9-10 Feb 2024

We have looked at God’s unchanging purpose for His people after the Fall; Israel was first assigned with this task in the Old Covenant, but she failed, despite the fact that prophet after prophet was sent by God to bring her back to her role. Then God sent His own Son to recreate a new community and humanity, and He fulfilled His mission, resulting in the New Covenant and a new community in the Church, comprising of both saints from the OT and NT contexts. The Church is now assigned with God’s unchanging purpose.

But over the years in the Church’s history, many things have gone wrong: distorted and wrong theology arose; compromise and dilution of Godly values took place; God’s people strayed and are straying from the focus on His unchanging purpose and they have ‘abandoned’ the Scripture and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in varying degrees.

We need to consider some of the salient and important areas that have been compromised, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps being led astray by the enemy, the influence of the fallen world, and the dominion of the flesh, or all of the three.

The Challenge:
Nations and communities once shaped by the values and influence of the gospel are now largely ignorant of true meaning and concept of the dynamic, changing power of the risen Lord Jesus to transform both individual lives and society.

There is a great danger that such a trend in this generation and society will panic the church into short-term measures, which in the end may prove to be counter-productive and even worsen the difficulties. The danger lies in thinking that the major problems are in the area of communication and methodology, rather than in the idolatry of the human heart and our stubborn and deep resistance to God’s authority as our Creator. So the church embarks on more training programmes, better methods and managing principles, thinking that these may correct the dangerous trend in society and in the church itself.

Unfortunately, the church will invariably concentrate on prevailing methodologies of our secular culture and seeking to imitate them – using worldly methods to do spiritual work. Large ‘exciting’ events will dominate evangelistic presentations, but with minimal serious gospel proclamation. Celebrities become the focus of the Christian subculture, especially if their former lives have had some public notoriety.
Preaching becomes salesmanship and marketing is king, so the spin becomes a way of life and substance is sacrificed to image. Reputations are built on great communication skills, irrespective of the content of what is being communicated.
We will not have to go far to see all these areas being highlighted and brought into the forefront; in many mega-churches, in many big and reputable events, God has been displaced by “talented and able communicators and charismatic speakers”; statistics matter more than quality spiritual responses to God.
Related to this, to ‘hype’ the atmosphere of the meetings, ‘worship leader’ replaces God as the leader and focus of the meeting; emotional music and singing take ‘centre-stage’ instead of the music being part of the worship of God, and the music team becomes the centre of attraction and God seems to ‘fade away’ in the background.
The evangelist, Charles Finney, who was known as an American revivalist, was noted to have brought many conversions in his evangelistic meetings. But the approach he used in his meetings seemed to increase the emotional tone before the message, with loud music and other activities which made the crowd more receptive to what they would listen to. By the way, the many Christian crusades that follow in subsequent years are patterned after the approach of Finney’s. Colson, who was involved in Prison’s ministry, shared about the many occasions he had been involved in speaking to those who came forward during such crusades, apparently responding to the gospel, and he lamented that the many so-called conversions fizzled out soon enough, with many of them becoming more like those who have never known Christ.
Interestingly, Finney was also one who did not believe in the theology of “Substitution” (i.e. he did not believe that Christ died as a substitute for sinners). Nonetheless, the theology book written by Charles Finney was well regarded by many believers.

The Apostles’s concern seems to have been much more with the transforming power of the gospel in the lives of the Christians, so that as the Word of God does its work, restoring the image of God in the believers, the world is made increasingly curious, and then even hungry, for the quality of spiritual reality it is witnessing in the lives of believers and the life of the church.
Clearly, verbal proclamation is demanded, but it is the quality of life that opens the door of opportunity.

Our contemporary danger may well be that the nurture of godliness in character is relegated down the list of church priorities, in favour of ‘skilling’ a workforce of salesmen, whose task is to saturate the market with their product. Someone rightly said that what we need is not more gospel salesmen, but more ‘free samples’.

