By Francis Shaeffer, Death in the City, pgs. 105, 107

In three different places Paul speaks solely to men without the Bible.  The first is in Lystra (Acts 14.15-17), where the message is fragmentary because it was interrupted.  The second is on Mars Hill (Acts 17.16-32), where he has a longer speech, but that also was broken off.  Third is the Book of Romans, 1.18 – 2.16, where he can develop his argument at ease.  We can see here what he was really saying in all these places, for the other two conform to this early section in Romans

Here, I believe, is where God gives us the method of preaching to our generation, for our generation is largely made up of men without the Bible.  How are you going to start talking to them?  Are you only going to quote from the Bible if they don’t know anything about it, or if they despise or ignore it or do not know its authority?  Paul didn’t.  In this passage from Romans 1.18 to 2.16 he does not once quote from the Old Testament.  When he begins to talk to the Jew, however, after 2.17, he does quote from the Scripture, because the Jews knew what the Bible was.  But in the first part, where he talks to the Greek, the man without the Bible, he talks to him in a different way.  And I repeat: I believe that we can learn from this the method of preaching to our generation.

How then, does Paul begin to speak to the man without the Bible?  He says this in Rom. 1.18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  Many of ht en3ew translations read “hinder the truth,” but I think “hold,” from the King James Version, is the better translation.  The first thing Paul says to the man without the Bible is this: “You’re under the wrath of God because you hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  Notice that he immediately beings to preach the wrath of God.  Think now of this man without the Bible (he is no different then than now).  If you merely say what Paul said in Rom. 1.16-17, “Here’s salvation,” he will shrug his shoulders and say, “Why do I need salvation?”  Or if modern man things he needs salvation, it will be some modern psychological salvation.  Paul says, “No.  What you need is moral salvation.  You are guilty.  You have true guilt in the presence of God”…

I am convinced that many men who preach the gospel and love the Lord are really misunderstood.  People make a “profession of faith,” but because they haven’t understood the message, they are not really saved.  They feel a psychological need and they want psychological relief, but they don’t understand that the Christian message is not talking only about psychological relief (though it includes that), but is talking about true moral guilt in the presence of a holy God who exists.  The real need is salvation from true moral guilt, not just relief from guilt-feelings.  And I am certain many people who make a profession go away still unsaved, having not heard one word of the real gospel because they have filtered the message through their own thought-forms and their own intellectual frame-work in which the word guilt equals guilt feelings.

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Tags: Apologetics, death in the city, Evangelism, Francis Schaeffer