Does God Change Lives Today?

This is the issue at stake between Evangelical and Liberal Protestantism. In my last post I suggested that Liberal Protestantism is in schism by virtue of its endorsement of homosexual sin as acceptable. But not only does Liberal Protestantism accept and endorse homosexual sin as morally acceptable, it does so for a very specific reason and that reason is that it accepts the argument that homosexuals cannot change.

Now, this whole idea of a "homosexual orientation" that people supposedly have from birth and have no conscious control over is contradicted by the facts all around us. Just look at what the pro-homosexual movement is called "LGBT:" lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered. All these are "orientations," but what does "orientation" mean here?

Very few people, if any, are exclusively homosexual throughout their lifetimes in the sense that they cannot be sexually aroused by member of the opposite sex. Yet many people can be sexually aroused by members of both sexes. Others go from one to the other and some go back and forth.

Gene Robinson left his wife and children to shack up with another man and the Episcopal Church made him a bishop! Why? Because we have to recognize free choice with regard to sexual lifestyles. But I thought "homosexual orientations" left no room for "choice" and that is precisely why they had to be recognized. Apparently, Gene Robinson could have a homosexual "orientation" that he supposedly had no choice about from birth and, yet, could also get married to a woman and father children by her. Then he exercised his choice to leave his lawfully married wife to take up with a man. So was he inexorably driven by his "orientation" when he was married to a woman? Or when he left her and took up with a man? Or did he have both an "orientation" and choice at the same time?

All this is very contradictory and leads one to suspect that the term "orientation" is basically meaningless. The term "orientation" basically functions in our society as a fig leaf for individual choice based on strong habits. The sexual revolution teaches that sexual behaviour is amoral and every individual should create his or her own values by his or her own personal choices. Since that seems immoral, hedonistic and selfish to most people, there has to be a way of fudging the real issues when operating in the public realms of politics, education and religion. The idea of "orientation" has a superficial veneer of (1) a scientific basis, (2) compassion and (3) tolerance, all of which make it useful as a propaganda tool to use on those who aren't paying close attention to the arguments.

The pagan world says to the Church: "The homosexual inclinations of some people are so deeply embedded, so fundamental to their identity and so hard to fight that we must accept them as they are. They cannot change and it is cruel to say that they must do so."

Conservative Christianity (Catholic and Evangelical) says in reply: "We understand that it is difficult because we all struggle against sinful desires and frequently give in to temptation. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and it means two things: (1) forgiveness for sin and (2) power to change. The indwelling Holy Spirit can change your life by giving you freedom from guilt instantly and then gradually increasing victory over the power of sin. The hope of the Gospel is that one day we will experience total liberation from sin in our glorified, resurrected bodies. Therefore, believe the Gospel and be saved!"

Liberal Protestantism says: "We understand that you can't overcome these strong desires and our message is essentially a therapeutic one that stresses becoming better adjusted to the realities of the natural world and the limitations of our moral powers. So we welcome you into the Church as you are and want you to know that you are accepted by us and by whatever God may be up there."

The problem is that Liberal Protestantism has no message of forgiveness and power to change. Evangelical Protestantism preaches a Gospel of forgiveness and power to change. Evangelicals are not better people than anyone else, but we have the greatest message the world could ever hear. And Liberal Protestants, as people, are no better than us, so is it any wonder that without a Gospel to proclaim their churches are dying out?

The tragedy is that an immature teen, struggling with homosexual temptation, who goes to a Liberal Protestant Church will hear no hope for change or overcoming temptation. The spouse teetering on the verge of breaking up his or her family to follow the inclinations of the flesh will hear only a justification for acting on the most base and selfish of impulses. The homosexual who is tempted to commit suicide because of his struggles with low self-esteem and guilt over his lifestyle will hear no message of forgiveness, cleansing and hope. This is the tragedy of Liberal Protestantism. People, at a very deep level, do not want "tolerance" or "acceptance." They want to be clean and free. This is the cruelty of having no real Gospel to proclaim.

