“How can I be a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ?”  I have often been asked that very question.  A good place to start is to ask, “what is a witness?”  Quite simply, a witness is one who tells what he knows and what he has experienced.  Here is an illustration which I hope will help us to understand what it means to be a witness for the Savior.  

    Two boats passed each other on the Mississippi River, one a ferry, loaded with people, the other was a freighter.  A worker on the ferry pointed toward a man on the other vessel and said to a nearby passenger, “Look, there’s the captain.”  When the passenger asked how the man knew the captain and why he pointed him out, the man told this story.  “Years ago we were going along just like this when I fell overboard.  About the time I went into the water, that freighter was passing alongside of us and the captain dove into the water and rescued me, otherwise I would have drowned because I could not swim.  I’ll never forget him and every time his boat passes I like to tell somebody about him and say, ‘Look, there’s the captain.’”

    My friends, in Adam and through personal guilt, I had fallen overboard into the depths of depravity with no ability to save myself.  If left alone, my soul would have been justly and eternally swept away beneath the waves of vindictive justice, but the Captain of my salvation came to my rescue.  The Son of God joined Himself to human flesh, lived a life of obedience to divine law and then culminated His obedience with the death of the cross.  He died that God might be a just God and a Savior.  Christ laid down His life to pay the penalty for my transgressions which is death; He put away my sins and established a perfect righteousness which God freely imputed to this unworthy sinner.  In time, He sent the gospel to me and by His Spirit’s power gave me a saving interest in this glorious Savior.  He was revealed to me as the One who had accomplished redemption.  I was brought to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  In short, He rescued me from perishing.  Everything a holy God required for my eternal salvation has been fully accomplished by my Substitute; I am complete in Him.  It is my delight and privilege to direct your attention to Him and proclaim to you, “Look, there’s the Captain of my salvation,” or, as John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29).  “For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10).

    To be a witness of Christ, then, is to tell people who rescued you and how He did it.  It is to exalt that One who was appointed to be the Savior of His chosen people, who made our peace with God by the blood of His cross.