Christ Church

The Meaning of Love and Justice (State of the Church 2018 #4)

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Introduction

The central difficulty with the great idol of the collective, the false god of statism, is that we have wanted to substitute the word of man for the Word of God. We want to define love according to our own lights. We have wanted to define justice without reference to biblical law, and this then makes us choose between individualism and collectivism. And then, because we have been thrown into a realm where might determines right, the collective wins.

But we are individuals saved by grace, bound together in a mystical body. This has been done in accordance with the Scriptures, which means that love and justice are defined from outside the world.

The Text

“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8–10).

Summary of the Text

A community like ours should be bound together by love. Sounds great, but what do we mean exactly? Our bonds to one another need to be stronger than the bonds of debtor/creditor (v. 8). If we love the other, then that means we have fulfilled the law. Paul then mentions the seventh, sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth commandments, in that order, and says that they are all comprehended in this one commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). The word rendered as comprehended is a verb that comes from the root kephale, meaning head (v. 9). Paul then tells us why. Love works no evil to its neighbor, and this is why love is the fulfillment of the law (v. 10). Love, in short, refuses to perpetrate injustice, and justice is defined by the law of God, which in turn is shaped by the character of God Himself—and remember that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8). Put all these together, and meditate on these identities.

Sin is Therefore Lovelessness

The apostle John defines sin for us in a very succinct way. “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4, ESV). Sin is lawlessness. That’s it; that’s the heart of it. But what is to keep the law from the heart? Scripture describes that as love. And so what does it mean to love someone? It means to treat them lawfully from the heart. Note that this excludes a mere ticking of boxes. The emphasis needs to be on the heart.

Jesus teaches us this explicitly. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Matt. 23:26). Cleansing the outside of the cup doesn’t get the inside clean. But when the inside is clean, what happens? Jesus says “that the outside may be clean also.”

The Great Clash

In the first message of this series, I said that one of the great enemies of our day is “relativism, subjectivism, the despotism of feelings.” And by this I meant “the idea that the world of facts is not the controlling reality. Reality, in other words, is optional.” We have been taught—ad nauseam we have been taught—that love is what you feel. When the feeling wanes or goes away, as the theory goes, so has the love. This has been the source of untold misery in the world. In a biblical framework, your feelings start to wander off, and love looks up with a sharp maternal gleam in her eye and says, “Get back here.”

In a biblical framework, you and all your feeling are like a first-grade teacher taking her whole class to some busy downtown museum, and every last one of them is on a neon-colored leash.

Covenant Bonds

As we talk about true Christian community, which is based on koinonia fellowship, we have to begin with the nature of covenant commitments. This applies to marriage and family, it applies to membership in the church, and it applies to the rest of life also. I am going to ask you to bear with a few illustrations, but they all line up with what a wise Puritan once said about marriage. “First he chooses his love, and then he loves his choice.”

If you go down in the basement of a house, you will likely be able to find cold concrete in straight lines. Let us call it cold covenant concrete—a bunch of unsentimental concrete. Then go up into the living room, and you will there see curtains, warm colors, cushions, sofas, carpet, and so on. This is where you live, but it cannot be the foundation of the house. Roll up the carpet, mound the cushions, throw curtains on top of it, and then try to situate a stud wall on top of that.

Or imagine you discipline your emotions the same way some folks discipline their kids (or not). Some people are so disordered in this that they have come to believe that if someone’s “children” are not unruly hellions, then this must mean that they don’t even have no kids. No, they have kids, but their kids mind. We like to describe self-controlled people as “unemotional,” but what we really mean is that their emotions are not half-civilized yard apes on a sugar rush. And by the way, before the wrong people start commending themselves for how “unemotional” they are, I would remind them that anger is an emotion.

Recall the three governments mentioned in an earlier message—the family is the ministry of health, education and welfare. The church is the ministry of grace and peace. The civil magistrate is the ministry of justice. The non-institutional government that supports and makes possible all three of these is self-government.

Put On Your Jesus Coat

Because we are forgiven by God through Christ (Eph. 4:32), so it is possible for us to be exhorted to imitate Christ (1 Pet. 2:21). But we are to imitate the whole process. Jesus did what He did for the joy that was set before Him (Heb. 12:2), and because of His obedience true joy is a possibility. But Jesus did not go to the cross on an emotional high. The greatest act of love that was ever offered up to God was the death of Christ on the cross (Rom. 5:8). And Jesus tried to get out of it (Matt. 26:39). But His house was not built on the cushions, and so it is that we are saved. His love for you had a more sure foundation than that.

So put on Christ (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27). Put on your Jesus coat. Make sure you put your arms through both sleeves.

