Thesis 16- We must practice wisdom in judging what are minor and what are major issues in the church.
Whenever we find disagreement, there is more often than not at least two levels of disagreement. First, there is the issue itself. I may believe that the Pittsburgh Steelers are the greatest professional football team ever, while you may mistakenly believe otherwise. The other disagreement, however, is over the relative importance of the issue itself. The strength of my conviction is often matched by my conviction of its importance. You on the other hand may find the matter to be of supreme indifference.
Consider the cliché we use to describe the propensity of believers to squabble and divide. Christians, we are told, have been known to split churches over the color of the carpet. On the other hand, we are likewise known for our credulity. Several years ago I read an article in an evangelical magazine celebrating the rapprochement between two different Pentecostal denominations. The petty issue they were happily putting behind them? The doctrine of the trinity. One “denomination” denied the Trinity; the other was merely betraying it. But at least they were learning to get along.
Christians are not, on this side of glory, going to be able to agree on everything. What we have to learn is to distinguish between the varying levels of importance of the things we disagree about. Jesus said to the Pharisees “you tithe your mint and your cumin, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law, like justice and mercy.” Here Jesus speaks against a common evangelical misunderstanding. Wanting to affirm that breaking any law of God makes us lawbreakers, wanting to affirm that all sin is at root cosmic treason, wanting to affirm that hating our brother unjustly is a violation of the commandment against murder, we make the mistake of believing that all sins are equally grievious. This error in turn encourages us to believe either that no sin is worth separating over or that all sins require us to separate.
When Jesus affirmed that some matters were weightier than others, He did not give us a flow chart listing the relative seriousness of all sins. He instead calls us to wisdom. We are called to discern which sins are those which love covers a multitude of. We must discern which sins call us to separate from others. But there is at least one other category. We must recognize that some issues call us to vigorous debate, followed by warm fellowship with those with whom we disagree. Most of the theses we’re covering fall into this broad third category.
That men of good will can disagree on some issues does not mean that they are not issues. That men of ill will can part company over some issues does not mean they are issues. One thing, however, that we can all agree on- that we need wisdom to discern and that God is the source of that wisdom. May He be pleased to bless us with that wisdom in all our churches.
It might be a sound argument as to why He ought not to love us that we find this question surprising. It is because of our sin, our pride, our egos that we think ourselves worthy of His love, as if we are owed such. The truth is we are by nature rebels against His reign, would-be dei-cides, dead in our trespasses and sins.
To rightly answer the question we first must ask whom we mean by “us.” It is true enough that us can include all men everywhere. God does have a universal love for all mankind. Why? I would suggest it is because of the remains of His image in us. In ourselves, apart from His grace in bestowing on us His image, we are but dust and rebellion. But even the reprobate are not in themselves; they bear the image of God. On the other hand we need to remember that this love God has for all men, what we call the love of benevolence, does not preclude His righteous hatred of these same men. That God loves us all does not mean that He cannot hate some of us. Esau is but one example.
If, however, we look at God’s love for the elect, we still must make another distinction. The elect are divided at least this way- between those who have not yet come to faith and those who have. I acknowledge that God transcends time and that makes the following point a bit sticky. But of those who are elect, but who have not yet been blessed with the gift of regeneration, we could say that God has a love for them grounded in compassion for them, a benevolent pity. Without regeneration we are still in our sins, still in a sense under His judgment. But the very act of regeneration is an act of love, a rescuing of us in our rebellion. We are not worthy of His love, but He casts His love upon us out of His infinite compassion for us.
When we have been regenerated, however, we trust in the finished work of Christ. Our sins are covered by His blood, and His righteousness becomes ours. We are now no longer in ourselves, but are in Him. And in Him, we are loved as His own. We are now so much more than merely forgiven, more than merely the object of His sympathy. We are now the objects of His delight. He rejoices over us, even as a father delights over and rejoices in his own child. We are now the olive plants about His table (Psalm 128). We are the apple of His eye.
Just as those outside the kingdom foolishly assume a kind of love of God over them that they don’t enjoy, too often those inside the kingdom foolishly miss the depth of the love of God over them that we do enjoy. He does not merely tolerate us. He is not merely loving toward us. Rather He has made us His children, and in His joy over us, is about the business of remaking us into the image of His Son (). Rejoice, give thanks, rest. He loves you.
