It’s not easy to do these days. In his epochal work Death in the City (pp. 70-71), Francis Schaeffer talks about how to speak Christian truth in the twentieth century. He says you’ve got to begin by telling people that they are truly fallen even though they are made in the image of God. They are truly fallen. They are morally guilty in the eyes of God. That’s where gospel presentations have to begin. You don’t start by telling them the good news that Jesus died for them. You have to make them understand that they truly are sinners before God. In one place he discusses what he would do if he were riding a train and got into a discussion with a “modern man” about the gospel. What would he say if he had only one hour to talk with that man? He said, “I would spend 45 minutes of that hour convincing him about sin and judgment and his true moral guilt before God. Then I would spend the last 15 minutes sharing the good news about the gospel of Jesus Christ, because until men see themselves as sinners they will never see their need of a savior.”
