I think I have said it myself. I have heard it from others. Perhaps you have said it yourself. With some combination of amusment, bewilderment, and derision, someone has just asked, "So what religion are you?" You reply, "It's more of a lifestyle than a religion; I'm a follower of Christ." This need not be a undesirable statement, but let us consider it more closely.
The name “Christian” has been tainted by several unfortunate
associations. First, we see it appropriated
by innumerable farcical “churches,” who have simply pinned Christ's name to their deity. Second, it is claimed by anyone who attends either
a genuine or cultish church, even if his or her profession of faith in "Chist" is as thin, and as transparent, as shrink wrap. Tragically, the world is all too
happy to affirm these definitions: anyone who at least professes allegiance to Christ is a Christian, regardless of the truth of their devotion or the
truth of their Christ.
This does much to water down the term, to be sure. However, I remain unconvinced that this forces
us to the conclusion that the term is unsuitable. To this end, I appeal to the historical
nature of the term – not because traditions must be upheld, but because the
past reminds us what it means to claim the title “Christian."
"Christian" (Χριστιανός) was the term given to believers in the cradle years of the church (Acts 11:26). Not many years after this, having this title attributed to oneself was enough to earn persecution or martyrdom, even from the state. "If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you...if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name." (1 Peter 4:14, 15b, emphasis added)
In other words, there is cause to glorify God in your label as a Christian, even if and when that moniker invites hardship. There is every indication that the fledgling church took this to heart; our early brothers and sisters were often obliged to stand before their accusers and stare into the black face of martyrdom, and many said nothing but, "I am a Christian." These few words assured dire recourse from their enemies, but they would say nothing else. J. Spencer Northcote records that when they were pressed further, they would reply in this manner: "I have already said that I am a Christian; and he who says that has thereby named his country, his family, his profession, and all things else besides." 1
Today, though, "Christian" has become the moral password which politicians whisper to quickly establish trust. It is the card which cults lay down in their plays for legitimacy and trust. It is the color which teenagers brush upon themselves to avoid close scrutiny in their lives. How did this word lose its original force? Why has the absolute truth behind it been displaced by ecumenical well-wishing and lies? This can only be the result of a church which has become all but indiscernible against the backdrop of the world.
To be sure, there will always be those who desire to twist and steal the name and truth of Christ, because this remains a permanent feature of the demonic mission, but there is no sense in our adding fuel to this ancient fire. We must stand distinct from the world, moving opposition to the world, and "preach[ing] Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness." (1 Cor. 1:23b) To unbelievers who know this sort of church, the word "Christian" is usually not one that they desire to place upon themselves, lest they be blighted with the shame that they themselves attribute to believers, or the anger that righteousness stirs within them, or the scorn that they share among their comrades.
Our lesson is clear; it has been proven out by history as well as by scripture. As we draw closer and more uncompromisingly toward Christ, we neutralize the perceived benefits of falsely claiming Christ until they cannot outweight the hardships which the world affords (and which are to us but jewels in the crown of joy). This is our course and our directive if we are to remake our own name into something more worthy of the one true Christ.
I am a Christian. I belong to a worldwide, a national, and yes, a local church that has not done all it could. I have not done all that I could, but still I am a Christian.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
What's in a Name?
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Christ Upholds the Reality of Human Responsibility
"What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy."
- Romans 9:14-16
We believe these words, and many others like them, because they are contained in God's book. The dispensation of mercy comes from God's hands in accordance with His own sovereign choices, not in accordance with our actions. This axiomatic - mercy, by definition, is not earned. However, this truth has been met with more than its fair share of criticism, of course, as it asserts that the choice of salvation resides with God, not with the person.
The natural conclusion of this is the question of how then God can condemn people to hell, if their salvation is His choice? Paul addresses this in Romans 9:20-21: "You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?' On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it?" In other words, we are to acknowledge, without fully understanding, that God can choose to graciously save, and then condemn those whom He has passed over in the same moment, and there is surely no injustice in His so doing.
We can accept this, but if we are honest with ourselves, it seems at times difficult to content ourselves with a concept so removed from our understanding. We cannot help but wonder how this idea can stand up. Fortunately, we may look to the words of Christ for two points of real and true comfort:
1. Legitimacy. "When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, 'If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.'" (Luke 19:41-42) Here our Savior weeps and laments for the unsaved in Jerusalem. If we sometimes struggle with feeling as though human responsibility in salvation is a merely ornamental element, we are comforted that the omniscient Christ never for a moment succumbed to this sentiment. This was not forced emotion or sentiment for the sake of those around Him - there is no duplicity in the countenance of the Savior.
