First, let me give you a definition of “incarnate.” It is defined in the dictionary as this: “invested with bodily and especially human nature and form; made manifest or comprehensible: EMBODIED. To give bodily form and substance to / incarnates the devil as a serpent. To give a concrete or actual form to: ACTUALIZE. To constitute an embodiment or type of / no one culture incarnates every important human value.”
So what is meant by the phrase “incarnating the Gospel” is that the message of Jesus is put into bodily form to make it comprehensible. The Gospel becomes not just merely information but demonstration. The truth about God becomes a living animated display and not just ideas spoken or written.
Word became flesh
We call the great mystery of God becoming man, “the incarnation.” For thousands of years the heart of God was communicated through the Law of Moses and through prophets. It was revealed mainly through spoken and written words. But when Christ appeared and dwelt among us—a new level of clarity of the nature and character of God was displayed. People saw God in the very face of Jesus. They saw His compassion, His tears, the groaning of His prayers, the kindness in His eyes. That’s what Scripture means that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Incarnational ministry should never be pitted against the preaching of the Word of God. This is an unfortunate error we can make. Both preaching and incarnational ministry aim at the same exact thing: communication. It is the communication of the Gospel that changes lives. God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save people. Preaching can be so powerful when done well. But preaching often works with a variety of other things that make the message more clear. For example, Jesus and the apostles often demonstrated the Gospel by doing signs and wonders, and then they would preach the Gospel with words. The early Christians preached but also demonstrated the Gospel by their intense love for one another.
Our ministry too
Incarnating the Gospel isn’t something that only Jesus did when He walked the earth. We take on this ministry as well. Consider this verse:
And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2 Corinthians 3:3
This means that God Himself writes His message into our very hearts in a way that causes our lives to display the heart of God. We are living animated messages to the world!
This combination of “word and deed,” of verbal or written communication along with demonstration, is exactly how Christ and His disciples did ministry. If all that is needed to get the saving Gospel out to the world is simply the information, then we could just drop a Bible in everyone’s mailbox. Or, maybe we could put a travel drive with a dozen gospel sermons on it and give it to everyone we know. We could write a letter explaining the Gospel and send it to every neighbor. All these ideas could actually have an impact on some but, we all know, that most would not even bother reading the Bible or listening to the sermons. They might read the letter but likely wouldn’t process it. When the Gospel is incarnated it not only communicates the Gospel more clearly but, it seizes people’s attention to listen to the message. Words are cheap. Anyone can say anything. But words backed by a living example are potent.
Partial understanding
I grew up Catholic and for a variety of reasons I just didn’t tune into what was being taught. I remember going to CCD, but I don’t recall paying attention. At 17 years old I confess I really didn’t understand the basic message of the Gospel. The first time I heard it was when I was at Daytona Beach for spring break in high school. A young Campus Crusade (Cru) worker approached me and shared Christ with me in a way that caught my attention. It was a seed planted.
When I was 19, I was working at a hotel doing room service, and there was a very sweet older woman named Ellen who was the hospitality person on the third floor lounge. She had short hair with bangs and round glasses. She sort of whispered as she talked and got close to me and looked deep into my eyes. I let her because she disarmed me with her almost motherly tenderness. She was a very strong follower of Christ. Usually, no one was in the lounge so when I’d deliver something to the third floor I’d interact with her a little. She kept sharing the Gospel with me, and I listened because she was just so kind and loving. Her sweetness was a measure of incarnating the Gospel message.
Fuller expression
It wasn’t until I was 21 that I encountered a fuller expression of the Gospel message incarnated. I was living in Springfield, Massachusetts at the time. I wasn’t working and was basically living with some college guys for free. My drug and alcohol use had taken a toll, and I was pretty broken. A couple of my friends who I often played music and partied with became Christians. Now, I don’t mean they just started going to church or adopted a belief about Jesus. They were really serious about following everything Jesus taught. And it showed!
Because they considered me a friend, I think they wanted to introduce me to this experience they found with Christ. So they came to the place where I was living and tried to communicate the Gospel with words. I wasn’t having it. I totally rejected the message and was mildly antagonistic about it. When they left the apartment I’d tell the guys I was living with that the Christians were idiots. I just blew the whole thing off until they began to incarnate the Gospel.
Since I wasn’t really open to the Gospel, they had the sense to back off on preaching to me. Instead, they just came to my apartment and hung out. After all, they were my friends. We talked about art and music, life and people. We talked about everything and even gradually began talking about God. What happened was that I was given an inside look at how Christ had changed them. I could see the peace and feel the love. I heard how their perspectives and motives were different now. They had not only kicked drugs but stopped using and didn’t feel miserable. To me, that got my attention.
Tailor fit
What was so beautiful about this particular expression of incarnating the Gospel was how personal it was. The guy on Daytona Beach and the nice lady at the hotel were essentially strangers to me. But when my friends shared and incarnated the Gospel it made the message come alive. Because my friends were so much like me in the natural, it enabled me to witness what it might look like if I followed Jesus. I guess I thought it would be lame or weird, but I could see what my friends were like as Christians. It was like all their best qualities were coming out and their worst qualities were fading away. They were still creative and interesting. They seemed so happy. It made me want what they had. After a few months, I dove in with them into the Waters and never turned back.
How most come to Jesus
I think in most churches if you asked the question, “How many of you became Christians through a friend or family member?”—almost all the hands would go up. There are exceptions, for example, someone giving their heart to Christ watching a Billy Graham sermon. Some have been awakened just by reading a Gospel tract, or by reading the Bible on their own. In most cases, however, people come to Christ through people the Gospel is incarnated in.
In order for the incarnated message to have an impact on people, we must be with people and let them into our world. Sometimes we just want to get with unchurched people and preach to them. But the call of Jesus isn’t to just preach to people but to disciple them. This call to disciple people is to open our lives to others; to let them see how we live and how we think; to just let them walk beside us in the full range of ordinary life activities.
We can all do this!
Not all of us can preach the Gospel to a crowd or write the Gospel message in a compelling way. But we can all do incarnational ministry. We can all display the message of Jesus to the world by simply living out the Christian life in front of them.
Some think that they can’t be a good display unless they are totally perfected and without any struggle. This is a great mistake though. It is true that if we are hypocrites and act like we are more spiritual than we are, it will affect people negatively. Showing our struggles is actually part of incarnating the Gospel. It shows how Christ works in our struggles. It reveals grace. When people see that we struggle with fear, anxiety, anger, sin, and so on, but that the Lord God is working in us—it gives them hope. They start to see how God could work His grace in their struggles.
Do you have people in your life who are not Christians who you spend quality time with and let into your world? I’m not talking just about spending time with people who don’t know Christ. You may work 50 hours a week with non-Christians. We can be with people but not let them in. Open your heart wide to someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet. Give them a front row seat to watch the workings of God in you. Incarnate the Gospel.
–Pastor Scott