Book 2, Chapter 1
-Part 7 Continued Even More-
The faith that was once and for all handed down to us from Christ – the faith of which he is said to be the “author and finisher” (Hebrews 12:2) – is a faith that has warnings attached to it. This is a faith that can be infiltrated or suckered in by a world that not only disbelieves, but also attacks, challenges or taunts the faith or the faithful. The believer is expected to don the armor (Ephesians 6) that will protect him as he does battle with the forces that clamor against God. If this were an easy fight, we would require nothing more than an attitude and a good argument.
We are, instead, told to be wise in considering how to express our faith against the world.
We are not to expect our culture to make a nice place for our faith to reside. For the time being, we are supposed to co-exist, in the style of wheat and tares, with a world fraught with doubt, disbelief and disorder. We are, in fact, the ones who are expected to infiltrate the world – to provide refreshment and healing to the parched, the unwell, the wounded and the contaminated. To fail here, according to the Scriptures, is to have it backwards – to live infiltrated, contaminated and lukewarmly.
The world’s theology, if it has one, is a nebulous one. Worldliness cannot provide the understanding or the level of care about truth to conjure or develop a faith that can put a person in touch with the Divine initiative. As was pointed out, Christ – not the world – is the author (originator) and finisher (perfecter) of faith.
The world preaches bad theology. Christians who try to annex their faith to an existing structure built from the spiritually flimsy materials of, for example, post-modernism, humanism, or materialism, have built their house upon sand. They have not heard Christ. The mentality of this present world has penetrated their lives. They will have no choice but to fit only small fragments of the faith into their lives. Once broken down into scrap by world view and selfishness, the faith that they possess is mortally damaged and distorted to the point that it is unrecognizable, and certainly undistinguishable from the prevailing mentality of the present world.
For those who think that some kind of arrangement can be reached between the world at odds with God and their relationship with God and His kingdom, the Scriptures bring this thinking to an end: “Do you not realize that friendship with the world is hatred for God?” (James 4:4) “Do not love the world or what is in the world. If anyone does love the world, the love of the Father finds no place in him” (I John 2:15).
In the Scriptures, God tells the church of Laodicea (Revelation 3) that those believers who have arrived at spiritual mediocrity have riches, but not the right kind of riches; they are clothed nicely, but virtually naked; they have vision, but they see nothing:
“Write to the angel of the church in Laodicea and say, ‘Here is the message of the Amen, the trustworthy, the true witness, the Principle of God's creation:
‘I know about your activities: how you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other,
‘You say to yourself: I am rich, I have made a fortune and have everything I want, never realizing that you are wretchedly and pitiably poor, and blind and naked too’”
(Revelation 3:14-18).
The faith of the Laodiceans was a disaster. Why? Because, unlike Peter, who said, “Lord, we have left everything to follow you” (Matthew 19:27), the believers of Laodicea left nothing. They padded their existing life with the packing peanuts of Christianity. Big mistake.
Their faith, neither hot nor cold, was not good for bringing healing and comfort as was the use at the time for hot drink. Nor was it good for refreshing the weary, as cold drink does. Their lukewarm faith had not changed them nor brought any evidence of change in their thinking or behavior.
We can say they tried to “serve both God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), by adding Christ to the many ingredients or aspects of their lives, when the Gospel is clear that Jesus requires a complete exchange in which He supplants all other attachments that one has had to the world. Paul makes this clear in a watershed statement in Scripture: “But as for me it is out of the question that I should boast at all, except of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
This double-edged death allows no lingering attachments between the believer and the world. Obviously, we cannot successfully befriend God and the world that hates Him. This will yield the very condition of the believers of Laodicea. This is a much different description from the faithful who are rich in the kingdom of God for having stored up treasures in Heaven; who see according to the light of Christ rather than stumbling in the darkness; and who are clothed in the righteousness of Christ instead of the rags of their own righteousness.
Rather than renounce the world that renounces God and seek detachment from the spirit of the world, these believers have tried to forge an accord in order to possess the blessings of God and the pleasantries of the world. The Gospel makes this impossible. “He will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second” (Matthew 6:24). The way of the world and the way of Christ diverge sharply – one path leading to death and the other to life.
Through the book of Psalms this same is emphasized as we are presented with only two possible shepherds: The Lord, who guides his flock to life (e.g. Psalm 23:1, 95:7); or Death, leading to death’s environs (Psalm 49:14). Two paths face mankind always. The Bible is clear everywhere: Life with God, or death without Him. The narrow way or the broad one.
Remember the words of Christ aimed at Satan in the wilderness: “Him alone you must serve” (Matthew 4:10).
No comments:
Post a Comment