He Gets Us

FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS
volume 22, number 7, February 16, 2023

“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” – 2 Corinthians 5:20

Most us have seen or heard about the “He Gets Us” ad campaign which began with television ads a few weeks ago during the telecasts of NFL football games, and then perhaps you saw the two ads which ran during the Super Bowl on February 12. The first was a thirty second ad costing $7 million with emotionally evoking images of children and their kindness to each other and animals, ending with the words of Jesus, “Be childlike.” The second ad was one minute long, showing disturbing images of anger and hostility between people with Jesus’ words “Love your enemies”, ending with “Jesus loved the people we hate.” The branding firm producing these ads say they will spend $1 billion over the next three years in this ad campaign.

What shall we say about this effort to reach people for Jesus? First of all, I find the ads very well produced and they certainly grab my attention. They do a good job of “scratching where people itch.” I found at least fourteen ads on <hegetsus.com> They say they are trying to reach people who are spiritually open but skeptical of Christianity. If you go to the <hegetsus.com> website you will find a tab directing you to various Bible reading plans. This is good. I like that. Getting people to read the Bible can be a powerful tool God may use in drawing people to faith in Jesus. The Gideon’s International, a ministry I love and admire, distributes Bibles worldwide in hopes that people who are searching will read and be saved. Furthermore, I have found that leading people in evangelistic Bible studies often is a catalyst to true conversion.  

Campus Crusade for Christ conducted something similar back in 1976 in an ad campaign called “Here’s Life, America,” where Bill Bright, founder and President of “Crusade”, claimed 545,000 people were saved through this effort of car bumper stickers and enlisting volunteers to call everyone in their community and engage in survey questions. The hope was to share the gospel using the “Four Spiritual Laws”, and to follow up those who made decisions for Christ and get them plugged into a local church. I remember our church, First Presbyterian Church of Macon, Georgia, was engaged in this effort and I was personally very involved in making phone calls and sharing the “Four Laws” with others.

While I applaud their zeal and earnest desire to see people become followers of Jesus, in both the He Gets Us and Here’s Life, America campaigns, I have a few serious reservations. I may sound like a nostalgic, cranky old man who needs “to get a life” and jettison my love for the 17th century Puritans and 18th century evangelistic preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Samuel Davies, but hear me out. Looking back on the Here’s Life, America effort, my concern now is that it did not give a full orbed gospel message, and that it was interested in “getting decisions” for Christ. While an effort, no doubt, was made “to follow up” those decisions for Christ, my experience was that nothing really came of it. I personally never saw anyone whom I helped “decide to follow Jesus” join a church nor was I ever able to get them to meet with me for follow up and discipleship. 

Admittedly, I have not read everything on the <hegetsus.com> but from what I have seen there is nothing there which gives a full picture of Jesus. Yes, Jesus commands us to love our enemies and to be childlike, but He also says, “Repent and believe the gospel. . . unless you repent, you will likewise perish. . . if anyone wishes to follow Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. . .hell is a place where the fire is never quenched and worm never dies. . . I did not come to bring peace but I came to bring a sword. . . unless one hates his father and mother and brother and sister, then he cannot be My disciple. . . unless you are born from above you will not see the kingdom of God. . . you will die in your sins. . .”

In other words, there seems to be nothing in the He Gets Us ad campaign which speaks of the sinfulness of man and the wretched hopelessness of everyone outside of union with Christ (Eph.2:1-3). There is nothing about the trajectory of everyone to an eternal hell unless they repent and believe the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (2 Thess.1:8,9). There is no call for repentance (Mt.3:8). There is no call for holiness (Heb.12:14). There is no mention of God’s wrath being satisfied by the death of Jesus for our own abject rebellion and contempt of God’s manifold goodness to each of us (Rom.3:23-25). There is nothing about the fact that God is angry with the sinner everyday (Dt.32:20-22), that He hates the man of bloodshed and deceit (Ps.5:3,4).

To go further, citing the Apostle Paul who said we are to beg people to be reconciled to God, there is in the ad no earnest, heartfelt, pleading call for lost, damned sinners to run to Jesus to be saved. God always uses the preaching of His word to save sinners. I am not saying that individual, non-ordained people cannot engage in evangelistic work. Clearly everyone in the early church was evangelizing and calling people to follow Jesus (Acts 8:4). I am not saying that the Gideon’s or evangelistic Bible studies are not helpful. Quite the contrary. The difference between the Gideon’s and He Gets Us is that the former has an outline of the gospel clearly displayed in the Bible where there is no evidence of that in the latter. Home evangelistic Bible studies should also be different than He Gets Us. At some point the leader of the Bible study will call the people to repent and follow Jesus. This seems not to be present in He Gets Us. 

So, we are back to where we have been for sometime. The situation is utterly hopeless without the convicting, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Someone has to proclaim Jesus to people. Someone has to risk estrangement from family, neighbor, or friends. Someone has to be a “fool for Jesus’ sake” and beg people (not suggest, nor try to coerce) people to be reconciled to God. 

Wini and I were talking the other day with a brother who labors in the inner city of Birmingham. As he spoke about the depth of generational sin and its control over the minds, hearts, and wills of people, Wini and I both came away from that conversation with a deep sense of hopelessness. Where do we begin? The sin is so firmly entrenched in every community, even within the church itself, that “business as usual” is not working. Some may agree and say, “Yes, that’s why we need something new like He Gets Us. I really wish I could get on board with the ad campaign, but I am afraid I cannot. So, where does this leave us? We must have preachers, we must have lay people in the church who will proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into the marvelous light of the gospel. We must remember our total inability, our paltry efforts, to effect any change in anyone. Our hope alone is in the Lord who made heaven and earth. We must not retreat. We must not give up, but we realize we must go forth in the fullness of the Spirit and with the full orbed gospel of man’s utter sinfulness and the richness of free grace in a gospel of regeneration, justification, and sanctification. Nothing less will do. Nothing less will truly save, and nothing less will transform our wicked and perverse nation.