How precious and true are the tears of the Lord Jesus! Do we give the due consequence to the lamentations of One who is beyond any form of dissembly, who understands as none of us can the utter sovereignty which is in His own very hands? His tears fall neither lightly or inappropriately; rather, they come laden with a full understanding both of human nature and of divine nature. If indeed the Lord Jesus can shed tears over the unfaithfulness of the unsaved, then we may rest assured that He at least considers their disbelieving choices to be of a very real substance. Note that this lamentation is made even while sovereignly declaring that these unbelievers will not be allowed to see "the things which make for peace."
2. Rationale. "Then He said again to them, 'I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.'" (John 8:21) A glimmer of understanding lies within these words. Jesus declares that the unbelieving Pharisees will die in their sins; that is, that their sins will remain upon their own heads when they die. And so it would be for all of us, were it not for God's intervening grace. We are each of us born in under the dark pall of sin; in condemning us, our divine Judge merely dispenses exactly what is deserved. If He chooses to save us, He gives us what we do not deserve, but this does not affect the deservedness and personal culpability of those whom He passes over. Human nature condemns, while divine grace saves. Thus God is glorified for saving His people, while at the same time showing Himself to be utterly just in His righteous condemnation. This raises other questions that are difficult, but at the least, it serves to give us a glimpse of God's justice in terms that we may appreciate.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Awash in the Sea of Compromise
At one point in the film Anatomy of a Murder, a lawyer expresses disdain for the idea of attempting to fabricate a viable but artificial excuse for a murder, even though this would be the muderer's only chance for escape from a murder conviction. A friend of his replies quite simply, "Maybe you're too pure, Paul. Too pure for the natural impurities of the law." In other words, one must not scruple to operate with a tinge of immorality while in an immoral system; so doing can bring about desirable, or even moral, results.
This excites no astonishment in us; the shelves of literature and cinema are saturated with this very idea: Robin Hood's clever thievery feed the grateful poor, and Harry Callahan kills the Scorpio Killer, then wordlessly discards his badge. Sadly, however, this travels deep beyond fiction into the very fabric of our world, the very stuff of human life, and perhaps the greatest, most tragic example of this is the final hours of Jesus before the crucifixion.
The Pharisees tried the Savior with a stunning and flagrant disregard for their own laws: demanding that He testify against Himself, trying Him at night, trying Him before Annas, who was not the high priest that year, trying Him without the Sanhedrin present, even striking Him during His questioning (John 18:12-24). This they did because they judged it necessary to stop the Christ by any means possible.
Later, Pontius Pilate, who never gave the slightest inkling that he supposed the Savior guilty of anything, nevertheless ordered Him to be unspeakably torn and mutilated. He so decreed in hopes that the Pharisees would be quieted and ultimately relent in their desire to kill Him (John 19:1-4). Were I an acquaitance of Pilate, I would ask him to not do me any favors.
But a moment later, the chief priests would achieve the very apogee of their ecstatic blasphemy in this austere declaration: "We have no king but Caesar." (John 19:15b) In other words, "Forget this Man, Pilate - He is not our king. Caesar, the very one whom we hate and chafe against and seek to throw off, is our only king. Forget even the God of Israel - we are under no rule but that of Caesar. So do we deny the very God we claim to serve, if only it means we may be rid of this troublesome carpenter whose claims we cannot dispute." And in doing so, they spoke far better than they knew about their own allegiances.
This is the world of sin, my friends. Without the regenerating work and righteous wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we possess no spiritual equilibrium - we suppose that we can usher in good ends through unsavory means. We tilt a quart of motor oil to our lips and expect it will turn to honey in our stomachs. It is not a matter of desiring this sort of compromise, but rather, of supposing that it is the only recourse available to us.
