Continued from yesterday…
Acknowledge Corporate Sin
In our churches, we need leaders who will help us see the big corporate sins of our age. We’ve often softened our congregations up on the easy topics that leave us feeling justified. It’s easy to rail against greed – especially when we think it is something that only rich people have. And rich people are people who earn at least $25,000 more than me. It’s easy to turn our applications into calls for more people to give up time in their ‘secular’ callings to spend more time helping out in the church institution. These soft and convenient applications have become staple.
But we need leaders who have courage and spiritual eyesight to call out the big sins to which we as a Christian community have become oblivious. What are these big sins?
Among them are the following eight. Astute readers will note that many of these were mentioned in our introductory post.
1. A failure to acknowledge Christ’s lordship in everything
This is at the top of the list, because all of the other sins are a consequence of this failure. We will explore this further in post three of this series. This failure has led to a dualistic approach to the world that divides everything into sacred and secular (neutral) realms. We will explore this further in article three in our series.
2. A truncation of the gospel to an individualistic personal salvation
Because we have divided life into the sacred realm (where Christ has a say), and the secular realm (where he is irrelevant and unwanted), we have redefined the gospel into an individualistic personal salvation. Rather than the announcement of the universal kingship of Christ and the need to repent and submit to his rule in all things, we have hollowed it out to become a kind of eternal fire insurance marketing. We will say more in this on post four in this series.
3. A reduction in what Christians will actually take a stand on because of the cliché excuse of “It’s not a gospel issue.”
Quite obviously this is tied with the previous sins, the truncation of the gospel and a refusal to set apart Christ as Lord in all things. By refusing to make a stand on an issue because it’s not a ‘gospel issue’ (whereby we mean the issue is not strictly to do with personal salvation), we encourage a Christian retreatism and a refusal to make any stand. There may well be no hill we will die on now except in the extremely unlikely case of a state saying we may no longer believe in Jesus ‘in our hearts’. And even in this case, having refused to make any other stands it is a questionable assumption that many will have the requisite muscle tone to make that stand. Continued retreat is liable to turn into a rout. This may stem from the sin of cowardice, or possibly an unhealthy love of wealth, comfort and respectability. We will explore this further in article nine in this series.
4. The Christian sin of ‘niceness’.
This is related to the previous failure. We are more concerned with avoiding the chance of upsetting modern sensibilities than we are with truth. We somehow think that if someone gets offended that is automatically a bad thing. We are more likely to become upset with a Christian brother for the way he says something than we are at rampant sin and wickedness around us. We think that blunt language is wrong. We might not exactly call evil ‘good’, but we do feel uncomfortable calling it evil. Our view of appropriate language and tone would have condemned most of the prophets, apostles and Jesus Christ himself.
5. Statism. A willingness to give to Caesar what does not belong to him including our very children.
We have forgotten the truths our Reformed and Puritan fathers taught. Christ is Lord, not the state. The civil government does not own everything; Christ does, and he has created multiple governments with separate areas of responsibility and delegated sovereignty. While there is overlap between family, church and state, we have not thought carefully about where and how this ought to occur, nor where state government is in idolatrous rebellion against Christ. We have squandered the Christian political inheritance we were given by the Reformation. We have disobeyed Christ by failing to instruct our children in the faith and instead given them over to Christ’s enemies to instruct. Again this is the result of our dualism. We have forgotten that there is no neutral ground. More on this in article seven in our series.
6. A failure to develop a Christian culture.
Again this is related to our dualistic thinking about life. Christ compared the kingdom to a small amount of yeast that causes drastic changes to a lump of dough (Matthew 13:33). A very small amount of yeast mixed with dough will cause it to rise, unless the yeast is expired. Yeast is a powerful transformative agent in the dough. So ought God’s people to be. We do this by applying Christ’s lordship to all of life, not by keeping the yeast in the ‘our hearts and church’ container. Though small in number we ought to be having far more impact on New Zealand. The fact that those with even smaller numbers, like the Alphabet Cult have had a disproportionate impact on our country shows us that it is humanly possible. And we have the Spirit. This concept will be explored in article five of this series.
7. A failure to hold unwaveringly to God’s design for male and female, marriage and family.
We are cowed into submission by the egalitarian spirit of our age and ignore the patent God-given differences in men and women. In a designed world, different bodies mean something, but we neglect to highlight the importance of a wife prioritising the domestic sphere and children while her husband pursues dominion. We denigrate motherhood in our attempt to supposedly elevate women by making them men version 2.0. More on this in the sixth article in our series.
8. Pessimism.
We have refused to develop Christian optimism and hope in the victory of Christ. We are pessimistic (lacking hopeful faith!) about the future of Christ’s earth, despite his claims to be ruling it now, despite his promise to never leave us or forsake us as we seek to see his kingdom extend over all the earth, despite the Scriptural truths that he is reigning and putting all his enemies under his feet right now, and despite the fact that he commands the kings of the earth to be wise and submit to his rule. Despite clear biblical truth, many of us have taken on a defeated mentality thinking Christ is incapable of victory in his realm. Our fathers in the faith did not have such reservations. Look to the old hymns.
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
does its successive journeys run,
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
till moons shall wax and wane no more.
Isaac Watts (1719)
More on the need of this Christian hope and faith in article ten in this series.
Repent – Make Changes
As the Holy Spirit exposes our individual and corporate sin, repentance is required. That means change. Who knows, if we as individuals and families begin to repent and live with Christ as Lord in every area of life, perhaps God will grant a great turning of the Church to himself in humble repentance. And then we can get back to the mission we have been called to.
Christ called the Church to the dominion of the Great Commission. Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. That same Christ commanded his church to go into the world and disciple the nations teaching them to obey all his commands. As we repent and start obeying them ourselves, we ought to expect that this commission be progressively fulfilled. It’s not that Satan owns New Zealand. He doesn’t. Christ does. Our marching orders as Christians in New Zealand are to disciple this nation teaching it to obey Christ’s law. We have the sword of the Spirit. We have the Word of God. What more do we need?