The hard driving forces of individualism do not yet stand astride the culture like a colossus. We have divided our homes into mini-apartment complexes, and our churches into age and gender segregated shopping malls. We break the ties that bind any time we find them the least bit binding. We live by ourselves and for ourselves. None of which has yet undone the truth that we are an incurably communal people.
Sociologists have argued for decades, for instance, that children in the inner-city, coming out of unstable homes, often without fathers, naturally gravitate toward the pseudo-family that is gang life. Even the mob mimics the contours of the family. The Casa Nostra, after all, means “Our House.”
One need not, however, live in the context of a criminal subculture in order to see faux families at work, to see the parade and charade of ritual togetherness. One can see it driving into Ligonier. Ligonier, before it was the name of a ministry, was (and still is) the name of a small town in western Pennsylvania, the town where I grew up. As you come down into the valley from the south, you see, as you would in most small towns, a sign of welcome. The sign welcomes you to town, but the welcome comes not from all its citizens, but from its leading “families.” That is, there on the sign you will see the logos for Ruritan, and the Knights of Columbus, for the Rotary Club and the Masonic Lodge.
I’m no expert on these civic organizations. I’ve never joined one nor visited one. Rumor has it, however, that quite apart from the service to the communities, separate from the business deals that are made there, there are sundry rituals and secrets that bind the members together. Which makes perfect sense. For these organizations invariably become not just pseudo-families, but pseudo-churches. They take on the shape of the one great organization wherein communities are served and dominion is exercised, the church of Jesus Christ.
We ought not, because of the obvious similarities, be ashamed of our practices. We do not greet one another with a secret handshake, but with the kiss. We do not wear funny hats, but crowns of gold. And the ritual that binds us together is as plain as it is powerful. There is no great power in bread. There is no great mystery surrounding wine. But Jesus, He is a different matter altogether. There is not just power and mystery, but power and glory.
The Lord’s Supper is a rite, a ritual, a form, and a raging storm of power. Of course there is the power to remind us of our sin. The body wasn’t broken by a car accident. The blood was not shed because of a mishandled kitchen knife. No, we come to the table knowing that we crucified Him. We broke the body, as our sin shed the blood. The very act of eating and drinking the destruction our sin has wrought will penetrate our hearts far better than the most cogent lecture on the doctrine of total depravity.
But there is greater power. For the Table not only tells us of our sin, but tells us of His forgiveness. It is, after all, the Table of the Lord. He invites us there that we might enjoy table fellowship with Him. We enter into His forgiveness, and His peace, as He lays out before us a table in the presence of His enemies. He bids us to rest not just in Him, but with Him.
When we affirm the power of conviction, when we affirm the power of connection with Him, we still, however miss the Body. For the glory isn’t merely that we commune with Jesus, but that as we commune with Jesus, we commune with each other. The Lord’s Table has the power to make of bickering, back-biting and squabbling siblings the very body of Christ. Just as hundreds of grains of wheat join together to form a single loaf, so too hundreds of grains of wheat join together to form the body of Christ, the very bread of life. The Lord doesn’t set His table for one, nor for two, but for the teeming multitudes that are His. The Table opens our eyes not just to see Him, but to see Him in our brothers and sisters, that we might love them as we are called.
It all, of course, ties together. When the table reminds us of our own sin, it helps us look past the sins of our brothers. And when the table shows us the glory of the Son, we set aside seeking our own glory and so love our brothers better. When we enter into the power of the Table to make of us one, then suddenly the formulaic copies of the world around us lose their appeal. Who needs funny hats and secret handshakes, when Jesus, the one we crucified, when Jesus, the one He raised from the dead, when Jesus, the one who is the express image of the glory of the Father, comes and feeds His bride? May He purify us that we might love Him, and so better love His body, the church.
There’s a new genre in town. We still have love stories, science fiction stories, crime stories. We also still have conversion stories, testimonies about God’s grace in our lives. What is new is the yang to that yin, testimonies of turning one’s back on God’s grace, on leaving the faith.
Like a rom-com starring an action hero, deconversion stories have something for everyone. For the unbeliever you have the blessing of encouragement, of having someone writing about how they came to be on your team. For the believer you have the emotional pull of watching someone else’s spiritual train wreck. And the author gets kudos from all sides for honesty and bravery.
