Eternal Perspectives

I was browsing at a Christian bookstore earlier today and picked up a book that looked interesting. I flipped it over to look at the back and noticed endorsements from R.C. Sproul and John Armstrong, plus the following:

The crying need of the church today is for discernment - the ability to recognize truth and distinguish it from error. [This book] reminds us that truth is important, and (contrary to the spirit of our age) real truth is not merely a matter of subjective individual opinion. - John MacArthur, endorsing Who Are You to Judge? by Erwin Lutzer, Senior Pastor of Moody Church

I bought the book and began reading it. I’m also in the process of reading David E. Garland’s commentary on 1 Corinthians (see below) but will also try to present some gleanings on Lutzer’s book, too. His opening chapter discusses the cultural quagmire in which the church today finds itself, as well as the effect of postmodernism on the church.

Appetizers:

The church is to be in the world as a ship is in the ocean; but when the ocean seeps into the ship, the ship is in trouble. I fear that the evangelical ship is taking on water.

There are churches and individuals that are making a great impact for the gospel, and for that we are thankful. But for the most part, we as Christians have settled down to a comfortable kind of Christianity that demands very little and therefore, in turn, makes very little difference in the wider culture. . . .

Officially, we believe that without trusting Jesus as Savior people are lost; unofficially, we act as if what people believe and the way they behave really does not matter.

Garland translates and comments on 1 Cor 1.17:

‘For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with rhetorically sophisticated speech, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied [of its effect].’

Eloquence that elevates the status of the preacher cancels the power of the cross . . .

To preach the gospel intending to charm and captivate the crowds with clever wordsmithery in order to enhance one’s own prestige only empties (kenoo) the cross of its effect. . . .

One does not preach the cross to win the admiration of the audience. The goal is to have them look up in awe at the cross, which implants new ideas and uproots the old ways of interpreting divine and earthly reality.

From David E. Garland’s comments on 1 Cor 1.10 in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament:

To be ‘in the same mind’ (en to auto noï) refers to a Christian mind-set that may include being able to judge ‘what distinguishes good and right from what is evil and wrong’ (Edwards 1885:17). To be ‘in the same purpose’ (en te aute gnome) refers to having the same goals and opinion about the truth.

As Garland notes, it is instructive that Paul, in addressing the factions that had arisen in the Corinthian church, argues theologically and does not rely on his apostolic authority.

Would that all of us might be in the same mind regarding what is right and what is wrong, and that we would all have the same goals - submission and obedience - as well as the same opinion - that the Bible is God’s revelation and is true as he is true - about it.

Someone else has said it better than I ever could. Ever think or feel this way about your own church?

[S]tatus was tied to a variety of factors: ‘occupational prestige, income or wealth, education and knowledge, religious purity, family and ethnic group position, and local-community status . . .’

‘Most individuals tend to measure themselves by the standards of some group that is very important to them - their reference group, whether or not they belong to it - rather than by the standards of the whole society.’ One could possess high status according to certain markers but low status when it came to others, creating a status dissonance that fed an internal restlessness and a greater desire to achieve the dignitas that one believed was one’s due’

[It involves] schmoozing, massaging a superior’s ego, rubbing shoulders with the powerful, pulling strings, scratching each other’s back, and dragging rivals’ names through the mud . . .

Most, if not all, of the problems . . . were hatched from the influence of this setting. Values that were antithetical to the message of the cross - particularly those related to honor and status . . . in which power manifesting itself in ruthlessness and self-advancement is thought to be the only sensible course - percolated into the church, destroying its fellowship and its Christian witness as some members sought to balance civic norms with Christian norms . . . Socially pretentious and self-important individuals appear to have dominated the church. It is likely that they flaunted their symbols of status, wisdom, influence, and family pedigree and looked down on others of lesser status. They appear to have wanted to preserve the social barriers of class and status that permeated their social world but were nullified in the cross of Christ.”

Apparently, they have no religious scruples about being well integrated into a pagan society that is inherently hostile to the wisdom of the cross. . . . Their faith appears not to have created any significant social and moral realignment of their lives. They face little or no social ostracism, and the lack of external pressure contributes to their internal dissension.

‘The church is not a cohesive community but a club, whose meetings provide important moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, but do not have global implications of moral and social change.’

This is not a description of any present-day church but of the church in Corinth to which Paul wrote his letters. It is taken from David Garland’s introduction to 1 Corinthians in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; he quotes from Meeks, Stansbury, and Barclay in the sections above.

In a sense, however, it is a present-day and any-day church: what was true of people then is true of people now and in the future. The struggles of sinful people then remain the struggles for all of us in our own lives and churches, and the solutions proffered by Paul remain the solutions that we need to implement today.