. If we only ever do positive apologetics, we risk creating the middle two soils in the parable of the sower (Matt 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, Luke 8:4–15)—superficial so-called converts who get demoralised by opposition or distracted by the joys and busyness of this world.
This doesn’t mean positive apologetics is entirely wrong. It means we need to combine positive apologetics with patient apologetics.
Being Positive About Patient Endurance
We need to be honest that the productive Christian life—the ‘full life’ which Christ came to give us —requires perseverance (Luke 8:15).[2] The problem is not, strictly speaking, with the gospel or the fact that godliness is good for us. The problem is people’s expectations about the ‘good life’ in this world. The industrial revolution, scientific revolution, globalisation, and the internet, have given us wealth beyond the imagination of people who lived only few generations ago. Therefore, whenever we speak of the good life, we need to be ready for people to think we mean leisure, luxury, and self-indulgence. Not responsible, thoughtful, industrious labour to honour God and care for everyone else around us.
The good, full life according to Jesus is not ‘fun’. It’s satisfying and meaningful. It can even be adventurous and sometimes heroic. But it’s not full of leisure, pleasure, and treasure. It’s usually hard work. But we can be positive about this kind of diligent effort, because it’s part of the goodness of the Christian life. It’s an aspect of our sanctification. It’s part of our efforts to be externally oriented—to put God and others first, above ourselves. It makes us more like Jesus, who shows us that the best way to be human is to be obedient to death, even death on a cross.
This apologetic for patient effortful endurance might sound surprisingly positive today. Many non-Christians are tired of the arrogance, greed, selfishness, and anger which increasingly characterises contemporary culture. They might be attracted to the way Christianity inculcates the resilience required to live a stable, generous, others-oriented life. Pray that they’ll find Jesus more persuasive than the worldly Stoicism of Jordan Peterson.
Being Patient With Persecutors
But to those who love the greed, arrogance, and selfishness of contemporary culture, this other-orientation will sound neither good nor positive. It will sound weak and self-destructive. It will reinforce their prejudice that Christianity, perhaps religion in general, has been created by losers for losers. And this pushes us to consider the purposes of our positive apologetics.
We usually think apologetics is intended to lower people’s prejudices against Christianity and predispose them towards the gospel. Christ himself commanded his disciples to be the world’s light, through whose good works others would praise our heavenly Father (Matt 5:14–16). And we can interpret Paul’s sermon to the Athenians as an appeal to discover the God they know they do not yet know, for he has made himself universally knowable in Christ and the apostolic gospel (Acts 17:23).
But what if God intends our apologetics to also achieve a different purpose? What if he also intends our patient explanations about the positive benefits of living Christ’s ways, and our demonstration of that goodness in our own lives, to harden people in their sin? What if he intends to confirm them in their angry irrational hatred of God, his Christ, his gospel, and therefore his people?[3]
This is the uncomfortable but classically Reformed doctrine of divine ‘reprobation.’ We need to recognise that when people respond to our positive apologetics in a negative manner, this might be a sign that they are those whom God himself at least permits, perhaps even causes, to reject the gospel and end up condemned for eternity (e.g. Isaiah 6:9–10; 2 Thess 2:10b–12). Jesus calls on his disciples to be the light of the world (Matt 5:14–16), while also blessing them when they are persecuted (verses 10–12). When Paul preached to the Athenians, most of the Areopagus ridiculed him (Acts 17:32a).
In such circumstances, our response is patient endurance. We continue to love our enemies and pray for those who reject us. This is another kind of patient apologetics. It images God, who “bore with great patience the objects of his wrath, prepared for destruction” (Rom 9:22b, cf. also 2 Pet 3:9).[4]
The Possible Positive Outcome of Patience
Our patient apologetic, our refusal to mirror today’s tribalised world, might actually have positive results. Those who begin by mocking may eventually believe. We don’t know whom God has predestined. We do know that anyone who trusts in Christ will be saved. Many in the Areopagus mocked Paul when he preached, but Paul did not mirror their mockery. He met with those who were willing to hear more from him, and through his patient discipleship, a few of them eventually believed (Acts 17:32b-34).
There is a long list of people who were once ferociously opposed to Christ but who eventually came to love and serve and follow him, from the Apostle Paul himself, to former atheist journalist Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ, to former LGBT+ activist Rosaria Butterfield. Patient endurance may not only have the effect of demonstrating that people’s opposition to Christ and us is irrational and sinful. God can use it to eventually draw those opponents to himself.
So don’t give up on positive apologetics, because it’s not wrong. But combine it with patient apologetics. Some people might be drawn to Christianity’s ability to build good, wholesome character. God might even use our patience under irrational persecution to draw our opponents to himself. And let’s even be patient with those who continue to unrepentantly mock our patience, because such patience images the patient God.
[1] Aaron Johnstone’s article recognises that “[t]hese kinds of findings” about the lifestyle benefits of Christianity “are rarely exclusive to Christian spirituality; and they say little about the actual truthfulness of Christianity.” Any and every kind of apologetics has its dangers, if it is divorced from the rest of Christian beliefs and life. Classical apologetics risks over-intellectualising the faith. And the patient apologetics I’m going to commend in this article, if divorced from the genuine joys of the Christian life in this world and our confidence in eternal joy with Christ in glory, can become no more than a rugged stoicism.
[2] Luke’s account of the parable of the sower is distinct in adding the words “through perseverance.” The Greek word for perseverance, hupomone, can also be translated as ‘patience’.
[3] Or for that matter in their flippant apathy or unrepentant despair, or self-satisfied nominalism, or confidence in their own good works?
[4] ‘Patience’ here in Greek is macrothumia, ‘long-suffering’.
