What Is the Best Way to Point People to Jesus?
By showing love – that’s it.
There are many reasons someone may not be a follower of Jesus – they think he’s made up, they haven’t encountered Jesus yet, or something else. Still, I believe the majority of people who don’t follow Jesus aren’t interested in Jesus because of the hypocritical and hateful words from some Christians.
For example, June was declared pride month back in 1999; if my research is correct, please correct me if I’m wrong, and this year I’ve seen hateful posts against pride month from people who consider themselves Christians. I also saw someone post a question to a Christian woman who has a large following, asking how can we help turn these people away from their sins and point them to Jesus during this month. And the response was something along the lines of being loving and remembering that “these people” are humans and have feelings.
I cringed at the question but loved the response – because I believe the best way to point people to Jesus is by loving them – that’s it!
It’s the greatest commandment Jesus gave us was to love one another.
John 13:34-35 NIV – “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Think about it – someone who doesn’t follow Jesus sees you, who says they do follow Jesus, being hateful, judgmental, and unloving to someone else; how will that make them want to know Jesus? It’s not.
Christians use a verse about righteous judgment to justify being judgmental toward people. However, I don’t think anyone on Earth is “righteous” enough to judge others because we are ALL sinners! We fall short every day because we are human; God knows this; He created us.
Jesus stopped an adulterous woman from being stoned by telling those who wanted to stone her that whoever is without sin throw the first stone, and no one could, because we are all sinners!
We are not here to change people, point out their sins, judge, or look at others as ‘less than,’ we are simply here to spread the love of God to others, be kind, help others when we can, and this way we spread the gospel, we plant that seed, and then we let God do the watering in that person. We do NOT have the power to change people – only God can do that. We aren’t here to ‘turn people away from their sin’ but to point them to Jesus with love.
Only God saves!
With Love, Heidy
I believe you have a really good point and couldn't agree more that we lead other to Jesus by our example (practicing loving one another). There's also another verse about loving enemies because a Christian loving a Christian is easy and does not help you stand out as a "Christian". The pride month is a hard topic for me but it goes perfectly with 'leading others to Jesus'. For me this month is more about speaking truth- the truth is that Jesus loved the sinner and died for this but he was against sin. He told that same woman whom was getting stoned to go and sin no more. We can't confuse love with acceptance & compassion with a lost sight of right and wrong. And pride month is pushing for that: for us as a nation to accept this ideology and to be compassionate and forget about truth. It's getting pushed everywhere, it's hard to sit back and "love". Love is also speaking the truth (when it's with the right intention) not a "holier than thou" stance or a "going to hell" postition. Love is not wanting your brother or sister to perish, it's to hurt with them (to know that sin is hard to overcome), to offer help, and let them know they are loved and not hated. We ought to be more coherent as Christians and hate sin equally- homsexuality, fornication, adultery etc. But we seem to condem the second & third less if it is man and woman and forget it's the act of sin that is wrong- if we're Christians and not the person. Some come after homosexuals (the person) to condemn which is not what we are called to do, we are to speak truth and it CAN be done without condemning or hate and should be with love and pure intention- and as you mentioned only Jesus saves. We can only put our grain of salt.