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Membership, Like-mindedness, and Loyalty (State of the Church 2018 #3)

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Introduction

As we build these new city walls in the midst of a ruined and ruinous old order, we will be attacked in ways that seek to divide us. We will be accused of being cultic, in thrall to charismatic “leaders.” But the Scriptures do require us to cultivate like-mindedness, and also require us to maintain a solid distinction between things of first importance, things of secondary importance, and things indifferent.

One of the things that modern Christians have a hard time doing right is loyalty. We don’t know how loyalty is supposed to work. We don’t understand the spiritual requirement of personal allegiance to your church and its leadership, and in addition we have a very poor understanding of what disloyalty actually smells like.

The Text

“Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits” (Rom. 12:16).

As you study this topic, please keep in mind the fact that we are told this same kind of thing often (Rom. 15:5-6; 2 Cor. 13:11; Phil. 1:27; 2:2; 1 Pet. 3:8; Phil. 2:20).

Summary of the Text

As you can see in the text, like-mindedness is a function of humility. It is not necessarily a function of high intellectual attainment. If that is accompanied by pride (as it often is—1 Cor. 8:1), then the opposite of like-mindedness will occur. Never forget that the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace—which necessarily includes this like-mindedness—is in fact a work of the Spirit. And where the Spirit comes He engenders the fruit of the Spirit, which in their turn contribute to humility, grace, peace, and like-mindedness.

Membership

“Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (Heb. 13:7).

“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you” (Heb. 13:17).

These two verses, incidentally, taken together, provide a compelling argument for membership in a local congregation. These individuals have to know the names of the men who rule over them—you cannot obey an undefined leadership. And a body of elders cannot render an account for an undefined membership. If you don’t know who your rulers are, you cannot consider the outcome of their conduct or way of life. And if you don’t know who you are responsible for, you cannot watch over their souls. So these two verses, taken together, require two lists of names—a list of the elders and a list of the members. Obedience to Scripture at this point is impossible otherwise. Pastors and elders are not allowed to look at their flocks on a distant hillside, as painted by an impressionist at a low point in his game, and working with dirty brushes. “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds” (Prov. 27:23). No, giving an account means counting.

How Membership Works Here

Our church has adopted the Westminster Confession. What this tells us is what doctrinal framework you can expect to hear from the pulpit. It does not tell you what you are required to affirm. You are bound to affirm nothing until you see it in the text of Scripture for yourself—but after that, of course honesty requires you to affirm it. We are a Reformed church, but this means that an Arminian charismatic dispensationalist could join. What we require of our members is a biblical confession that Jesus is Lord, and that they agree not to go downtown on the weekends to shoot out the streetlights.

No Human Authority

No human authority is absolute, and yet at the same time we are taught in Scripture that authority is genuine, and is to be honored as far as obedience to God allows. This creates a problem, but it is a problem that God wants us to have.

Let me begin by noting that—in this as in so many other situations—there is a ditch on both sides of the road. One ditch might be called the “Dear Leader” ditch, the insistence that everyone applaud like they were a spectator at a North Korean missile parade, clapping in sync with the goose-stepping soldiers. That really is cultic. But in the other ditch we find ornery cussedness, pretending to be valiant for truth, but in the last analysis they are loyal only to their own thoughts, opinions, and perspectives. These people are disrespectful, disloyal, and disruptive.

Actual Temptations

Here is a relevant observation from Screwtape. “The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.”[1]

When it comes to life in our modern congregations, we think we have to guard against mindless conformity when what really threatens our spiritual health is our radical individualism. The Scriptures tell us what we should be laboring for, striving for, and praying for. We are not told to work at maintaining independence of thought. We are not told to build some ecclesiastical variant of academic freedom. We are commanded to strive for like-mindedness, to be of one mind.

Allow me the privilege of translating all of this into modern American English for you. Drink the Kool-Aid. Join the cult. Surrender your independence. Swallow the party line. Go baaa like a sheep. Strive for the nirvana of acquiescence.

Modern Christians allow the Bible to talk that way because it is their sacred book and so they are technically stuck with it. But if any Christian leader, anywhere, anytime, teaches that obedience and maintaining a teachable spirit are virtues to be cultivated by church members, then that guy is now a hazard with blinking lights all over him. He is clearly power-tripping. He must be a Diotrephes. He is Diotrephes automatically.

Pursue Christ

Now this means that members of churches have assigned duties of loyalty and obedience. But what some Christians today believe is that their membership actually requires impudent feedback when they disagree, preferably online. I have seen some behavior in that department that, as one of my daughters might put it, makes my eyeballs sweaty.

