The Gospel and the Outsider

Overview

Our passage today is really about evangelism. The gospel writer shows Jesus evangelizing a woman, and then, when she figures out who he is, she runs off and evangelizes her friends. This is a wonderful picture of how evangelism works. Christians talk about their faith with others and then they invite others to embrace the faith for themselves.

Many modern people can be skeptical of this idea of evangelism. In a pluralistic society like ours, encouraging others to adopt your beliefs and convictions is not generally welcomed. However, evangelism for Christians, no matter what kind of society we’re in, is both reasonable and necessary.

Let’s look at these four things in Jesus’ offer: 1) the freeness of his offer, 2) the greatness of his offer, 3) the process by which he makes the offer, 4) and the singleness of his offer.