The Reformers taught that the true Church exists where the Gospel is faithfully proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered. The true Church does not exist where there is no proclamation of forgiveness through the cross of Christ and power to change through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people." (II Tim. 3:1-5)

Conversion versus Inclusion

David Virtue of Virtue Online has written a concise summary of the two views of the Gospel that are at war in the Church today: conversion versus inclusion. He writes:

There was a time when becoming a Christian used to mean CONVERSION. But in Anglicanism (and in most mainstream expressions of church life) it has been twisted into INCLUSION. Not "Repent, and believe the Gospel, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" - but "Come as you are, stay as you are." This is the "gospel" of the Episcopal Church. It is insidious and it is a lie...and it is sending tens of thousands of Episcopalians and not a few Anglicans around the world into a Christless eternity. It is the curse of universalism, which refuses to admit that there is sin, that its wages are death, and that there is a place of such appalling separation from God that we can call it Hell. There can be no Hell, for there is no longer any sin, and therefore there can be no final judgment. It is a shadow gospel: it presents only the outward appearances of life as a born-again Christian. The heart within remains unchallenged and unchanged. The orthodox see things much more clearly. Their prayer is, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."

That if very helpful and clear. Liberals will think it is too simplistic, naturally.

The Message Media Muddles About Jesus Christ

Watch this brief (1 min, 41 sec) video and you will never be impressed by anyone's ability to drop a lot of pop culture references again. Tamara Lowe gets the message out.

What is the Gospel?

John R. W. Stott, in his classic, The Cross of Christ, notes the objections to orthodox Christianity in his day based on the idea the Gospel the Church proclaims is not the message of Jesus. He quotes Sr. Alister Hardy in his 1965 Gifford Lectures, who asked if Jesus himself would be a Christian if he were to live today and then said:

I very much doubt it . . . I feel certain that he would not have preached to us of a God who would be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of a tortured body . . . I cannot accept either the hypothesis that the appalling death of Jesus was a sacrifice in the eyes of God for the sins of the world, or that God, in the shape of his son, tortured himself for our redemption. I can only confess that, in my hearth of hearts, I find such religious ideas to be amongst the least attractive in the whole of anthropology. To me, they belong to a quite different philosophy - different psychology - from that of the religion that Jesus taught." (quoted on pl. 111)

I was struck by how similar this objection is to Brian McLaren's and Steve Chalke's and those of feminist and liberal theologians of recent years. How does Stott reply?

Stott notes that the cross was at the core of the apostolic proclamation as described by Luke in the Book of Acts. Stott points out that there are five sermons by Peter (Acts 2:14-39, 3:12-36, 4:8-12, 5:29-32 and 10:34-43) and five by Paul (Acts 13:16-41, 14:15-17, 17:2-3 and 22-31, and 28:23-31). Stott then reconstructs the core of their proclamation as follows:

Jesus was a man who was accredited by God through miracles and anointed by the Spirit to do good and to heal. Despite this, he was crucified through the agency of wicked men, though also by God's purpose according to the Scriptures that the Messiah must suffer. Then God reversed the human verdict on Jesus by raising him from the dead, also according to the Scriptures, and as attested by the apostolic eyewitnesses. Next God exalted him to the place of supreme honour as Lord and Saviour. He now possesses full authority both to save those who repent, believe and are baptized in his name, bestowing on them the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit, and to judge those who reject him. (p. 33)

Stott is concerned to show that the doctrine of the atonement was preached from the very beginning and was not a later doctrinal development, which is why he is concentrating here on Acts, as opposed to the epistles. Noting that a full-scale doctrine of atonement is missing, he points out that Luke is careful to record of both Peter and Paul that they used the term "tree" in describing the cross. Paul says to the synagogue congregation in Pisidian Antioch that when the people and rulers of Jerusalem "had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree." (Acts 13:29)

Both Peter and Paul used other ways of referring to the means of death: Paul speaks of his sufferings and his execution, while Peter speaks of Jesus' crucifixion. So their references to "tree" and his having been "hanged" on it must have theological significance. In Deuteronomy 21:22-23 instructions are given for the burial of a hanged man before nightfall "because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse." The apostles were quite aware of the law and could have hushed up or at least discretely not referred openly to the manner of Jesus' death. Instead, they trumpeted it with no apparent sense of shame.

They must have understood the curse under which Jesus suffered to have been our curse, which is what both apostles teach clearly in their later letters. (eg. Gal. 3:13, I Pet. 2:24) so in the very earliest preaching of the apostles we see the interpretation of the cross as atoning and substitutionary.

It seems to me to be obvious, although Stott does not mention it, that in so doing the apostles were interpreting the words of Jesus at the Last Supper "this cup is the new covenant in my blood . . . this is my body broken for you." In the end the apostles were preaching a Gospel that originates with Jesus himself.

Tim Keller on "What is the Gospel?"

