Episode Details

In this week’s edition, I want to answer an insightful question that Dave Pitt posed after reading my piece about small groups and one-another edifying speech. 

Hi Tony,

Thanks for this great article. It provides some really helpful language around the difference between the preached word and the one-anothering the NT speaks of. You’re focussing on the way the word grows Christians.

I’m wondering if the same idea applies to the way the word saves people—i.e. the difference between the proclamation of the gospel at an event vs. inviting an unbeliever to read the Bible with you.

I guess the question is: Is there an equivalent language to the one-anothering for what the Christian does with an unbeliever, in the NT?

Well spotted, Dave. 

And in our current strange circumstances, this is perhaps an even more pressing question. In a context where many of our normal, event-based opportunities for gospel proclamation are denied to us, what is the role of smaller-scale, one-another-style gospel interactions? 

My PhD research focused on one-another speech within the Christian community, but there are good reasons to think that this way of thinking about different kinds of speech could provide some fresh thoughts about Christian speech outside the Christian community as well. (Who knows, we might even be able to cut through some of those old arguments we’ve had about evangelism and the everyday Christian.)

While there are lots of passages in the New Testament that speak about one-another speech within the Christian community (25 of them by my count), we have fewer passages that touch on the spiritually significant speech of everyday Christians to outsiders. There’s Acts 4:31, 1 Cor 14:24-25, Phil 1:14 (I think), Col 4:5-6, 1 Pet 2:9-10 (perhaps), and 1 Pet 3:15-16. 

Let’s look really quickly at three of them that touch on the issue that Dave raises. In Acts 4:31, the apostles Peter and John had been boldly proclaiming the gospel, and facing opposition in doing so. And as the whole company of believers prays for ‘your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness’, God answers their prayer in a surprising way. The whole place is shaken, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”.

This is like Pentecost all over again. The Spirit is poured out, and the believers pour out speech. All the same, did the believers in Acts 4 go out and do exactly what Peter and John had been doing in bold public proclamation? Possibly, but very possibly not. Was the context in which all the believers ‘spoke the word of God with boldness’ as varied as their different circumstances and opportunities allowed—such as in their households, or in their regular interactions with outsiders? I suspect so, but we don’t know. However, whatever the context, what the speech of Peter, John and all the believers had in common was its enabling power (the Holy Spirit), its essential content (the apostolic word of God) and its motive and character (boldness in the face of threats). 

We see a similar commonality in Col 4:2-6, where Paul asks for prayer for his speaking of the word (the logos, in v. 3), and then urges the Colossians themselves to let their word with outsiders (their logos, v. 6) be always gracious and seasoned with salt. The essential content is shared (the speaking of the logos), but the context or mode of the speech seems to be different. Paul is an itinerant proclaimer, now imprisoned for his preaching; the Colossians are having regular daily interactions with outsiders, and making the most of opportunities to converse graciously and ‘saltily’ in those contexts. 

Likewise (and very briefly), we observe a similar pattern in 1 Peter. Peter’s readers have rece