But people today are nevertheless hungry for true community, and true community is impossible apart from shared values and mores—like-mindedness, in other words. But once community actually starts to form, the attacks on the “cult” will begin. Vulnerable and sophomoric Christians in the community will be taunted—prove your independence. Whatever your leader asks for, vote no, drag your feet, raise a stink, and put some daylight between yourself and that guy. As if you could establish independence by always finding the North Star, and always sailing south by it. But that’s not independence.

Remember that unity and like-mindedness are a function being apprehended by, and apprehending, Christ. He is the one in whom every joint and ligament joins (Eph. 4:16).

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne, 2001), 138.

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Alternative City Walls (State of the Church 2018 #2)

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Introduction

The need of the hour is for the church to help establish a defined counterculture. This requires much more than defined denominational boundaries, or sectarian carve outs. There needs to be a defined center (worship) and a defined mission field (the world). In order to accomplish this, we need brick and mortar to build the alternative city walls. We have been doing this for some decades now, and we know how we mix that mortar. Now one of the key ingredients in that mortar is unrelenting antipathy to the ways of the world. Our danger is that any success in this (what people call our community) will attract people who love the walls but do not like how we lay the bricks. They love the fruit but do not care for the orchard. They like how the church works because they are actually assuming the world (at its best) should be able to work that way.

The Text

“Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:26–28).

Summary of the Text

Jesus teaches that when we finally have that “good testimony” we have been striving for, we ought to see a red danger light blinking on the dashboard. Something has gone terribly wrong.

But objections come immediately to mind. We note that some people know how to get everybody to hate them simply by being jerks. Pagans certainly hate one another (Tit. 3:3), and that doesn’t make the other despised pagan godly. Peter says that we should rejoice when we are persecuted for the sake of Christ (1 Pet. 4:14, 16), but goes on to add that we must be certain that it really is for the sake of Christ and not because we are a being pseudo-Christians.

So how can we tell if we are guilty of this false credit that takes as a badge of honor a sign that we are actually being disobedient? The answer is found in our text. Those who can take legitimate comfort from the fact that they are slandered are those who can love their enemies, do good to their haters, bless those who curse them, and pray for those who are malicious in their mistreatment. They come into your shop to buy something while sneering at it, and so you must give back scriptural change. If you pay them back in their own coin, then this encouragement does not apply. It only applies to those who can do a little jig when they are reviled (Luke 6:23).

Not an Obscure Teaching

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This enmity between the “two seeds” cannot be erased, and attempts to erase it are actually attempts to go over to the other side. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). If you want to be God’s adversary, then simply make friends with the world. “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). This means that you cannot strive for Christ-likeness in this dark world without bringing down on your head something of what came down on Christ’s head. “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). Stop acting surprised at things that the Bible talks about all over the place. “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” (1 John 3:13).

“. . . And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved . . .” (Matt. 10:21–26).

Tombs of the Prophets

Jesus pointed out that after prophets are dead and gone, their reputations start to improve. And if enough time passes, the ungodly build memorials to the godly, lined with marble (Matt. 23:29). But whenever a living Christian leader comes back from a hot engagement at the front, with a couple of arrows through his hat, the careful men are quite willing to offer their critiques. It reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s magnificent definition: “REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.”

Why, the critics want to know, can’t you be more like the saintly men of old, whose marbled tombs grace the avenues of the city that people (not like us at all) built?

Like Spurgeon, who was vilified throughout the course of his ministry? Like Augustine, who wrote his famous Confessions because he was answering a smear campaign that was hindering his ministerial effectiveness? Or like Athanasius who stood contra mundum, that world being the Christian world, the world of accommodating bishops? Examples could be multiplied to the point of being pretty tedious.

The principles don’t change. The names do. This makes unprincipled people think that everything is different now.

Alternative City Walls

Remember that in our generation, feeeelllings are the queen of the land. People don’t want to know if a Christian apologist has actually wronged someone in the course of his ministry. They just want to know if the other guy felt wronged. And of course it took about ten minutes for the unbelievers to figure out that you could get most Christians to back off just by saying ow ow ow ow!

As for the infidels, our central offense is not the presence of what I call the “satiric bite.” It is not even an offense at all. Are you serious? They don’t care about that. The offense is where the jabs are aimed. These are the people who laugh at the taunting of late night comedians, who host banquet “roasts” that are filled with vile insults, and who otherwise sit in the seat of mockers. But as the old blues song puts it, “it ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”

When David went out to face Goliath, he was not looking for a dialogue partner.

“This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Sam. 17:46).

And when Nehemiah established a great wall that separated the people of God from the unbelievers, the unbelievers did not take it well.

“And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? Yet they sent unto me four times after this sort; and I answered them after the same manner. Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me in like manner the fifth time with an open letter in his hand; Wherein was written, It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel: for which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king, according to these words” (Neh. 6:3–6).

