Not Hysterical. Not Fanatical. But Radical.

Ray Ortlund post:  2015 Is the New 1968

I remember the tumultuous days of 1968.  The top stories of that year included the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in April.  Two months later, in June, Robert Kennedy was murdered.  Two months later, in August, Hizzoner Mayor Richard J. Daley presided over the demolition of the Democratic National Convention as the Chicago police beat up on anti-Vietnam War protesters in the streets.  It was an intense year.

We are now living in similar times.  Pressure has been building for several years.  Now the cultural upheaval is exploding.  “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them.  How then can we live?” (Ezekiel 33:10).

I also remember how Francis Schaeffer lived during that spasm of national self-injury.  His example can guide us in these days.  And there was one thing that stood out about Francis Schaeffer: he was radical.  Not hysterical.  Not fanatical.  But radical.  He followed the vector of the gospel out into bold and costly obedience in ways that other pastors and leaders just hadn’t thought of or dared to attempt.  He told the radical truth of Scripture — lovingly and gently, but without backing off.  He and his wife Edith practiced radical hospitality, with personal sacrifice.  Rather than reject the radicals of those times, he identified with them and adapted his ministry to match their boldness.  He was unafraid to welcome into his world young people as they really were, without fearing them or expecting them to change first.  He worked tirelessly, even to his own disadvantage, for the advance of the gospel in culture and dress and communication that the rising generation could hear clearly and respect.  And God honored his ministry with radical impact.

2015 is the new 1968.  And I’m glad to be right here, right now, with you, for the most radical cause in history.  No hysterics.  No fanaticism.  But radical followers of Jesus doing whatever it takes to communicate the fullness of the gospel in the extremity of our times.

Let’s get after it.

All That is Wrong In the World

Jemar Tisby post:  From Depraved to Disciple - The Story of Every Christian 

On June 17, a twenty-one-year-old man entered Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He sat down with a small group of parishioners who were there for a Bible study. After about an hour of listening to teaching and discussion on Mark 4:16–20, he pulled out a pistol and fatally shot nine people.

In the aftermath of the Charleston shooting, pundits on television and people on social media labeled the tragedy “inexplicable” and “senseless.” While well-intentioned, these words are inaccurate. This young man’s deadly violence is indeed explicable. It does make a sort of twisted “sense.” We know why these nine people were murdered. We know why sex-trafficking thrives. We know why we cheat on our spouses. The reason for all that is wrong in the world is summed up in one word — sin.

The Bad News First

It may sound trite, but it is profoundly true: you can’t fully understand the good news if you don’t understand the bad.

When God first created the world, only two descriptors applied to all that he made — “good” and “very good.” But in his mysterious providence, he made the man and woman capable of rejecting his benevolence and disobeying his command. Our forefather Adam ate the forbidden fruit, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and that death has spread to all people (Romans 5:12). The biblical teaching that Adam’s sin has been passed down to all people like a terminal spiritual disease is called “total depravity” (Romans 3:10–2, 23).

Extensive, Not Intensive

The depth of mankind’s sin nature is commonly misunderstood. Human beings are not as bad as they possibly could be. To be absolutely sinful means that a person's every thought, word, and deed is malicious. But this isn’t our experience.

People demonstrate benevolence all the time. They donate money and clothes to help the poor. They become teachers to inspire young people to thoughtfulness and service. They take care of their sick parents.

Total depravity describes an extensive reality, rather than an intensive one. It means that sin extends to every aspect of our humanity. Each person’s mind, will, and emotions have been corrupted by sin. No part of any human being has a defense against depravity. But this does not mean that people do as much evil as they possibly could. Total depravity does not speak of the intensity of sin in a person, only that every part of a person has been touched by it.

Protection from Progressivism

The biggest enemy of our embracing this biblical truth is the contemporary belief in the inherent progress of humanity. The rapid advances in scientific knowledge during the Age of Enlightenment and the technological shifts during the Industrial Revolution deluded us into thinking that we behave better over time. The idea of sin seemed passé in the midst of tectonic changes from traditional to modern life. This gave rise to the idea of “progressivism.”

Progressivism teaches that — given enough time, information, and good will — people will become progressively better on their own. Societies will become more humane, science will teach people all they need to know, and nations will become more civilized.

