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Have you ever given thought to the fact that as a Christian, you are a walking “billboard?” Paul was approaching this idea when he wrote to the Corinthians, “Ye are our epistle…known and read of all men” (2 Cor. 3:2). Jesus spoke of this in the Sermon on the Mount: “Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works and glorify your Father Who is in Heaven (Mat. 5:16).
The function of a billboard is to advertise a product or a service. The Christian advertises both. The product is the Gospel and the beautiful life It produces. The service is the helpfulness he extends to his fellowmen and the careful obedience he expresses toward God.
Is it possible that some of us forget this function we are to faithfully fulfill? Sometimes I fear we are advertising for the competition instead of for the Lord. For example, I can’t understand why a Christian boy or girl would want to wear a cap that advertises a brand of beer. Nor can I understand a Christian parent who would allow a child to wear such. It is understandable that those twisted minds who think drinking and drunkenness are smart would delight in parading their foolishness before the world. But how can a Christian do it and be innocent? The T-shirt and sweatshirt slogans need to be carefully considered, also. Is the current Hollywood starlet the ideal of Christian womanhood we want to project? And what about the man or boy who displays obscene images or words on his clothing and thinks he’s really cute? Some girls and women advertise for the adversary with no printed message at all. In fact, the scanty costumes some wear hardly have enough square inches of material in one place to print a message. You’d better believe they are advertising, though.
We advertise in other ways, also. I’ve often thought it might encourage some of us (young and old) to drive more sanely and more courteously if we had a bumper sticker that read, “Follow me to the Church of Christ.” Is it really a good advertisement for Christ to drive like we’re possessed of the devil? You can make additional applications. let us all remember that we are to live in such a way that our lives “adorn the doctrine of God (Tit. 2:10).
[Note: I wrote this article for, and it was published in the May 26, 1977, edition of the Granbury Gospel, weekly bulletin of the Granbury Church of Christ, Granbury, Texas, of which I was editor.
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
