Walk Somebody Through the Ten Commandments Without Being Weird

Ask him if he thinks he's a good person. Then shut your mouth and let him answer.

That one question is the whole hinge, and I learned it standing in a gas station parking lot at about 10:40 on a Tuesday night, talking to a guy I'd worked beside for two years. I'd tried the other approach with him before. I'd told him Jesus loved him and died for his sins, and he'd nodded the way you nod at a coworker showing you pictures of his boat. Pleasant. Unmoved. Because I'd handed him the cure for a disease he was certain he didn't have.

Way of the Master, the ministry Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron built, is really just a recovery of something older than either of them. Use the law to show a man his sin. Then show him the Savior. Paul said it plainly: "by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20), and the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Grace tastes like nothing to somebody who doesn't know he's dying.

Why the order matters more than your words

Most of us witness backwards. We lead with love, forgiveness and a personal testimony about how much calmer our mornings are now. The person hears a self-improvement pitch and files it next to keto and journaling.

Lead with the commandments and something different happens. You're not the one accusing him. The law is. His own conscience is, the one Romans 2:15 says is already scribbling notes in the margins. You're just the guy holding up the mirror, and mirrors don't argue.

The ministry's shorthand for this is law to the proud, grace to the humble. Scripture backs it. God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud (James 4:6). So if a man is standing there confident he's basically fine, handing him grace is like handing a rope to somebody who won't admit he's in the water.

The four questions, in order

Memorize these. Not a script, a sequence. You'll say them in your own voice a thousand different ways, but the order doesn't change.

"Do you think you're a good person?" Almost everybody says yes. Let them. Don't flinch, don't correct.

"Do you think you've kept the Ten Commandments?" Most say roughly yes. A few say they don't know them. Either answer opens the door.

"Can I run through a few with you?" Now you've got permission, and permission changes everything. You're not preaching at a man. He invited you.

Then the specifics. How many lies have you told in your life? What do you call somebody who tells lies? Have you ever taken something that wasn't yours, regardless of value? What do you call somebody who does that? Have you ever used God's name as a curse word, the way you'd never use the name of someone you love?

Do it gently and it's devastating. Not because you're clever. Because it's true, and he knows it's true, and he's been avoiding knowing it for thirty years.

A practical note the training videos won't emphasize enough. The classic set includes the seventh commandment and what Jesus says in Matthew 5 about the heart, and that's legitimate ground. But you don't need it to make the point, and in a lot of settings, a parking lot with a coworker, a conversation where a woman is talking to a man she barely knows, a table with kids nearby, it's wisdom to stay with lying, stealing and blasphemy. Three commandments are plenty. Nobody has ever escaped on a technicality because you skipped one.

The turn

Once he's conceded he's lied, taken things and used God's name carelessly, ask the question that does the work:

"So if God judged you by that standard, would you be innocent or guilty?"

Let the silence sit. Don't rescue him. Then: "Heaven or hell?"

Some people get flippant here. Some get quiet. The quiet ones are why you do this. And the moment his face changes is the moment you stop being a prosecutor and start being a friend with news.

Here's where the whole thing turns warm, and it should turn fast. God is a good judge, which is exactly the problem, and exactly the reason the cross is what it's. He paid a fine he didn't owe. Jesus, the Son of God, crucified for sin that wasn't his, raised on the third day, and there's no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Not a path among paths. The only one (John 14:6).

Then tell him what to do: repent and trust Christ. Not "try harder." Not "come to church with me sometime," though invite him too. Turn from sin and put your trust in the Savior the way you trust a parachute, not the way you trust a fact.

Where people push back, and what actually works

"God's forgiving." Agree with him. Then ask if a judge who lets a guilty man walk because he seems nice is a good judge or a corrupt one.

"I don't believe in hell." Fine. Ask what he thinks God should do with a man who's molested children. Most people believe in justice. They just don't like the word.

"You think you're better than me." This one you answer with your face before you answer it with words. Tell him the truth: you failed the same test. That's how you found out you needed a Savior.

"I'm religious already." Ask what he's trusting in to get to heaven. If the answer is anything he did, you've found the conversation.

What goes wrong the first ten times

You'll rush. You'll ask a question and then answer it yourself two seconds later because the silence is unbearable. Sit in the silence. It's doing more than your paragraph would.

You'll turn it into a debate. Somebody takes a swing at the age of the earth and forty minutes vanish. Answer briefly, then steer back: "Fair question. Can I ask you the one I started with?"

You'll pick the wrong moment. Thanksgiving dinner, in front of his wife and his mother, isn't a gospel conversation. It's an ambush, and he'll defend himself instead of listening. Get him alone. Get him in a truck, on a job site, on a walk.

And you'll be tempted to use this as a weapon on somebody who annoys you. Don't. The method is sharp enough to wound without love behind it, and a man who feels hunted will never hear you again.

Where to practice

Living Waters puts hours of unscripted street conversations on YouTube, and watching twenty of them will teach you more about pacing than any book. Their tracts are worth carrying because they solve the hardest part, which is starting.

Better than either: run it on your own kids at the dinner table, out loud, and let them hear you stumble. My oldest can now walk through the four questions cleaner than I can. He's twelve.

Then find one person this month. Not a stranger downtown, unless that's your gift. The guy who fixes your brakes. The neighbor whose sprinkler you've fixed twice.

Ask him if he thinks he's a good person, and mean it kindly, and be ready for the answer to take longer than you thought.