Human-centered progressivism undergirds the modern secular mind, and tragically it is sending people to hell. It causes people to turn away from God and seek salvation in science or activism or themselves. In the philosophy of progressivism, the serpent still whispers, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:3). The biblical truth of our total depravity must be protected from progressivism, to help people seek Christ for salvation instead of themselves.

Our Need for Good News

The biblical doctrine of total depravity teaches the complete futility of all efforts at self-salvation. Human beings are not just sick in their trespasses and sins, but dead (Ephesians 2:1). No matter how hard we try to do good in our own power, we will always act selfishly in the end. These problems do not arise from a lack of willpower, but from a lack of life. Only an external power stronger than sin and death can overcome the depravity that resides within us. The biggest implication of total depravity is that humankind needs a savior.

Jesus Christ was the only human being ever born who did not inherent Adam’s sin. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, he lived a sinless life and was thereby worthy of eternal life. Yet because he so loved his chosen people, he willingly subjected himself to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). On the third day, he rose again, vanquishing sin and the last enemy, death. Now through faith in Christ we, too, are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). Christ has freed us from the power of sin.

In Jesus, we are able to fight our sinful nature and live holy lives to his glory. Christ’s sin-crushing power in us does not represent a mere foray into enemy territory but a complete takeover. Just as depravity once affected us in our totality, by faith in Christ, holiness now permeates our entire being. This does not mean that we never sin. Even Christians suffer from the disease of sin and its effects, but the difference for believers is that sin no longer controls us.

Potential for Evil

Total depravity implies that the same seeds of murderous anger that led a young man to slay nine people in a Bible study reside in us as well. Just because we haven’t committed particular sins doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of doing them or worse. Total depravity should lead all believers to humble circumspection about their own potential for evil.

But God gives more grace. He has provided ways for us to continually dismiss the darkness with light. Sin flourishes when Christians are isolated, but it withers in the midst of community. God has given us the church to build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). We are to exhort one another so we will not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). God has also given us prayer, the preached word, and the sacraments to keep the haunting presence of total depravity from our hearts.

Heinous acts have sin as their source, and we are all born totally depraved. But thanks be to God for the grace he has shown us in Jesus Christ, who transforms the depraved into his disciples.

Simply Pray

Thomas S. Kidd post The Final Break Between God and Country

As dismaying as the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage was, there was something especially painful about seeing the White House lit up that evening with the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag. It almost seemed sacrilegious. But “sacrilegious” is not quite right, because Washington, D.C., has nothing to do with our eternal Jerusalem.

Perhaps the best thing that can come out of the gay marriage decision is for the church to make a final break between our faith and our nation.

Christian Consensus?

 

For American Christians, the connection between God and country has been deep and understandable, even if it put us at risk of a corrupt civil religion. Christians have been linking their faith to America since the time of the founding. Protestant ideals were inextricable from the establishment of the North American colonies. Christian principles such as equality by creation, and the flawed nature of all people, undergirded the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

But even in 1776, there was no Christian consensus on the great questions of the founding. Was the Revolution justifiable in light of Romans 13 warning against resisting the established powers? Could Christians support independence, when so much of America’s wealth depended on slave labor? Could Protestant dissenters like the Baptists support Patriot authorities who often persecuted them for their faith? What should African American and Native American believers do, when they had suffered enslavement and discrimination at the hands of many Patriot leaders?

Our nationalistic mixing of faith and state can make it difficult for us to see when the nation has gone wrong. It can also make it hard for us to know what to do when the nation has patently wandered from the truth.

There was never any unified Christian answer to these questions. An uneasy relationship with America is nothing new for Christians. Christian support for the American nation was always contingent, and always secondary to the kingdom of God. Or it was supposed to be.

War breeds intense patriotism. Its sacrifices require transcendent justifications. Even starting in the Revolution, certain pastors and chaplains began to speak of America and its history as if it were close to the center of our faith. On the two-year anniversary of the Revolution’s Battle of Saratoga, Baptist chaplain Hezekiah Smith told troops that the victory was “the grandest conquest ever gained since the creation of the world.” It should remind them of “another conquest, which so far exceeds the one now mentioned as scarcely to admit of comparison,” Christ’s victory over sin and death in his resurrection from the dead. Saratoga afforded “the happy prospect of earthly felicity,” and the resurrection delivered “the most pleasing hope of celestial happiness.” Smith’s striking conflation was an early example of some evangelicals’ tendency to blend American history with the Christian history of redemption.

