Setting the Scene: Strangers in a Secular World

Good morning. Our preaching series this summer has focused on evangelism—the nuts and bolts of how we share our faith with friends, colleagues, and family members. This week, we're looking at how to give a reason for our faith when we face difficult questions, hard objections, or are given the opportunity to explain why we're Christian and why that makes sense.

The Apologetics Weapons Cabinet: A Misunderstanding

I wonder if anyone has had a conversation with an unbelieving friend or colleague where you shared something of your faith, but they weren't convinced? You walk away thinking, "What could I have said to persuade them?"

Some people say the answer is found in Christian apologetics—the art of giving reasons for the Christian faith. Often, it's conceived as a weapons cabinet full of arguments: classical philosophical arguments for God's existence, science-and-religion debates, cultural apologetics using art and literature. The aim is to learn those "magic points," the silver bullet arguments, and deploy them at the right moment to persuade people.

Some of you love this intellectual cut and thrust. Others find it completely bewildering and wonder: Do I need special training to be an intellectual Christian to defend my faith?

The Framework Problem

But let's dig deeper. When we discuss and debate anything—football, news, TV shows—we rarely do so completely objectively. Everyone brings their own framework, assumptions, questions, and perspective. The same is true with God.

You and an unbeliever see the same evidence very differently. If you believe in God, the order and splendor of the universe might point to a creator. The Gospels might strike you as credible historical accounts. But if you don't believe in God, you might see needless suffering as the key evidence against God, or judge Gospel stories as implausibly mythical.

But here's where it goes even deeper: The Bible tells us that the root of sin is that we haven't believed God; we haven't trusted him. In our fallen human nature, we cannot bring a framework where God is Lord over all of life. We can't expect unbelieving friends to reason their way to God with us.

Yet God does command us to give a defense for the hope we have. So what's actually going on when we're told to give a defense?

"Revere Christ as Lord in Your Hearts"

Our passage is from 1 Peter. Peter addresses his readers as "God's elect exiles scattered throughout the regions"—people who didn't fit with the beliefs, values, and culture around them. We can identify with that background of unbelief in our culture. Peter deliberately addresses them this way because he's saying something profound: God's people are not at home in this world. We belong to a different kingdom; we have a different King. We are always strangers and sojourners moving toward our ultimate home in heaven.

Peter's letter asks: How should we live for Jesus in a society where people around us don't believe in our God, don't agree with us, and perhaps don't like what we stand for?

In the midst of his letter, Peter gives this command: "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect."

But notice the heart of the command: "In your hearts, revere Christ as Lord." In the Greek, it's even bolder—Christ is front and center. The call to give a defense wasn't about seeking debates with atheists or pagans. It was about being willing to say publicly: "Yes, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I believe what he teaches is true, and I believe it makes sense."

And being prepared to say that doesn't start with a set of arguments or facts. It starts with a heart attitude of reverence before the lordship of Jesus Christ.

When We Don't Revere Christ as Lord

The world around us makes it difficult to live openly as a believer. People may say your beliefs are backwards, outdated, oppressive, judgmental. They may say belief in God is ridiculous and implausible. But Peter says: In your hearts, revere Christ as Lord.

When you know this, you know that no atheist argument, no sarcastic attack has taken Jesus by surprise. These are all foreordained within his sovereign rule.

But there's another sense too. The word "revere" can also be translated "sanctify." When we sanctify Jesus in our hearts, he is holy to us, set apart. There might be a thousand reasons to stop believing, but only Christ the Lord occupies that sacred central space.

What this means is: Our whole worldview, our entire way of seeing the world is built around Jesus Christ. He is the reason we value what we value, do what we do, think what we think. He's the foundation of our thought. The whole of life makes sense because of the light he shines on it.

All of our ideas about the deepest things—truth, beauty, goodness, suffering, marriage, death, sexuality, science, social justice—everything that really matters is properly understood in Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth.

If you truly revere, if you sanctify the one through whom you believe in God, you basically have what you need to defend your faith when you're asked. Peter's main concern is not winning every intellectual argument. It's total integrity between what you treasure in your heart and how you act and what you present to the world about what you believe.

Two Dangerous Extremes

When we don't revere Christ as Lord in our hearts, we swing toward two extremes.

First: We put all our hope in arguments and ideas about God rather than in Christ himself. If we don't trust that Jesus is Lord, it's up to us to justify his existence. If we don't grant God the right to exist and show himself as he pleases, we need rock-solid arguments for his existence and Christianity's truth.

