The real point of this story...
Illustration
Object:
The real point of this story is not the miracle of healing Jesus did, but the miracle that it transformed the man healed into an evangelist. English evangelist Alan Redpath was on target when he claimed that "the conversion of a soul is the miracle of the moment..." And evangelism is what the church and what our lives are for. C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther make that clear respectively in the following quotations:
"The church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose."
"We live on earth for no other purpose than to be helpful to others. Otherwise it would be best for God to take away our breath and let us die as soon as we are baptized and have begun to believe. But he lets us live here in order that we may lead other people to believe, doing for them what he has done for us" (What Luther Says, p. 961).
"The church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose."
"We live on earth for no other purpose than to be helpful to others. Otherwise it would be best for God to take away our breath and let us die as soon as we are baptized and have begun to believe. But he lets us live here in order that we may lead other people to believe, doing for them what he has done for us" (What Luther Says, p. 961).