Praise be to God, though, that this sort of moral compromise is utterly foreign to the Christian world. It is never called for. We may be fraught with confusion or reluctance in our pursuit of righteousness, but we will never find ourselves needing to harness sinful means to accomplish a righteous purpose. So Peter, in speaking to those enslaved to unkind masters, can simply tell them to bear up submissively and righteously under such treatment (1 Peter 2:18-20). This answer from Peter is not out of touch or obtuse; he simply declares that righteousness and endurance are that which please the Lord. There is no circumstance in which the temporal consequences of righteousness render the relinquishment of that righteousness a valid option.
Furthermore,God will never lead us into a situation demanding moral compromise. His righteousness, His omniscience, His sovereignty, and His omnisapience (complete wisdom) all stand as insurmountable fortresses that oppose the incursions of moral compromise: there will never come a need for us to equivocate, in either word or deed, on our dearly-held, divinely-imparted righteous principles. More directly, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone." (James 1:13)
There are certainly times when we can feel as though compromise could help the Kingdom - perhaps to grow God's church or to establish a relational context with the unsaved. These feelings are not from the Lord. When Christians sinfully forgo a righteous act in hopes of accomplishing a righteous end, they have forgotten that the righteous act they spurned was itself the righteous end that God desired! Our righteous response to our circumstances is the Lord's prescription, and it is His prerogative to work through our righteous deeds as He sees fit. Consider Jeremiah and Paul, for instance - both godly men, obedient and righteous, and yet the results of their ministries were dramatically different.
Our righteous deeds, then, become as humble offerings to the Lord, for His own use. To deny this by sinful compromise is to judge that the Lord does not have His own best interests at heart. Furthermore, it assumes that a situation can have but one outcome if a righteous prescription is followed - such a mockery to God in His sovereignty! In a word, it demonstrates our opinion of God as a weak, foolish, very human sort of deity. May these things never be.
Instead, we joyfully hold to the truth that God sees all ends and has ordained all ends, and we may therefore rest in our resolve to tenaciously pursue His righteous principles at every turn. Moral compromise is neither a requirement nor an option for the saint whose eyes are fixed on Christ, no matter what the circumstance. Praise Him for this beautifully rigid certainty!
Monday, October 15, 2012
Simple Truth Entreated: The Response of Unbelievers (Part 5 of 5)
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Simple Truth Entreated: The Response of Unbelievers (Part 4 of 5)
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Simple Truth Revisited: The Response of Believers (Part 3 of 5)
Friday, October 12, 2012
Simple Truth Revisited: The Response of Believers (Part 2 of 5)
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Simple Truth (Part 1 of 5)
It was not, however, God’s intention that the entire human race go down into eternal hell. The masterful and incredibly loving stroke, devised before time began (Titus 1:2, Matt. 25:34), came in the form of Jesus Christ, God Himself, becoming fully human while still fully God (Phil. 2:6-7) and living a perfect, sinless life (1 Pet. 2:22, Heb. 7:26). This life culminated in Christ willingly and sovereignly going to His own death (John 10:18) as His heavenly Father unstintingly laid the full weight of eternal punishment for the sins of many upon Him (2 Cor. 5:21, Is. 53:4-12). We see that if Christ so suffered and died for our sins, then the just punishment for those sins has been depleted, and we need no longer go to Hell for them. What gracious and superlative love!
After He had taken the Father’s just wrath upon Himself and died, He wondrously took up His life again three days later (Matt. 28:1-6, 1 Cor. 15:3-4), rising triumphantly from the dead and showing Himself to many (1 Cor. 15:5-8). If He has raised Himself from the dead, then He has gloriously conquered sin and death – not only is He able to keep people from hell, then, but He can also give them eternal life (Rom. 6:3-10, 1 John 5:11)!
The uniqueness of this act cannot be overlooked or understated. When Jesus said that “no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6b), He demonstrated the solitary access He offered to the Father. The apostle Peter later affirmed the same truth: “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) If we would be saved from the just wrath of God for the sins in our hearts, we must seek that salvation by the means which He, the sovereign and only true God has established.
What is our response to this? How can we have this life and avoid our eternal doom? The command in the New Testament is that people “should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.” (Acts 26:20b; cf. Matt. 4:17). In other words, we must remorsefully admit of our sinful character to God, and beg Him to forgive us on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of sinners. We must also understand that, according to Acts 26:20, we cannot claim to be repentant, but then continue to live and act just as we did before; we must count the cost (Luke 14:26-35). Our salvation, if genuine, will bear the fruit of good works because we want to please God (1 John 5:3, Rom. 7:22)!