This article by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, is a serious, learned and pastorally sensitive response to the recent remarks by Katherine Jefferts Shori about the gospel of personal salvation. Keller says much more comprehensively and clearly much of what I was trying to say in the previous post. Here is a section:

"Let's take the second criticism first. The belief that there is no single basic gospel outline in the Bible goes back at least to the Tubingen school of biblical scholarship, which insisted Paul's gospel of justification was sharply different from Jesus' gospel of the kingdom. In the 20th century, British professor C.H. Dodd countered that there was one consensus gospel message in the Bible. Then, in turn, James Dunn argued in Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977) that the gospel formulations in the Bible are so different that we can't come up with a single outline.

Now hundreds of websites of young Christian leaders complain that the older evangelical church spent too much time reading Romans rather than Jesus' declaration that "the kingdom of God is at hand." But to be true to first-century Christians' own understanding of the gospel, I believe we must side with Dodd over Dunn. Paul is emphatic that the gospel he presents is the same as the one preached by the Jerusalem apostles. "Whether it was I or they," Paul says, referring to Peter and the others, "so we preached and so you believed" (1 Cor. 15:10-11). This statement assumes a single body of gospel content.

One gospel, many forms.

So yes, there must be one gospel, yet there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed. This is the Bible's own way of speaking of the gospel, and we should stick with it. Paul is an example. After insisting there is only one gospel (Gal. 1:8), he then speaks of being entrusted with "the gospel of the uncircumcised" as opposed to the "gospel of the circumcised" (Gal. 2:7).

When Paul spoke to Greeks, he confronted their culture's idol of speculation and philosophy with the "foolishness" of the cross, and then presented Christ's salvation as true wisdom. When he spoke to Jews, he confronted their culture's idol of power and accomplishment with the "weakness" of the cross, and then presented the gospel as true power (1 Cor. 1:22-25).

One of Paul's gospel forms was tailored to Bible-believing people who thought they would be justified by works on judgment day, and the other to pagans. These two approaches can be discerned in Paul's speeches in the book of Acts, some to Jews and some to pagans.There are other forms of the gospel.

Readers have always noticed that the kingdom language of the Synoptic Gospels is virtually missing in the Gospel of John, which usually talks instead about receiving eternal life. However, when we compare Mark 10:17, 23-34 , Matthew 25:34, 46, and John 3:5, 6 and 17, we see that "entering the kingdom of God" and "receiving eternal life" are virtually the same thing. Reading Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:15 and John 3:3, 5 together reveal that conversion, the new birth, and receiving the kingdom of God "as a child" are the same move.

Why, then, the difference in vocabulary between the Synoptics and John? As many scholars have pointed out, John emphasizes the individual and inward spiritual aspects of being in the kingdom of God. He is at pains to show that it is not basically an earthly social-political order (John 18:36). On the other hand, when the Synoptics talk of the kingdom, they lay out the real social and behavioral changes that the gospel brings. We see in John and the Synoptics two more forms of the gospel-one that stresses the individual and the other the corporate aspect to our salvation.What, then, is the one simple gospel?

Simon Gathercole distills a three-point outline that both Paul and the Synoptic writers held in common. (See "The Gospel of Paul and the Gospel of the Kingdom" in God's Power to Save, ed. Chris Green Apollos/Inter-Varsity Press, UK, 2006.) He writes that Paul's good news was, first, that Jesus was the promised Messianic King and Son of God come to earth as a servant, in human form. (Rom. 1:3-4; Phil. 2:4ff.)

Second, by his death and resurrection, Jesus atoned for our sin and secured our justification by grace, not by our works (1 Cor. 15:3ff.)

Third, on the cross Jesus broke the dominion of sin and evil over us (Col. 2:13-15) and at his return he will complete what he began by the renewal of the entire material creation and the resurrection of our bodies (Rom 8:18ff.)

Gathercole then traces these same three aspects in the Synoptics' teaching that Jesus, the Messiah, is the divine Son of God (Mark 1:1) who died as a substitutionary ransom for the many (Mark 10:45), who has conquered the demonic present age with its sin and evil (Mark 1:14-2:10) and will return to regenerate the material world (Matt. 19:28.)

If I had to put this outline in a single statement, I might do it like this: Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever."

Read it all here.

Do Not Be Conformed to This World (Rom. 12:2)

What does it mean to be conformed to the world today? It cannot mean simply doing or believing something that non-Christians also do or believe. After all, common grace ensures that unbelievers often do praiseworthy things and believe truths. We are all human and the patterns of human life make some overlap between Christian and non-Christian belief and behaviour inevitable.

Liberal Protestants seek to align themselves with the forces of "progressive" politics in order to advance the causes of peace, justice and the environment. For liberals, this is not being conformed to the world but fighting against the evils of the world in cooperation with the unbelievers who already are engaged in doing so. Liberals want a society in which the State ensures equality for all and individuals have equal opportunities for fulfilling life projects. This is what liberals mean by the common good.

