“This also is
an important principle in need of stress at the present day. If there is danger
of Christianity being temporalized, there is no less danger of its being
materialized. How easily do we fall into the habit of handling the things of
our holy faith after an external, quantitative, statistical fashion, so that they turn flesh under our touch and emit a savor of earth? If at any time or in any form this fault should threaten to
befall us, let us revisit the tents of the patriarchs and rehearse the lesson,
that in religion the body without the soul is worthless and without power.”
G. Vos
Considering that
Vos gave this message at Princeton Seminary in the early part of the 20th
century, the above is prophetic; for we have certainly made Christianity
something of the temporal – a creature of time, as well as of the material – a
statistical creature where we count the numbers and the money. In contrast to
the Holy of Holies, we are a people of the Outer Court at best, and a people
living outside the Tabernacle at worst. We have Christian celebrities, programs
for about everything under the sun, therapies in place of the work of the
Spirit and the Word, and Jesus is our marketing icon and not our Lord.
We quantify,
quantify, and continue to quantify; this is a hard thing not to do because we
live in a world that gauges success by quantities, by numbers, by money, by the
pragmatic, by the things that we can see. But friends, Jesus says, “Enter
through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads
to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small
and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it”
(Matthew 6:13 – 14).
We are called to
make disciples, not increase our church membership. We are called to teach
others to “obey” what Jesus commands us (Matthew 28:18 – 20), we are not called
to pretend we don’t see sin in our lives and fellowships. We certainly are not
called to invite others to the broad way that leads to destruction, but I
wonder if we are effectively saying, “Ignore this small gate, ignore this
narrow way, Jesus didn’t mean what He said”?
The pressure to
conform to the world is great, the pressure to operate successful churches is tremendous,
the pressure to please people so they will remain in congregations is
significant. The pressure to operate seminaries so that they will appeal to
students who pay tuition is real.
It isn’t that we
shouldn’t care about numbers, but rather that we should care about Jesus more
than anything; we should care about the Biblical Gospel and Biblical
discipleship more than all these other things. If we are faithful to Christ and
have hundreds or thousands with us, let us rejoice; if we are faithful to
Christ and have a few with us, let us rejoice no less, let us worship no less,
let us give no less.
When we touch
the things of God “they turn flesh under our touch and emit a savor of earth.”
In other words, we make holy things stink, but we are so accustomed to the
stench that we don’t notice. We market a lifestyle, we do not call men and
women and young people to repent, bringing the fruits of repentance, and to
take up the cross, deny themselves, and follow Jesus Christ in obedience (Mark
8:34ff; Matthew 28:18 – 20). We measure the success of a congregation or a
ministry by numbers – the bigger the better, the more in the bank account the
more convinced we are that God is blessing.
Because we are
an anemic and powerless people, we devise and adapt programs based on the
shifting sands of the social sciences to give a measure of healing and help to
others; rather than allow the Holy Spirit to work in us as the People of God so
that the true healing elements of the Body of Christ become a way of life for
us. Beloved – there is healing in koinonia, there is holistic healing when we,
as God’s People and by God’s grace, live collective lives of faithfulness and
obedience to Jesus Christ.
“If at any
time or in any form this fault should threaten to befall us, let us revisit the
tents of the patriarchs and rehearse the lesson, that in religion the body
without the soul is worthless and without power.” Here is a frightening
thing, we are so good at what we do that we don’t need the Holy Spirit.
We have become so marketing oriented, so entertainment oriented, so oriented to
the social sciences – we have so many tubes hooked up to the patient, that we
don’t know that the patient is dead. The doctors and nurses and medical techs
are generally fine with this because it keeps them employed. The people are
happy because it requires little, if nothing, from them. We are allowed to live
as we wish, without regard to Jesus Christ and His Cross, but at the same time
we can feel smugly spiritual – we have enough deodorant and air freshener about
us so that we don’t smell all that bad.
And yet, there
are times the world can smell the stink. It smells the stink when we align
ourselves with political parties. It smells the stink when we claim to be prolife
and yet don’t care for the babies that are born – don’t care for health care,
education, housing, equitable employment opportunities, or when we don’t care
for those at and beyond our borders (I speak to my own tribe, there are other
tribes with their own smells about them). The world smells the stink when we
are as materialistic, if not more, as the world in the marketplace and with our
checkbooks. And where, O where, is that church or movement that will embrace
the clear teaching of 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 that we are to materially
care for one another in the Church across social, ethnic, and national lines? How
can we say we preach the entire Bible and not preach and practice the clear
teaching of these two chapters, chapters written to Christians in the economic
powerhouse of Corinth? We cannot even practice these chapters locally, let
alone globally (though perhaps it is easier to send funds abroad, or go on
short-term trips abroad, than to really get to know others locally who are not
like ourselves…that would require too much, just too too much).
We are called to
belong to Jesus Christ; not to an economic system, not to a political party, not
to a celebrity – whether political, religious, or otherwise – we are called to
be the People of Jesus Christ. We are not even called to primarily identify
with a parochial Christian movement – for all of these things will capture our
hearts and minds, when we are to have only one Husband, one true Friend, one
Lord, one Master – Jesus Christ. Isn’t it about time that we remove the dollar
sign from our churches and hearts and minds, and replace it with the Cross of
Jesus Christ?
Well, enough of
this, I don’t enjoy writing it and you should not enjoy reading it; let us be
encouraged that God always has a remnant, He always has a People who will
remain faithful to Him and will pass the torch to others. Here is the next
section of Vos’s message, we’ll look at it in the next post, in the meantime
please draw encouragement from it – for this is where Vos is headed, indeed, it
should be where we are all headed:
“The other
point to be observed is this, that heaven is the normal goal of our redemption.
We all know that religion is older than redemption. At the same time the
experience of redemption is the summit of religion. The two have become so
interwoven that the Christian cannot conceive of a future state from which the
redemptive mold and color would be absent. The deepest and dearest in us is so
much the product of salvation, that the vision of God as such and the vision of
God our Savior melt into one. We could not separate them if we would. The
simple reason is that precisely in redeeming us God has revealed to us the
inmost essence of his deity. No one but a redeemed creature can truly know what
it is for God to be God, and what it means to worship and possess Him as God.
This is the fine gold of the Christian’s experience, sweeter to him than honey
and the honeycomb. The river that makes glad the city of God is the river of
grace. The believer’s mind and heart will only in heaven compass the full
riches, the length and breadth and depth and height of the love of God.”
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