The Distinction Between Missionary Work and Proselytizing

Matthew 23:15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." ¹

The distinction made between God-fearers and proselytes is common in the New Testament. There is also archeological and literary evidence for this distinction from the first century. A ‘God-fearer’ was a person of pagan birth who honored and worshiped God without becoming circumcised or following the entire law. A person of pagan birth became a ‘Proselyte’ if he became circumcised and began following the law. It was more likely for a woman to become a Proselyte than a man because a woman did not have to undergo circumcision in order to follow the law. When Jews tried to proselytize God-fearers, they often drove them away from the Jewish faith or made them into believers that were "fit for Hell" (Matt 23:15).

Proselytizing tries to force (or inflict) God upon people and often makes them a slave to the moral law. After the early Christian missions were taking root, proselytizing Jews disturbed the early churches by arguing that all must submit to circumcision and the Law. When this proselytizing caused confusion about the Church’s teaching, Christians became insecure about their salvation and were tempted to despair and leave the faith or become circumcised and follow the Law in order to ‘play it safe’. Paul completely rejects this proselytizing attitude in his letters to the Galatians and Romans. He makes it clear that this form of moral rigorism destroys the freedom that Jesus Christ died to create (Gal 5:1).

The primary goal of missionary work is to kindle the fire of love. God has gone out of his way to win our love and to demonstrate his love for us. The cross is the most striking demonstration of his love. Missionary work should reflect this and preach ‘Christ crucified’ (1 Cor 1:23). It should focus on God’s love and try to inspire the love of God.

Following the moral law is the proper response of love to a God who is all good. With sincerity the psalmist says, "O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day." (Ps. 119:97), and all of Psalm 119 is a thanksgiving for the gift of the law. No slave to the law is thankful for it.

In the New Testament, Paul says that ‘Love is the fulfillment of the law’ (Rom 13:10), and John writes,

1 John 4:16-19
We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
We love, because He first loved us.

It is necessary for a missionary to love those he is trying to convert, and it greatly helps if the missionary likes them too. Zeal, defending the honor of God, and a desperation to save someone from Hell are dangerous motivations. They can subvert the missionary from focusing on love. The following excerpts capture the true spirit of missionary work.

"God," wrote Lacordaire, "has willed that no good should be done to man except by loving him, and that insensibility should be forever incapable either of giving him light, or inspiring him to virtue." And the fact is that men take glory in resisting those who try to impose anything on them by force; they make it a point of honor to raise countless objections against the wisdom that aims at arguing everybody, all the time, around to its own point of view. But because there is no humiliation involved in allowing oneself to be disarmed by kindness, men are quite willing to yield to the attraction of its advances.
Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.
The Soul of the Apostolate

These angels of this earth fulfill the definition of Fr. Faber: "Kindness is the overflow of self on others. To be kind is to put others in one’s place. Kindness has convinced more sinners than zeal, eloquence, or learning, and these three things have never converted anybody without kindness having something to do with it. In a word, kindness makes us as gods towards one another. It is the manifestation of this feeling in apostolic men which draws sinners to them and brings them thus to their conversion."

And he adds: "Everywhere kindness shows itself the best pioneer of the Precious Blood. . . . Without doubt the fear of the Lord is frequently the beginning of that wisdom which we call conversion: but we must frighten men kindly, for otherwise fear will only make infidels."
Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.
The Soul of the Apostolate

Meekness is one sign of a vocation to be an apostolic missionary. When God sent Moses, he gave him the grace and virtue of meekness. Jesus

Christ was meekness itself, and because of this virtue He is called the Lamb. The prophets foretold that He would be so mild that He would neither break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax; that he would be persecuted, calumniated, and covered with reproaches and yet remain as one without a tongue and say nothing. What patience and meekness! Yes, by his labors, his sufferings, his silence and death on the Cross, He redeemed us and taught us how we must act to save the souls He has entrusted to us.
St. Anthony Mary Claret
Autobiography

[St. Catherine received the following message from God in a vision.] They have arisen with servile fear from the vomit of mortal sin, but, if they do not arise with love of virtue, servile fear alone is not sufficient to give eternal life. But love with holy fear is sufficient, because the law is founded in love and holy fear. The old law was the law of fear, that was given by Me to Moses, by which law they who committed sin suffered the penalty of it. The new law is the law of love, given by the Word of My only-begotten Son, and is founded in love alone. The new law does not break the old law, but rather fulfills it, as said My Truth, ‘I come not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.’ And he united the law of fear with that of love. Through love was taken away the imperfection of the fear of the penalty, and the perfection of holy fear remained, that is, the fear of offending, not on account of one’s own damnation, but of offending Me, who am Supreme Good.
St. Catherine of Siena
The Dialogues

¹All biblical passages quoted in this tract are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB). The NASB was translated by a Protestant group, and it is the most literal widely published translation.
²Some proselytes (Greek word proselutos) heard the apostles speak in tongues after Pentecost (Acts 2:10), Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch, was appointed as a steward of charitable donations (Acts 6:5), and some devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas in order to listen to their preaching (Acts 13:43). The term God-fearer or the Greek terms theosebeis (worshipers of God), phoboumenoi (fearers [of God]), and sebomenoi (worshipers [of God]) appear more frequently. A partial list of the appearances of God-fearers in the New Testament include: Peter was sent to the God-fearer Cornelius when he first received the call to preach to the gentiles (Acts 10:2,22,35), Paul addressed his message to the Jews and the Men who fear God in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:16,26), a number of God-fearing Greeks were converted in Thessalonica (Acts 17:4), and the roman centurion who had built a synagogue for the Jews and asked Jesus to heal his servant was probably a God fearer (Luke 7:1-10).
³Everett Ferguson agrees with this distinction and discusses supporting evidence in his textbook Backgrounds of Christianity published by WM. B. Eerdmans in 1993 (2nd Edition).