East-coast Missions Project

The Silent Witness?

I have never been able to find the term ‘silent witness’ used in Scripture. However, throughout the years I have heard many people who profess to be Christians state that they are a ‘silent witness’ for Christ in their workplace or their school ... not because of rules forbidding them from sharing, but because they simply feel they don't have too. These people claim they don’t saying anything to people about Christ, they just let the way they live be their testimony of witness for Christ. This really frightens me when I hear somebody say they are a ‘silent witness.’ Why would anyone not want to tell people about their God, Lord and Savior? Unless, they don’t really believe in His ability to take care of them.

Scripture tells us in Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved …”.

Gee … I think that means in part that if you are a follower of Christ you will speak about it. The supposition that the ‘silent witness’ makes is that through their works people will see Christ and they will find favor with God (and man). The problem for them is we are not saved by how we live, but by faith. The danger even with very mature Christians is that sometimes we slip into thinking that we can gain favor with God by the things we do. We can not do anything to earn favor with God. The only thing we can possibly persuade God to do is pour His wrath out upon us. The only favor we have with God comes through His mercy in the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

All the other religions of the world (Christianity is the exception) are based on man doing ‘works’ to please their god. Man wants to be god. The lesser is always blessed by the greater. When you have a religion of works … what you are saying is that you have blessed God – God is the one receiving a blessing from you and now God owes you because of the things you have done. We can not bless God, we can not do anything to gain favor with God … that is why men hate the gospel … man feels the need to earn favor, but God offers eternal forgiveness as a free gift – man hates that. Man wants to be God.

We all do it, in one way or another … the thinking is, if we do some special act of service on behalf of God that God will owe us a blessing. I’m really in good standing with God today because I did such and such. Not.
We do the things we do because we believe God.

Many people who make the ‘silent witness’ claim do so out of fear, and a lack of faith. They can rationalize it anyway they want, but the truth is they are not trusting God or God’s Word. Plain and simple, they are saying they have more fear of man than they have fear of God. There are the rare cases where speaking out would be foolishness and certain death; and even then (or where there are rules in place that say we shouldn't speak) we need to trust that God is true to His word. I'm not saying to break rules, but where there is conflict we are to obey God over the rules of men. However, for the average person (here in America) someday they will have to give an account of why they feared losing their job, or feared verbal persecution possibly being told that what they say is ‘hate speech’ or they are intolerant and judgmental and why they put so many other things ahead of and more important in their lives then Jesus Christ, … who should be the essence of their lives. The ‘silent witnesses’ needs to examine and test themselves based upon scripture to see if Christ is really in them.

Matthew 10:32-33 “Everyone therefore who shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”

Faith trusts and obeys God’s Word out of faith because of faith in God. Not simply to obey God because we desire to become a moral people, or simply to do the right thing; we should obey God because we BELIEVE God. What we do, how we live our lives is a result of Him living in us as evidence of faith, not works to win favor and not legalist obedience. We do the things we do; we say the things we say, because we believe God. It is only because of God’s faithfulness that we can have faith. Because God is faithful and keeps His word that even in spite of our inability to remain faithful we can still have faith because God is faithful. Speak up and believe God.