WORD VS DEED, by Dr. Duane Litfin

First let me thank Angie Chetham and Lindsey Tulley from Crossway Publishing for sending me a review copy of this new book by Duane Litfin.  I appreciate them allowing me the opportunity to read and digest this material.

Dr. Litfin is President Emeritus of Wheaton College.  His book is dealing with the topic of whether or not the Gospel can be preached just through deeds and not with words.  He starts out with a quote, “Preach the gospel at all times.  Use words if necessary.”  This quote is attributed, wrongly, to St. Francis of Assisi and that is one of the reasons that Litfin starts with it.  He wants to be sure we don’t give power to this concept thinking that St. Francis said it.

Part One of the book deals with a very strong defense that the Gospel can only be “Preached” with words.  It cannot be “preached” with deeds.  He gives a very strong compelling argument for the truth of this point.  While his teaching is ‘right on’ I found that I kept asking, but shouldn’t our deeds be living examples of what “the Gospel” has done in our lives?  Don’t our deeds back up our “Verbal Preaching” of the Gospel?

Well, I had to keep from jumping to that point.  I found myself letting Dr. Litfin continue on his dialogue of the need for “Verbal Preaching” of the Gospel.  He is correct.  And he states in the beginning of the book that he is going to be “forceful” in Part One to stand firm on the thought the Gospel can only be conveyed with WORD’s and not with just DEED’S.

So, I really appreciated his first three chapters that strong detail the need for preaching the Gospel.

Part Two of the book deals with “The Importance of Our Deeds.”  So, he does get to a place where he brings the discussion to focus on the fact that our deeds should be a reflection of how the Gospel has affected our lives.  Thus our deeds should be such that they clarify our words and demonstrate the way the gospel has changed our lives.

Obviously our deeds have the potential to affirm or preaching or to show us to be hypocrites by demonstrating our sinful natures.

Deeds are good, but they come out of the convictions we hold.  The Gospel can not be caught only by our deeds, it must be verbally preached to those we want to share the Gospel with, but our deeds will add strength to our verbal preaching as people see how we live our lives.

I must admit that I found chapter four, “Abstractions and their Uses” to be a bit more academic than I felt was needed for this book.  But what can you expect when you have a professor / College President writing a book.  They just have to get academic at times J

Chapter Five, “Theology Applied” starts to get to the issue of how Deeds can be useful.  He starts with a quote from John Calvin, “The faithful do not only make claims with their lips, but prove their service of God in concrete acts.”  Again you see the emphasis on our words being the way the Gospel is preached, but our deeds add a secondary strength to our preaching.

Part Three of the book deals with “The Importance of Handling Scripture Well.”  Dr. Litfin gives us a very good discussion of how we need to know our scripture, we need to handle it well and we need to use it wisely and often.

2 Timothy 2:15 affirms the concept of handling scripture well.  Paul instructs Timothy to “do your best to . . . . handle rightly the word of truth.”  Dr. Litfin builds on this concept and ties it in well to his topic of Words verses Deeds.

Conclusion; I believe this book will be an excellent addition to any layperson’s library of Christian books.  It will also give them as well as Pastor’s a good treatment of why the Gospel Must Be Preached With Words and not just left to be hopefully ‘caught’ by those who observe our deeds.

This has been a fairly lengthy review, but I hope you caught that I was at first frustrated with Dr. Litfin’s strong statements in Part One, but he won me over to his side with his good transition to Part’s two and three and tied all of them together nicely throughout the book.

Bottom line, preach the Gospel with words and let your deeds demonstrate the truth of the Gospel you preach.