The Case Jesus Refused to Make Alone

Over the years, I have visited many churches to talk about community engagement, and in group after group, someone raises the same question. The questions around it change as the culture changes. Some years they are about technique. Lately they are about whether anyone still wants to listen. But one question stays the same: "How do you know when to share your faith?"

I used to answer it head-on. Now I wonder if the question itself is the problem.

It assumes the weight of the case rests on our words. John's Gospel, which reads more like a trial transcript than a biography, suggests Jesus did not carry it that way.

The language of the courtroom runs all through John. Jewish law required two or three witnesses to establish any matter, and Jesus knew his hearers would measure him by that standard. So he says something no defense attorney would ever say about his own case: "If I give evidence about myself, my evidence isn't true. There is someone else who gives evidence about me."

Who else takes the stand

Jesus does not stop at the admission. He calls witnesses. John the Baptist testifies. The Scriptures testify. His own works testify, and these carry particular weight because anyone can see them: "the very works that I am doing" show that the Father sent him. Behind all of it stands the Father himself. Jesus does not build an argument for his claims. He points past himself to evidence someone else has already given.

Today the stakes feel higher than a courtroom. Large sectors of American society are rejecting the claims of Jesus, and many Christians have cast themselves as defense attorneys in the court of public opinion. That role has a built-in problem. A defense attorney with no credibility with the jury loses before she opens her mouth. Some of the accusations against Christians are true. Others rest on misconceptions. In an age when the internet makes truth hard to sort, both kinds stick.

My instinct is to answer by arguing harder. Jesus models something different. Truth does not become true because I discover it or construct a careful case for it. My arguments do not make God's truth true. They bear witness to what is already true. Jesus grounds his teaching in what the Father tells him, not in what his critics can verify. The basis of truth is that God spoke it, not that I understand it.

This is not an argument against apologetics. Apologetics comes from the Greek apologia, which means a formal defense or a reasoned speech to justify a position. While apologetics is essential, arguments alone must be accompanied by visible evidence. Amid rapidly spreading mistruth, this form of apologetics through our actions is increasingly urgent.

Back to the raised hand

So here is what I would say to the person who asks when to share their faith. The question puts the whole defense on our words. Jesus did not. This does not mean silence, any more than it did for him. He spoke constantly. But his words stood alongside other testimony, and the most visible of it was what people could watch him do.

The same pattern holds for us. What we say rests on what God has already said, and it is corroborated by what others see. Our actions become a kind of light. They do not create the evidence. They illuminate it, so that a neighbor can see for herself and tell someone else what she saw. We have all heard that actions speak louder than words. It may be even truer when the actions are ours, and the words are God's.

The defense of the faith rests on two testimonies: the words God has spoken and the lives others can see. Our part is to live in a way that corroborates the first.