Sadly, such stories are not honest. Honestly they are just sad. And bravery left town a long time ago. What believers need is the bravery to look straight into the heart of the sadness, and call the lost to come home. The hard truth is that at that moment of rejection we don’t and can’t know if we are dealing with the one sheep that has wandered off, or with a wolf that has just removed his wool suit. Either way, our calling is to repent, believe the gospel and to call such deconverts to repent and believe the gospel.
What we don’t repent for is what we are accused of. Usually deconversion stories include tales of mean-spirited judgers who have the heart of Scrooge and the sexual ethic of Queen Victoria. Deconversion stories often amount to little more than, “I had to choose between my sexual partner and Jesus. I choose the former.” Or, “I had to choose between my friends who engage in sex outside of marriage and Jesus. I choose the former.” The accusation against us is that we make the Christian faith not just about does and don’ts, but that our don’ts all have to do with taking our pants off. It’s not that Christians have made sexual purity the defining quality of our faith. It’s that the world has made sexual license the defining quality of their faith. It’s just about impossible to construct a syncretistic god out of one God who says, “No sex outside of marriage” and another who says, “Do what thou wilt.”
No, we repent not for being too cold, too hard, too judge-y but for being too warm, too soft, too accommodating. We repent for hanging with the same spirit that led them astray, that spirit that wants us to value the approval of the world above the truth of the Word. We do, however, believe in the gospel, and its power to save. We recognize that power because we’ve seen it save a wretch like me. If Jesus could redeem someone as wicked as me, surely he could redeem someone whose false conversion didn’t take. If Jesus can chase me down when I have, having already been redeemed, washed, forgiven, indwelt, willfully wandered off He can surely find a sheep that has wandered into a pigsty.
Do not commiserate with the deconverts as they grumble against your brothers and sisters. Don’t try to connect in your disdain for others. Connect in your joint disdain for yourselves. They, whether they were never genuinely converted, or are sheep that are lost, are carrying the weight of their own sin. Tell them about Jesus, about the cross, about the Father’s love, about forgiveness, about His promise to never leave us or forsake us. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
What advice would you give Christians facing such rapid cultural marginalization?
In the great battle that is the culture war Christians are in rapid and chaotic retreat. On issues of sexuality we are deemed backward, hateful and hypocritical. To speak in defense of marriage is, in the minds of the world, on par at best with denying the holocaust, at worst to perpetrating it. We have not just lost our place at the table, but in the building. We are on the outside looking in.
First, accept it. I’m not suggesting surrender mind you. I am, however, suggesting that denying the obvious helps no one. Sure Fox wallops MSNBC. Of course abortion mills are shutting down. But the cultural ethos is still hostile to us, and it’s only going to get worse. I fear that too often our fear is losing privilege, that we fight our rearguard action to protect wood, hay and stubble. The reputations we too often seek to defend are our own, rather than our Lord’s.
Second, embrace it. The church historically has made its greatest gains when it was under the most pressure. Heat removes dross and we have far more dross than we ought in the body. To be purified, to be chastened by our Lord, is the very mark of what it means to be a child of God. Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 1 that it is God’s holy habit to use the weak and the despised to show forth His strength. Pounding our chests, building our strategic alliances simply encourages the One True Power to abandon us to our own devices. When we are weak, He is strong.
Third, give thanks for it. We are, of course, called to battle, to tear down strongholds, and every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. But even our losses are victories. So He tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, reminding us that we are blessed when we are persecuted for His name’s sake. His blessing is the victory. What a privilege to share in His shame. It’s how we come to share in His exaltation.
Fourth, pray for our enemies. For for them, every victory is a loss. The deeper the culture falls into sin the more misery it faces. Bruce Jenner, when he received the Arthur Ashe award for courage from ESPN was in deeper despair than he was when he first saw lying chemicals as the solution to his ills. Those who have been given over to their own dark desires may march in the streets to demonstrate their pride, when the truth is they are consumed by shame. Pity, rather than hatred, ought to be what motivates our prophetic call to repentance.
Finally, pray for each other. The deepest danger of cultural decline isn’t the self-destruction of goats who love death but the temptations that come to the sheep. Our children are being raised in a world without the blessing of social taboo, in a culture that has lost the ability to blush. And we face the temptation to walk the wide path of destruction, protecting our standing by betraying Him. Jesus prayed for Peter. Let us pray for one another.
Jesus is on His throne, bringing His purposes to pass. And we are seated with Him in the heavenly places. We are kings and queens dressed in beggars’ clothes. May we have the eyes of faith to see it.