It’s easy to see in retrospect how inappropriate Smith’s juxtaposition was—he was right, the resurrection and Saratoga should not have admitted any comparison. Yet American Christians have often put the things of America and the things of the kingdom in uncomfortable proximity. (Christians in other nations have done so too.) As proud as we may be of the American tradition, our nationalistic mixing of faith and state can make it difficult for us to see when the nation has gone wrong. It can also make it hard for us to know what to do when the nation has patently wandered from the truth.

Now What?

 

So here we are, a week after the gay marriage mandate, and the Fourth of July is upon us. What should we do? One appropriate option—one we have always had—would be to politely ignore the Fourth of July in our families, and our Sunday services. Again, what does 1776 have to do with our worship? Around the world, our Christian brothers and sisters from Nigeria to Nepal will not say anything about the Fourth of July. Why should we?

Pastors, if you do say something about the Fourth of July, steer between two extremes. One extreme would be to follow President Obama’s one-time pastor Jeremiah Wright, who famously called on God to damn America for its sins (in Wright’s case, he meant sins of racial injustice). The anger over the gay marriage decision is fresh, and the temptation to denounce is strong. But we remain citizens of our nation, we are still allowed to worship in freedom, and we have duties as Christians to respect our leaders and pray for the country.

The other extreme would return to the old patriotic mode, mixing in nationalistic anthems with our songs of worship to the Lord Jesus. We see more clearly than ever how wrong it is to do that. We Christians have a mission to America, but we will never “take America back” and return to some mythical Christian era. Perhaps there was a time when a higher percentage of Americans were believers, or when Christianity had a deeper cultural influence. But there was never a time when America acted as a fully Christian nation, for nations of this earth cannot do so.

If you choose to acknowledge the Fourth of July, the best thing you can do is simply to pray for our country, which is one nation among all the nations of the earth, and which (like other nations) needs the Lord. Let us pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the cities in which we live. Let us pray that our political leaders would be given godly wisdom, perhaps in spite of themselves. Let us pray that our pilgrim church will have an undefiled witness of faith to the millions of Americans who so desperately need the Lord.

Too Wonderful

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high; I cannot attain it.

Ps 139: 1-6

Religion and Politics

Steven Dilla at Park Forum:  Rulers: Gospel and Government

Rulers: Gospel and Government | Summer Reading SeriesExcerpt from Chapter 6: An Introduction to Christian Social Ethics by Dr. David Clyde Jones

The institutional separation of church and state, or more precisely, the separation of the government of faith communities from the government of civil society, is a separation devoutly to be wished. But that is not at all the same thing as the separation of religion and politics. 

The separation of church and state is highly desirable; the separation of religion and politics is simply impossible. Why is that? Because politics is the domain of public policy, and public policy proposals are inevitably the expression of some world-and-life view, some conception of the common good to be aimed at for human beings living in community. Public policy proposals are worldview dependent, and worldviews, theistic and non-theistic, are religious in nature as ultimate faith commitments.

This is especially important for the principle of sphere sovereignty sketched above. Not only are the governing authorities of church and state distinct, but also participation in the cultural spheres is religious activity on the part of believers just as much as their corporate worship and diaconal ministries in the visible church institute. 

That all of life is religious in this sense is important for understanding the full meaning of religious liberty. The idea of freedom of religious faith and practice was a long time in coming in political philosophy and remains a matter of controversy down to the present day.

Why [then] should we have such a work as Ministry to State? The rationale for special ministry to those in civil government is their special role in the government of civil society, a role that directly affects everyone and presents particular temptations for “selling out” one’s convictions in the pursuit of power and yielding to the temptation to the abuse of power once it is obtained. 

I think no one has captured this better than Martin Franzmann, [in his prayer] “For Charity Toward Men in Office” —

O God, remember in Your mercythe men who bear the burden of this majesty,men like us, easily bent by the pressure of temptation,by the impact of expediency.Remember them and strengthen them when they are movedto shade the truth to their own ends,to withhold what should be told,to distort what must be told,to disclose what does not serve our common weal.Keep intact their honor and their credibility.

