New Theses, New Reformation

Thesis 8- We must be a city shining on a hill.

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and the people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). We serve a God of contrasts. He is all light. In Him there is no shadow of turning. But from the beginning and unto the end, God delights to separate, to distinguish. In the creation He separated light from darkness, land from sea. And in the recreation He separates His people, calling them out of the darkness into the light. In accord with His promise in Genesis 3, He drafts the soldiers of His army from the army of His enemy, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.” Meanwhile, we, fools that we are, seek to bring together what God has torn asunder.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, reminds us of our calling. He tells us that we are the salt of the earth, that we are the light of the world. Outside the kingdom we find putrescence and darkness. Inside the kingdom we are salt and light. In our zeal to bring those outside inside, however, we have lost sight of this truth. We think that the blind will be made to see if we can simply be more like them. Our minds are so darkened that we think that the darker we are, the more we will shine. The evangelical church has called us to dress like the world, only, we hope, with a little more cloth. We are called to talk like the world, only we hope, with a little less, ironically, “saltiness.” We are called to watch their television programs, only not the ones on late at night on pay TV. We are called to listen to their music, only with nice clean words substituted by our friends in Nashville. We think we are baptizing the world when I’m afraid we are instead taking a bath in worldliness.

It is time for the church to be the church. Jesus says we are a city on a hill. We do not live in the valley of darkness. We are set apart, not merely for our own spiritual safety, but for the sake of the lost. We will win them only when we are not like them. Long before the Sermon on the Mount, God established a city on a hill. He instructed the children of Israel to wipe clean the land of Canaan. He gave them His Word. And He promised them that if they would stop behaving like their neighbors, if they would abide in His Word, then all the nations of the world would be blessed, that the lost would be banging down their doors, to find out their secret.

A life well lived may or may not be the best revenge. It is, however, most assuredly, the best way to proclaim the good news. May God give us the grace to live lives of such beauty, of such joy, of such light, that even the blind might be made to see.

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