This is my third and final installment (part one and part two) of John Stott on what he referred to as “holy worldliness”–an idea which speaks to the relationship of Christianity and culture. Stott picks up where he left off, beginning with the concept of identification (and assimilation).
[I]t is no use the Church identifying with the world if in doing so it ceases to be the Church. In a word, identification is not to be confused with assimilation. If the salt loses its saltness, it is useless. ‘Men throw it away,’ Jesus said. It might just as well have stayed in the salt cellar. The disciple is not above his Master. Like Christ, therefore, the Christian is to be ‘a friend of sinners’ yet ‘separated from sinners’ at the same time. We are called to live in natural surroundings a supernatural life, to demonstrate in this age of life of the age to come.
Certainly nothing hinders the progress of the gospel as much as our own inconsistent Christian lives. Too often we resemble the false teachers in Crete, of whom Paul wrote to Titus: ‘They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deed.’ Since we advance great claims for Christ, boasting that He saves His people from their sins, onlookers are perfectly justified when they demand to see in us some evidence that substantiate our claim to salvation.
As it is, we do not see ourselves as others see us. We do not realize how poor is our commendation of the Lord we love and seek to serve. More often than we know, what people reject is not the true Christ but the Christ they see in Christians–not Christ at all, in fact, but a rather unChristlike Church.
When I read this, the first thought that came to my mind was what Paul told the Jews. “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom. 2:24). This past week we studied in our small group 1 Peter 2:1-12. In that text Peter tells us that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, livings stones–all for the purpose of proclaiming (publishing, advertising) the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into light. But the proclamation does not stop there. He continues by saying that we should keep our conduct among the Gentiles “honorable” or “excellent” for the same stated reason as Matthew 5:16, namely that the world would see our good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Proclamation isn’t enough. We must demonstrate before our unbelieving world the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They won’t see such an attractive witness from a distance or on a stage. It must happen where they are, where they live. There is a direct correlation to the proclamation of the excellencies of Christ and the demonstration of the honorable lifestyle of Christians, and lest we think otherwise, we will have fumbled the faith and caused those who should be calling upon the name of Jesus to blaspheme it on account of our lives.
May God give us a glorious weightiness in the high calling of being faithful stewards of the gospel which has been entrusted to us by giving our lives away to those who God has placed us to serve.
Timmy: Given this passage from Stott, would you agree that we as churches aren’t bound by time and locked into tradition, but infact, can be creative in our worship and ministry as long as Christ is glorified and we ourselves are living sacrifices in all we say and do?
I love John Stott. Read alot of his stuff when I first became a Christian. Like the way you added the salt to the meal he prepared. I’ve been so saddened by the way Christians in general and pastors in particular act when they are on opposite sides of an issue in Southern Baptist life. Makes me wonder. Have we made the SBC our idol of the moment? selahV
selahV,
Given Stott’s Anglican background, I believe he would consider his heritage (or tradition if you want to call it that) important to him. As an evangelical and Southern Baptist, I appreciate my roots, though such appreciation does make me aware of the errors and mistakes of the past (in other words, I am not naive or blind to them). What makes Protestants and more specifically evangelicals different from Roman Catholics is our appeal to a sole and final authority in all faith and pratice, that is, the Word of God (sola scriptura). Traditions have a secondary role (albeit still important) in the formation of thought and practice, and here is where I find it applicable to your comments. I do believe there is a regulative priinciple and we should conform our ways and practice according to God’s Word. However, there are areas which the Bible allows for latitude, matters which fit the category of adiaphora (matters of indifference). That is not to say we don’t care, but that there is room for disagreement and still be considered orthodox. We must take creativity, cultural application in one hand, and the sufficiency of Scripture, orthodoxy in the other and bring the same faith which was “once for all delivered to the saints” to our generation for the sake of the kingdom.
Our rich evangelical and Sothern Baptist heritage, along with the confessional and doctrinal roots, has and I hope will continue to serve as moorings for conservative evangelical expressions of faith in a time where the pursuit of relevancy and novelty are so popular. Going back to the issue in SBC life, there are issues which I see that deserve immediate and thorough attention and others which I think have received too much attention (because they are not essential). So to answer your question, I don’t know if we have made the SBC our idol of the moment, but I do know that the SBC has made much ado about issues which are not germane to gospel proclamation or cooperation in Christ’s Great Commission. Is that not what the SBC is fundamentally about? Well, I hope so! 🙂