Conservative Protestants seek to align themselves with conservative politics in order to resist the encroachment of the State into more and more areas of life and to defend civil society, especially the family. Conservatives want a society in which the State does not become totalitarian and in which families, civic organizations and churches can flourish so as to enrich human life. They value subsidiarity as part of the common good.

Neither of these appraoches can be said necessarily to be conformity to the world even though liberal Christians work as allies of secular liberals and conservative Christians work as allies of secular conservatives.

The uniqueness of Christianity is centered in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a message of sin and salvation for individuals and a witness for the kingdom of God that will come through the work of Jesus Christ. To enter this Kingdom, which Jesus will set up on earth at his return, one must be born again. So Christianity is focussed, not on this world, but on the eschatological Kingdom of God. Both liberalism and conservativism are focussed on this world and, to the extent that we all have to live in this world, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that.

The problem with both liberalism and conservativism arises when these worldly ideologies come into conflict with the Gospel. The question of worldliness (conformity to the world) arises when one's social and political ideology leads one away from a focus on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So which one of these ideologies leads us to compromise the uniqueness of the Gospel message? Which one takes our attention off Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour? Which one leads to a down-playing of the Gospel of sin and salvation and makes personal faith superfluous?

My conviction is that, while there are dangers in both ideologies, liberalism hold the most potential for leading the Church to be conformed to this world. Utopianism and Pelagianism are the hidden presuppositions in much of so-called "progressive" Christianity and these presuppositions embody a false doctrine of human nature and are, therefore, dangerous.

While it is true that unthinking conservativism can lead to nationalism, violence and imperialism, it can only do so when it is perverted from its true nature. It seems to me, however, that liberal progressivism need not be perverted from its true nature in order to be dangerous.

Whatever the case may be in theory, the historical evidence of the past 200 years is very clear in indicating that liberal Christianity has in fact become conformed to the world as it has made common cause with progressive politics. There is no logical reason why cultural liberalism (ie. promiscuity, divorce, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality etc.) need accompany economic liberalism (ie. the welfare state, equality of opportunity, etc.), but the fact is that it does. The Democratic Party in the US and the NDP in Canada promote cultural liberalism every bit as much as economic liberalism. Theory aside, this is how it has worked out.

But to say this is not yet to settle the matter, for the real issue is which kind of alignment with the world leads to the silencing of the Gospel. And here the evidence is in and it is unambiguous. The liberal Protestant denominations (eg. the United Church of Canada, The Episcopal Church) no longer preach the Gospel that all Protestants preached at the time of the Reformation. On the other hand, the Southern Baptists and other conservative denominations do. So worldly politics aside, the fact is that only conservative branches of Christianity still preach the message of sin and salvation that Peter, Paul and the other apostles took to the Greco-Roman world and the Reformers emphasized. This, then, is the definitive answer to the question of who is conformed to the world. The liberal churches are conformed to the world, in disobedience to the Scriptural command, because, and to the extent that, they no longer preach the Gospel.

Forget sex and economics for a moment. The Gospel is far more important. With the Gospel issues of ethics and lifestyle can eventually be sorted out. Without the Gospel no such issues matter because the Church has no message for the world that the world does not already know and the Church has been conformed to the world.

The Gospel and the Consequences of the Gospel

In my Adult Sunday School class at Westney Heights Baptist Church last Sunday I expounded John 21:1-14, the miraculous catch of fish, which is, of course, about evangelization. John 20-21 depicts the risen, but not yet ascended, Lord Jesus Christ organizing, empowering, instructing and preparing His Church for her mission in the world. Central to the work of the Church in the time between the Ascension and the Return of Christ is evangelization. My plea was that we would keep our eye firmly fixed on the ball and not allow the world to squeeze us into the mold of making social action and social justice central to the mission of the Church. They are good in their place, but they are not the Gospel. Only the Church has the Gospel; if we don't preach it no one else will. Others may feed the hungry physically, but no one else can feed them spiritually.

It seems to me that we may well be in the middle of a Second (or is it the Third?) Great Defection from Evangelical Protestantism into liberal apostasy. A previous defection took place in the late 19th century and led eventually to the expulsion or withdrawal of many Evangelical and orthodox believers from the mainline Protestant denominations during the Fundamentalist-Modernist conflicts of the 1920's and 30's. Those events sowed the seeds for the current on-going decline of the old Protestant denominations, which is so evident today. Their decline is doctrinal, moral and numerical and the very survival (in any form) of denominations like The Episcopal Church and the United Church of Canada is in question. Certainly their gospel witness has evaporated.