You really should give up preaching. And blogging. And publishing. And declaring. And why? Gashmu saith it.

You Can’t Preach Jesus

The answer is, of course, to preach Christ. But it needs to be observed that it is not possible for a man to preach Christ while simultaneously ignoring the words of Christ. Preaching Christ means preaching both His words and His wounds. You cannot preach the cross, which is a scandal, without scandal. There is no such thing as sanitized gospel faithfulness. It doesn’t exist, and never has.

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Our Culture, What Remains of It (State of the Church 2018 #1)

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Introduction

Instead of a stand-alone “state of the church” message this year, as has been our custom, I want to spend a number of weeks on the topic. Lord willing, I intend to drill down into the subject, and I trust that the reasons for doing so will become increasingly apparent as we work through the series. The point of these messages will be to help you, as members of Christ Church, to better understand the crisis of our times, along with the demeanor we as Christians are called to cultivate in the course of such a crisis.

We also must address an explication of the basic strategy that we have been using here in our community for a number of decades now. This is because we have been greatly blessed in our community, and so we need to equip ourselves in two areas. We must educate the immigrants, and we must educate the next generation. If we do not do this, then we will be faced with two disasters. The first is what might be called “Californians moving to Texas, but continuing to vote like Californians.” The second is the son of a billionaire growing up without ever breaking a sweat, or knowing what having calluses might be like.

As If There Were No Text

As you know, at this place on the outline, it is our practice to quote the text that the message is designed to unfold and apply. There is no text here today, not because we will not be bringing Scripture to bear shortly, but rather to illustrate the fundamental disease of our time. As a people, we have pretended to ourselves that a secular order is even possible. We have pretended that a people can exist without a transcendent Word. The deeper we descend into this folly the higher our impudence grows. To be without God is to be without hope in the world (Eph. 2:12).

In the spirit of having no text, here is a text: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, That I will send a famine in the land, Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12).

A Minister’s Task

The message a minister is appointed to proclaim is the basic gospel message—the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:1-4)—oriented, as it necessarily must be, to the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). But the wisdom of God is not placed in our trust so that we may speak it into a void. The preacher is not supposed to learn what he is supposed to say the same way a parrot does, or an answering machine, and then say that, regardless of the circumstances.

No. Preachers of the gospel must also be students of the culture they are sent to. A minister must be a student of the Word, but he must also be a student of men. He must study them—not just men generally, but the men of his own era, the men to whom he is charged to bring the gospel. When the Lord speaks to each of the angels of the seven churches of Asia, the message for each church is different. Same gospel, different sins, different message applying that gospel.

And men are not to be studied so that the minister might best know how to flatter them. “For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness” (1 Thess. 2:5, ESV). Rather, they must be studied because their sins are different, their blind spots vary, and this is why their fortifications against the Spirit of God must be attacked differently.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3–5).

A man who is charged with pulling down strongholds must be a student, therefore, of two things. He must be a student of the gear he is using, and he must be a student of the tower he is toppling. He must know the gospel, and the Scripture that houses it, and he must also know the state of the current imaginations. He needs to know where to attach the ropes.

Our Culture, What Remains of It

We are in the midst of a massive religious/political/cultural transformation. But we cannot assume that this is all downside. God shakes what can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken may remain. In the meantime, speaking of traditions, there are no pacifist traditions left. All traditions must be militant in order to survive this time of upheaval.

In such a time, Christians must be conservative when it comes to everything that the Spirit has accomplished in the history of our civilization. And we must be progressive with regard to all the things He has yet to do.

The Sinful Symptoms

It is difficult to make it through the evening news without encountering multiple examples of our contemporary follies—the blood guilt of abortion on demand, the insanity of transgenderism, the idea that more government can save us from the weather, the acceptance of socialist collectivism, the indulgence of snowflakes, the incompetence of modern educators, the epidemic of food guilt, and more. The disease lies within, but the splotches on the skin are pretty ugly.

The Disease Within

The root of every rebellion (in every culture) must always be identified as pride, and the lust for autonomy. But this central sin manifests itself in different ways in different times, using different methods, concepts, and techniques. These are the tools that are currently being used on us. Please be aware that there are areas of overlap between these.

• Secularism—the idea that a culture can be religiously neutral;
• Darwinism—the idea that we somehow arrived here by ourselves, and which makes secularism a scientifically respectable concept;
• Egalitarianism—the idea that blessings for others are tantamount to oppression for me;
• Value/Fact Distinction—the idea that “reality” is divisible;
• Admiration of the Cool Kids—the idea that what matters is copping a pose.

Some might worry that I am adding “intellectual” requirements to the simple gospel of Christ. Don’t worry—it is actually the reverse. You generally need a couple years of grad school before you can really buy into any of these mistakes.

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