Koh Choon

Sat, Feb 10, 5:17 PM (13 days ago)

to matthew, Andian, me, Dorcas
Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do good work” (Titus 2:14).
This, in essence, is God’s unchanging purpose for His people (the church).

The very purpose of His self-giving on the cross was not just to save isolated individuals, and so perpetuate their loneliness, but to create a new community whose members would belong to him, love one another and eagerly serve the world. This community of Christ would be nothing less than a renewed and reunited humanity, of which he as the second Adam would be head. It would incorporate Jews and Gentiles on equal terms. In fact, it would include representatives from every nation.

The community of Christ is the community of the cross. Having been brought into being by the cross, it continues to live by and under the cross. All our relationships have been radically transformed by it; our perspective and our behaviour are now governed by the cross. The cross is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disorientated world. In particular, the cross revolutionises our attitudes to God, to ourselves, to other people both inside and outside the Christian fellowship, and to the grave problems of violence and suffering.

Our attitudes to God

It is firstly marked by boldness; through Christ (and the cross) we are now able to approach God with freedom and confidence. We have freedom because of Christ’s high priesthood to come to God’s throne of grace, and confidence by Christ’s blood to enter “the most Holy Place” of God’s very presence. This freedom of access and this outspokenness of address to God in prayer are not incompatible with humility, for they are due entirely to Christ’s merit, not ours. His blood has cleansed our consciences (in a way that was impossible in Old Testament days), and God has promised to remember our sins no more. So now we look to the future with assurance, not fear.

The second characteristic of our new relationship with God is love. Indeed, “we love because he first loved us”. Previously we were afraid of him. But now love has driven out fear. Love begets love. God’s love in Christ, which has in one sense liberated us, in another hems us in, because it leaves us no alternative but to live the rest of our lives for him, in adoring and grateful service. (1John 4:18-19)

Joy is the third mark of those who have been redeemed by the cross. God has redeemed us from an oppressive slavery – the early Christians in Acts could hardly contain themselves – they shared their meals together ‘with unaffected joy’ (Acts 2:46). When we come together in public worship, the Christian community is a community of celebration and singing.

Our attitudes in Christian living and serving

The centrality of the cross is not only in Christian believing but also in Christian living. Preachers of the Christian gospel, for instance, cannot be impressive, self-made, public performers, because lives of that sort deny the content of their message. Rather, they demonstrate that the authentic Christian lifestyle does not consist in superior knowledge, well-developed rhetorical skills or extraordinary manifestations of supernatural power, but in the self-sacrificing love that gives itself up in the service of others and keeps persevering in the way of the cross to the very end of the journey.
Boasting about people, ourselves or others is always out of place, because the greatest human achievements are transitory and futile alongside God’s eternal wisdom and power. God has given his Spirit to his believing people to grant understanding and develop a mature, Christlike mind as the foundation for a sacrificial Christlike life (1 Cor. 2:12-16).
The arrogant division and self-seeking behaviour, the elevation of knowledge above love and the desire for the manifestation of giftedness are all denials of the heart of the gospel (and the centrality of the cross).

The sacrifice of the cross provides both the foundation and the shape of the building of Christian discipleship – the maturity in Christ God desires for the individual Christians and the church is defined for us as the cross-shaped spirituality characterised by serving sacrificial love in order to build others up, and energised by the Holy Spirit.
The journey of biblical truth in the hearer, during preaching and teaching, should progress through the mind to the heart in order to activate and energise the will in obedience to God.
The church should be committed to this long haul, because life transformation takes time. But God is far more committed to bringing every one of his redeemed people home to glory, and by his Word and through the Spirit he has all the resources needed to accomplish his purposes.The marathon course involves the whole counsel of God applied to the whole of the human condition and every aspect of life.
If we do not wish to miss God’s unchanging purpose for his church. we must keep the cross central in our Christian believing and living individually, and as a community in God’s church.