This is why you see YouTube thumbnails: "Atheism Destroyed," "Every Atheist Argument Ranked and Destroyed." You never see: "Forty Atheists Engaged Gently and Respectfully in Dialogue." Why? I think this has less to do with wanting to seek and save the lost, and more with shoring up our own beliefs. If you can convince yourself that other ways of thinking are destroyed and annihilated, you don't have to do the hard work of really thinking about what people are saying.

But if you revere Christ as Lord, you don't need to destroy other questions and ways of thinking. We can recognize that some questions are genuinely deep and raise truly valid points. We can trust that the Lord is sovereign and can use us to bring people to Jesus. And if he doesn't, that's not a threat to Jesus.

Second: We might shield our beliefs from public scrutiny. We become vague or cagey about what we actually confess. It feels safer to say something no one can disagree with. When asked why you're Christian, you might say, "It gives me peace" or "I love the church community."

These are wonderful and true, but if that's all we say, we haven't told anyone about Jesus. We've just told them why we like our religion. But if we revere Christ as Lord, it's natural to tell people about what you believe in him, why he is wonderful, why you dedicate your life to him. You don't ultimately need to fear what you might get in return because your salvation and identity are in Jesus Christ.

"Always Be Prepared to Give an Answer"

So what do we do if we truly revere Christ as Lord? Our text says: "Be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks."

The word for "give an answer" is apologia—a defense, like in a courtroom. Someone accuses you, and you stand up and give reasons why you're in the right.

But look at the second part: Who are we giving our defense to? "Everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have."

The word for "reason" is logos—the same word John uses to describe Jesus: "In the beginning was the Word, the logos." So when we're asked why we're Christian and we say, "Because Jesus died for my forgiveness and rose again, and I put my trust in him," that's a defense. That is a defense for the hope you have.

I know it's rare that someone just walks up and says, "Hello, I would like to know why you're a Christian." But questions come. When there are challenges or objections—from someone curious, skeptical, or hostile—the aim is the same: give a reasoned explanation of your hope, an account of the Christian faith.

We all have different personalities and ways of thinking. Some are logical and cool; others are creative and relational. The same is true of those we talk to. There's no magical formula, but our call is to communicate the gospel message in ways that thinking, reasoning people can engage with.

The Danger of Supplementary Apologetics

There's wonderful material available for thinking deeply about our faith—websites like reasonablefaith.org, bethinking.org, YouTube debates, podcasts, classic books by C.S. Lewis, and new books every year. These can be genuinely helpful for thinking through our faith because people have deep and serious questions. It's loving and right that we think deeply about the issues they're asking about and come back with informed, considered, on-point answers.

Christianity has always been a religion unashamed about engaging our intellects. We're not all expected to have PhDs in systematic theology or flawless expositions on biblical doctrine. We don't all need to know how Christianity fits with quantum physics or evolutionary biology. But we all have brains, and it's good and loving that we challenge ourselves to give satisfying answers to friends and family with questions or objections.

But there's a real danger here. It's when we confuse thinking that apologetics—these arguments—should be an extra thing that supplements the actual content of Christianity. You have the gospel content on one side, and then these extra arguments and facts on the other. This is how you get someone to believe, and then when they do, you introduce them to the real thing.

First problem: This encourages people to sit in judgment over God.

There's a Christian film called God's Not Dead where a college student tells his philosophy class: "Today we're going to put God on trial." It sounds cool, but think about what it means. You're putting rationality as a standard above God—a standard God must meet to be worthy of belief. Some apologetics language reflects this: "I believe in Jesus because the arguments are better." But that makes you the sovereign decision-maker, ultimately about your rational weighing of arguments. That's wrong—or at least a very surface-level view of how people become Christians.

Paul writes: "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power."

What people need is not just better arguments to weigh rationally. What each person needs is the Spirit's power to reorganize our whole thought life, our whole world in response to the message of Christ crucified. Only then can we see the evidence for what it really is in its true relation to God. We don't put God on trial.

Second problem: Imagine someone raised in the jungle his whole life, with no outside contact. You present him with all the facts: Jesus rose from the dead; we have four eyewitness Gospel accounts; we have extra-biblical sources; the disciples died claiming he'd risen; the belief spread far and fast—it doesn't look like a myth developed in different places simultaneously.

By the end, he's convinced Jesus rose from the dead. But what has he actually understood? He might say, "Cool. Normally people die, but Jesus isn't normal. He rose from the dead. I'll put that in my book of amazing stuff." That's as far as you've gotten him.