Yet, incredible as it may seem, many Evangelicals are once again falling for the siren song of "relevance" by embracing the same doctrinal deviations as late 19th century Evangelicals did, including a denial of moral guilt produced by sin, the need for a substitutionary atonement, the divinity of Christ, the need for personal conversion and the need for separation from worldliness (while remaining, of course, in the world). Along with this eviserating of the the heart of the Gospel (Christ died for our sins) there must be, and always is, a new replacement "gospel" of moralism and good works. Concern for the poor, "peaceandjustice" and environmentalism come to stand in the center of the Christian proclamation instead of sin and atonement.

In a recent editorial in Themelios, D. A. Carson addresses the question of "What is the gospel?" [My comments in bold in square brackets]
_________________

"In blogs, journal essays, and books, there has been quite a lot written recently about what “the gospel” is. In the hands of some, the question of what “the gospel” is may be tied to the question of what “evangelicalism” is, since “gospel” = εὐαγγέλιον = evangel, which lies at the heart of evangelicalism. . . .[In David Bebbington's widely-accepted four-fold definition of Evangelicalism as an historic movement, the centrality of the cross is one of the four distingishing marks. This is indisputable and Carson is about to unpack it.] . . . one must distinguish between, on the one hand, the gospel as what God has done and what is the message to be announced and, on the other, what is demanded by God or effected by the gospel in assorted human responses. [This is a crucial distinction. If not made, it results in the distortion of the gospel and the failure to preach the gospel.] If the gospel is the (good) news about what God has done in Christ Jesus, there is ample place for including under “the gospel” the ways in which the kingdom has dawned and is coming, for tying this kingdom to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for demonstrating that the purpose of what God has done is to reconcile sinners to himself and finally to bring under one head a renovated and transformed new heaven and new earth, for talking about God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, consequent upon Christ’s resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and above all for focusing attention on what Paul (and others—though the language I’m using here reflects Paul) sees as the matter “of first importance”: Christ crucified. All of this is what God has done; it is what we proclaim; it is the news, the great news, the good news. [The gospel is not everything that the Church has to say, but rather a proclamation (heralding) of what God has done. The Church will, of course, have other things to say on the basis of the Gospel, i.e. "teaching them to obey all things I have commanded you," once the Gospel has been proclaimed and a local congregation of believers formed. ]

By contrast, the first two greatest commands—to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves—do not constitute the gospel, or any part of it. [This must be said and it must be said this bluntly. If you find yourself resisting this truth, you may well need to examine your conscience and your understanding of the basis of your salvation.] We may well argue that when the gospel is faithfully declared and rightly received, it will result in human beings more closely aligned to these two commands. [Of course.] But they are not the gospel. Similarly, the gospel is not receiving Christ or believing in him, or being converted, or joining a church; it is not the practice of discipleship. [Here is where many Evangelicals make the same mistake with regard to piety as Liberals make with regard to social service and it explains why some Evangelicals are already half-way to Liberalism even though they look and sound orthodox. I want to stress that this insight is not a uniquely Reformed insight, as people like Brian McLaren would like you to believe (although many Reformed preachers express it very well). But John Wesley would concur with Carson here, as would Benedict XVI.] Once again, the gospel faithfully declared and rightly received will result in people receiving Christ, believing in Christ, being converted, and joining a local church; but such steps are not the gospel. The Bible can exhort those who trust the living God to be concerned with issues of social justice (Isa 2; Amos); it can tell new covenant believers to do good to all human beings, especially to those of the household of faith (Gal 6); it exhorts us to remember the poor and to ask, not “Who is my neighbor?” but “Whom am I serving as neighbor?” We may even argue that some such list of moral commitments is a necessary consequence of the gospel. [Theologians will argue about the precise definition of "necessary" here.] But it is not the gospel. We may preach through the list, reminding people that the Bible is concerned to tell us not only what to believe but how to live. But we may not preach through that list and claim it encapsulates the gospel. The gospel is what God has done, supremely in Christ, and especially focused on his cross and resurrection.

Failure to distinguish between the gospel and all the effects of the gospel tends, on the long haul, to replace the good news as to what God has done with a moralism that is finally without the power and the glory of Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning. [Right. This is the main problem of liberalism - moralism instead of the good news of salvation. And moralism is bad news - who can live up to the Divine standard?]
______________

Clearly, Don Carson and I are on the same page here. It is a good editorial about a pressing contemporary issue.