Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Finding The Cure
Jollyblogger quotes Martin Lloyd-Jones extensively, of which I will excerpt:
If indeed, we are in an age when scripture no longer carries general authority, if indeed, we are in an age where religious institutions no longer carry authority, how is the gospel message to be authenticated? What is it that will make people find truth in our claims?
I submit to you there is only one way that truth can be established, and that is in the lives of those that carry and proclaim the message. If the church is just another institution that tries to feed it's own needs and weild earthly power, then it is in fact, just another institution and just another book.
If the preacher speaks boldly and well of the heart of the gopsel, but his actions speak to motives of greed and growth, then the message he proclaims becomes one more message amongst the many that is not for the hearer, but for the messenger.
But suppose the church were a place radically different from the world around it? Suppose the church looks first, no exclusively and sacrifically, to the genuine needs of its members. Would the gospel message not ring true?
Suppose the preacher loved rather than objectified his congregation. Would not the message of Christ's love then not be more real?
Suppose we let the gospel change us as we claim it can others? Would its truth not then be self-evident?
How can we expect the world to take the gospel seriously when we do not?
Let's start with us!
Related Tags: gospel, truth, reality, claims
I feel increasingly, that as we examine this truly, we shall see that the kind of problem facing us is altogether deeper and more desperate than that which has confronted the Christian Church for many a long century. For the problem for us is not apathy, it is not a mere lack of concern and lack of interest. It is something much more profound. It seems to me to be a complete unawareness, even a denial of the spiritual altogether. It is not just apathy, it is not that people really have at the back of their minds what is right and true, but are not doing anything about it. No, the whole notion of the spiritual has gone. The very belief in God has virtually gone. We need not at this point seek the causes of this, but the fact is that because of some supposed scientific knowledge, the average man today thinks that all his belief about God and religion and salvation, and all that belongs to the realm of the Church, is something that should be entirely dismissed and forgotten. He believes that it has been an incubus on human nature all through the centuries, that it has been something that has been preventing the development and the forward march of the human race, and that it should be got rid of. The modern man is impatient with it all. He dislikes it and he dismisses it in toto.David quotes this in the context of trying to "diagnose" problems with the world. My question is what is the cure?
Now surely this is something which we should recognise. It is very difficult for us, because we are Christian people, and because we are interested in these things, to realise the mentality and the attitude of those who do not belong to the Christian church, but that I would suggest to you is what they are thinking. Not only that, the authority of the Bible is no longer recognised. In past times people did recognize the Bible to be the Word of God. They did not practise it or listen to it, but if you asked them what they thought of it, they would admit that, yes it was the good ol' book, God's book, and, yes, they felt that they were sinners. But that is no longer the case. It is regarded as an ordinary book to be treated like any other book. It is just literature, which is to be criticised, analyzed and subjected to our knowledge, historical, scientific and everything else, just a book amongst books. No longer is it acknowledged as the divine, inspired word of God.
If indeed, we are in an age when scripture no longer carries general authority, if indeed, we are in an age where religious institutions no longer carry authority, how is the gospel message to be authenticated? What is it that will make people find truth in our claims?
I submit to you there is only one way that truth can be established, and that is in the lives of those that carry and proclaim the message. If the church is just another institution that tries to feed it's own needs and weild earthly power, then it is in fact, just another institution and just another book.
If the preacher speaks boldly and well of the heart of the gopsel, but his actions speak to motives of greed and growth, then the message he proclaims becomes one more message amongst the many that is not for the hearer, but for the messenger.
But suppose the church were a place radically different from the world around it? Suppose the church looks first, no exclusively and sacrifically, to the genuine needs of its members. Would the gospel message not ring true?
Suppose the preacher loved rather than objectified his congregation. Would not the message of Christ's love then not be more real?
Suppose we let the gospel change us as we claim it can others? Would its truth not then be self-evident?
How can we expect the world to take the gospel seriously when we do not?
Let's start with us!
Related Tags: gospel, truth, reality, claims