Without showing him what the evidence means—what the Bible says about who Jesus is, his divinity and humanity, the reality of sin, the atonement he achieved on the cross, our redemption by his blood, our glorification in him—in other words, the hope that you have—that's what your friend actually needs to know.

I saw this so clearly in a podcast where Wes Huff spoke to Joe Rogan. They discussed ancient manuscripts for two hours, demonstrating how the Gospel message had been preserved. Joe kept saying, "Wow." He was fascinated—but not because he was becoming a Christian. He loves ancient texts, especially mysterious, mystical ones. After that podcast, he probably went back to interviewing skateboarders or discussing hallucinogens. All the evidence didn't engage him with the heart of Christian faith.

But at the very end, Wes Huff asked Joe directly: "What do you actually make of Jesus?" That was the most significant five minutes—when Joe was asked to open his heart and respond to the man all this evidence points to.

The Bible: Your Best Defense

So what's the best tool we have for defending our faith and our hope? The Bible.

If we share with our friends what the Bible actually says, not only does that keep us honest about what the faith we hold actually teaches, the Bible has the words of eternal life. You're using the book that gives the Christian faith its meaning, its power, its logic.

Did you know historically the church has taught that the Bible is self-authenticating? You don't need to supplement Scripture's revelation with other arguments to show it's God's word. God speaks to us directly by his word and by the Spirit. When we read his word, we recognize God's voice in its pages. Historically, this has often been taught as the main argument that the Bible is God's word.

The Westminster Confession says:

The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole which is to give glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God.

Do you see? The way it's written, the things it talks about, the way it teaches us the gospel and the way to salvation, the way it works when we practice it—these are all evidences that you can recognize it comes from God when you open the Bible.

So next time you have a tricky question, before reaching for the apologetics textbook or searching Google for the best arguments, ask yourself: What have I learned at church? What main passages of Scripture address this subject? What does the Bible actually say?

Or if someone has an issue with the Bible—the ugly parts, the violent parts, the parts we struggle with—invite them to look at those passages with you. Share how we Christians read them in light of Jesus. Invite them to consider how they fit into the bigger story of Scripture.

When we go to the Bible, we often find it reframes the question. We find the Bible looking at things from a different perspective. Often we find that God doesn't give us answers per se. Sometimes the deepest questions remain a mystery. God wants us to trust him because of what he has shown us by his word, not by answering all our questions and resolving all problems.

Practical Responses

Someone might say: "I don't believe in God. There's a scientific explanation for everything."

You might respond: "I've read Genesis hundreds of times. I don't see the conflict. It seems to me it's talking about God creating and ordering the universe. Why do you think the universe is so ordered and beautiful?"

Or someone says: "Jesus was a good man, but I don't think he did miracles or was the Son of God."

You might say: "Have you considered what the miracles meant in their original context? The Bible calls them signs. Would you look at these passages with me?"

Or: "Why does God allow suffering?"

You might honestly say: "I don't know. The Bible doesn't seem to give us a direct answer. But in the Bible, God entered our world to suffer for us in Jesus Christ. That gives me hope when I look out and see evil in the world. How do you deal with it?"

A Personal Testimony

All this has been a real lesson for me. I constantly fretted about how I would answer this or that question, how I would respond if an objection came from a friend. But one of my best apologetics moments was when I was completely unguarded.

At a Christmas curry at work a couple of years ago, a friend leaned over to me. She was getting ready to get married and asked: "What does it mean to you to be married as a Christian?"

I wasn't expecting that question at the Christmas curry. All I could say was what I'd learned over the years:

"Well, I know the Christian view of marriage sometimes isn't popular because it talks about wives submitting to their husbands. But what I'm taught is that I am to love my wife like Christ loves the church. The whole thing about Jesus is that he sacrificed his life for our salvation. So that's a model for how I'm to live my life in my marriage—to sacrifice my life for my wife. That's how I'm to love her."

All the girls at the table went, "Oh, that's so sweet."

But that was giving a defense of the hope I have. I'd been taught that Gospel truth time and again over the years, and clearly it had sunk in as Louise and I tried to live it out in our marriage. That's what I could share with my friends. I have a hunch that answer was more persuasive to her than any of my abstract conversations about the existence of God.

The Call

Revere Christ as Lord in your hearts. Think through your faith. Be winsome. Be persuasive. Yes—but be ready to give an account for the hope that you have. The heart of the Christian faith. The gospel of Jesus Christ.