Was Jesus an Effective Evangelist?

There is such an empha­sis in mod­ern churches on the quan­tity of con­verts over qual­ity; and they attribute this suc­cess to the work of the preacher, music, church, or any­thing besides the Holy Spirit. What does it mean that over 2 bil­lion peo­ple in this world are pro­fess­ing Chris­tians? Nothing.

“Not every­one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the king­dom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not proph­esy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you work­ers of law­less­ness.‘
Matthew 7:21–23


This verse speaks specif­i­cally against those who go down dur­ing an alter call, sign a ‘sal­va­tion con­tract’ with God, and believe they’re saved and go back to their sin­ful lives. Jesus, by worldy mea­sures, wasn’t that sucessful:

In fact, if we were to look only at num­bers, we might be tempted to con­clude that Jesus Him­self was not an espe­cially gifted evan­ge­list. He started His min­istry with a mul­ti­tude of fol­low­ers, but ended with only eleven faith­ful dis­ci­ples. He often spoke words that offended His hear­ers (John 6:41–56; 8:31–59), which even­tu­ally pro­voked many of them to aban­don Him (John 6:60–66). His dis­ci­ple­ship demands were also hard (Matthew 10:34–39; 16:24–26; 19:21; Luke 9:57–62). Nev­er­the­less, every­thing He said and did was in com­plete accord with the Father’s pur­pose. Thus, we should never con­clude that a large, pos­i­tive response to the Gospel mes­sage, by itself, proves that God is bless­ing our meth­ods or that such a response is gen­uine (John 2:23–25). Instead, we must faith­fully declare the whole coun­sel of God (Acts 5:20; 20:27) and leave the results to Him, who alone is able to add to the church (Acts 2:47; 13:48; 1 Corinthi­ans 3:6–7; Psalm 127:1).1

Mod­ern churches sim­ply have to much of a focus on man-centered the­olo­gies then that of God. We are here to serve and wor­ship God, not the other way around.

Exalt the LORD our God; wor­ship at his foot­stool! Holy is he!
Psalms 99:5

So, how do we know we’re saved?

Lord­ship Sal­va­tion.