Jesus Is Hard at Work

Jon Bloom: God's Purpose for the Supreme Court - And Everything Else

Jesus Christ is hard at work (John 5:17) and this is what he’s up to:

I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. (John 10:16)

Jesus is working hard to gather the rest of his sheep that he “bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28) and that are “scattered abroad” (John 11:52). This gathering is the main work that is happening in the world. All the great geopolitical events in the world are connected to this mission, though the world doesn’t know it.

But the church on earth, the sheep that are in the fold already, must remember this truth.
It’s what history is all about and it’s why we are still here, participating in this work with him.
It’s why God installs and removes rulers.
It’s why economies surge and crash.
It’s why church planting and missionary doors open and close.
It’s why gospel awakening breaks out in one place and persecution breaks out in another.

And as Jesus’s mission moves steadily toward its fulfillment, he tells us what we are to expect:

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:9–14)

We can be at peace despite major cultural shifts, moral decline, political upheaval, war, natural disasters, disease, and increasing hostility to the gospel (Romans 8:35) because we know that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37), through him who loved us to the point of his own death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). And we know that all these things “must take place” (Matthew 24:6). All that is happening right now, no matter how concerning and God-belittling and destructive, will not prevent, but in fact will have some role in facilitating, the gospel proclamation throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

As the official defenders of American justice codify immorality as the law of the land, God wants us to stir up our minds (2 Peter 3:1) — to remember — so that we don’t lose sight of the gospel and the real purpose of history. Remembering what’s really going on is what keeps us from losing heart and hope and retreating into our private escapes and growing cynical. Jesus died to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) and he is relentlessly seeking each one he’s determined to save (Luke 19:10) until the full number has come in (Romans 11:25).

So despite the appropriate grief we experience over the new calamity, we can abound in hope (Romans 15:13). Because what’s really going on is that Jesus is bringing in all his sheep, and they will listen to his voice. And then the end will come.

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Love for the Name of God and Compassion for the City of Destruction

John Piper: So-Called Same-Sex Marriage

Jesus died so that heterosexual and homosexual sinners might be saved. Jesus created sexuality, and has a clear will for how it is to be experienced in holiness and joy.

His will is that a man might leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that the two become one flesh (Mark 10:6–9). In this union, sexuality finds its God-appointed meaning, whether in personal-physical unification, symbolic representation, sensual jubilation, or fruitful procreation.

For those who have forsaken God’s path of sexual fulfillment, and walked into homosexual intercourse or heterosexual extramarital fornication or adultery, Jesus offers astonishing mercy.

Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

But today this salvation from sinful sexual acts was not embraced. Instead there was massive institutionalization of sin.

In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage.

The Bible is not silent about such decisions. Alongside its clearest explanation of the sin of homosexual intercourse (Romans 1:24–27) stands the indictment of the approval and institutionalization of it. Though people know intuitively that homosexual acts (along with gossip, slander, insolence, haughtiness, boasting, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness) are sin, “they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:29–32). “I tell you even with tears, that many glory in their shame” (Philippians 3:18–19).

This is what the highest court in our land did today — knowing these deeds are wrong, “yet approving those who practice them.”

My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us. The new thing — new for America, and new for history — is not homosexuality. That brokenness has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man. (And there is a great distinction between the orientation and the act — just like there is a great difference between my orientation to pride and the act of boasting.)

What’s new is not even the celebration and approval of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia. What’s new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.

My main reason for writing is not to mount a political counter-assault. I don’t think that is the calling of the church as such. My reason for writing is to help the church feel the sorrow of these days. And the magnitude of the assault on God and his image in man.

Christians, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries in it its own misery: “Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27).

And on top of sin’s self-destructive power comes, eventually, the final wrath of God: “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6).

Christians know what is coming, not only because we see it in the Bible, but because we have tasted the sorrowful fruit of our own sins. We do not escape the truth that we reap what we sow. Our marriages, our children, our churches, our institutions — they are all troubled because of our sins.

The difference is: We weep over our sins. We don’t celebrate them. We don’t institutionalize them. We turn to Jesus for forgiveness and help. We cry to Jesus, “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

And in our best moments, we weep for the world, and for our own nation. In the days of Ezekiel, God put a mark of hope “on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in Jerusalem” (Ezekiel 9:4).

This is what I am writing for. Not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction.

“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.” (Psalm 119:136)