The Truth War (30 page)

Why do you think the Lord struck Ananias and Sapphira dead in front of the whole congregation? Scripture is clear: it was so the rest would be fearful of sinning (Acts 5:5, 11; 1 Timothy 5:20). This was not a “seeker-sensitive” strategy. In fact, it was the polar opposite of the contemporary push to make the church as comfortable as possible for sinners.

Do not misunderstand. It is a fine goal to make visitors and unchurched people feel welcome in the church. But deliberately trying to give them the impression that the church or the Word of God has no serious objection to their pet sins is quite another matter. Christ Himself was known as a friend of sinners (Matthew 11:19), but He never condoned or minimized anyone's sin. After all, He came to call sinners to repentance (9:13).

One of my main concerns about the “seeker-sensitive” movement has always been that in their zeal to make the church a “comfort zone” for unchurched people, churches often go too far. Many churches have deliberately downplayed the biblical message of God's hatred of sin, and in some cases they have carefully refrained from identifying certain politically volatile sins—such as abortion and homosexuality—as evil.

Some in the Emerging Church movement have taken that same philosophy to even more outrageous extremes. Chris Seay, for example, has founded Emerging congregations in Waco and Houston. He is a third-generation Southern Baptist pastor and has written a much-talked-about book contrasting his approach to ministry with that of his father and grandfather. Seay argues that doctrinal, cultural, and lifestyle boundaries are bad for the church. Specifically, he believes traditional churches have made too much of the sin of homosexuality and have thereby wrongly excluded homosexuals from their fellowship. He says he wants practicing homosexuals to feel right at home in his congregation.
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He believes his duty as a preacher is to encourage a relationship with God, not to confront people about specific sins—or even wantonly evil lifestyles. Once a person has established a relationship with God, Seay says, God Himself can deal with whatever needs to be changed in the person's life.
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Seay is apparently convinced that most people simply grow out of their sinful lifestyles as they become more and more involved in the church—even if the church never actually confronts specific sins and calls sinners to repentance.

What are we to conclude when someone living in open sin can sit in a church service and feel comfortable week after week? Is that church proclaiming what it is supposed to proclaim? I can't imagine that a practicing homosexual—or a heterosexual living in deliberate sin, for that matter—would have sat comfortably under Paul's teaching in Ephesus or Corinth.

THE PRIMARY MESSAGE OF
THE CHURCH SHOULD NOT
BE, “WE'RE A NICE PLACE;
YOU'LL LIKE US.” INSTEAD,
THE MESSAGE SHOULD BE,
“THIS IS A HOLY PLACE
WHERE SIN IS DESPISED.”

The primary message of the church should not be, “We're a nice place; you'll like us.” Instead, the message should be, “This is a holy place where sin is despised.”Wasn't that, after all, the whole point of the Ananias and Sapphira episode?

We can't lower the standard. We can't deliberately accumulate sinning Christians or try to make non-Christians comfortable in the midst of their sin. The church must purge and discipline and sift and purify. First Peter 4:17 says, “It is time for judgment to begin with the household of God” (NASB). And Paul wrote, “Do you not judge those who are within the church?” (1 Corinthians 5:12 NASB). “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (11:31).

The church that tolerates sin destroys its own holiness and sub verts the discernment of its own members. There can be no true church at all without clear boundaries. How can you help people draw clear lines in their own
thinking
when you have already said you are not going to draw any lines to regulate
behavior
? If the goal is to make everyone feel all right, tolerance and compromise must rule. Discernment and discrimination are ruled out.

Jay Adams has written:

Lack of discernment and lack of church discipline walk side by side. Not only does the same mentality lead to both lacks, but by rejecting discipline one naturally downplays the very concerns that make him discerning. When churches reacted to the abuse of church discipline that was all too common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by virtually eliminating church discipline, the broken dike cleared the way for the liberal takeover of the church and allowed the ways of the world to flood in.
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Adams calls the collapse of church discipline the most obvious reason for the decline of discernment in the church. As he points out, “Discipline, by its very nature, requires discernment.”
²⁰

But in an undiscerning church, discipline is neglected. And where discipline is neglected, discernment declines further and further.

A LACK OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY

One more factor in the abysmal lack of discernment today is a growing deterioration of the overall level of spiritual maturity in the church. As knowledge of God's truth ebbs, people follow popular views. They seek feelings and experiences. They hunger for miracles, healings, and spectacular wonders. They grope for easy and instant solutions to the routine trials of life. They turn quickly from the plain truth of God's Word to embrace doctrines fit only for the credulous and naive. They chase personal comfort and success. The brand of Christianity prevalent in this generation may be shallower than at any other time in history.

I have absolutely no confidence in contemporary Christian pollsters, starting with their incorrigible unwillingness to make any kind of meaningful distinction between a heathen who makes a religious profession in the name of Christ, and people who truly seem to believe God's Word, love the Lord, and give credible professions of faith. (That is, of course, the very distinction Christ instructed us to make in Matthew 7:15–20.) But since so many supposedly evangelical churches themselves deliberately refuse to differentiate between sheep and goats, sometimes the opinion-poll data is telling anyway.

For example, a survey released by the Barna Research group in February 1994 suggested that half of all people who describe themselves as “born-again” had no clue what John 3:16 refers to. Large percentages of professing Christians were also at a loss to explain terms such as “the Great Commission” or “the gospel.” A number defined “gospel” simply as “a style of music.”
²¹

Clearly, spiritual ignorance and biblical illiteracy are commonplace among professing Christians. That kind of spiritual shallowness is a direct result of shallow teaching. Solid preaching with deep substance and sound doctrine is essential for Christians to grow. But churches today often teach only the barest basics—and sometimes less than that.

Churches are therefore filled with baby Christians—people who are spiritual infants. That is a fitting description, because the characteristic that is most descriptive of an infant is selfishness. Babies are completely self-centered. They scream if they don't get what they want when they want it. All they are aware of are their own needs and desires. They never say thanks for anything. They can't help others; they can't give anything. They can only receive. And certainly there is nothing wrong with that when it occurs in the natural stage of infancy. But to see a child whose development is arrested so that he never gets beyond that stage of helpless selfishness is a tragedy.

HOW DO WE GROW
SPIRITUALLY? BY “SPEAKING
THE TRUTH IN LOVE” TO
ONE ANOTHER.WE GROW
UNDER THE TRUTH. IT IS
THE SAME TRUTH BY WHICH
WE ARE SANCTIFIED,
CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE
OF CHRIST, MADE TO BE
MATURE SPIRITUALLY
(JOHN 17:17, 19). AS WE
ABSORB THE TRUTH OF
GOD'S WORD, WE GROW UP
AND ARE BUILT UP.

And that is exactly the spiritual state of multitudes in the church today. They are utterly preoccupied with self. They want their own problems solved and their own comfort elevated. Their spiritual development is arrested, and they remain in a perpetual state of selfish helplessness. It is evidence of a tragic abnormality.

Arrested infancy means people do not discern. Just as a baby crawls along the floor, putting anything it finds in its mouth, spiritual babies don't know what is good for them and what isn't. Immaturity and lack of discernment go together; they are virtually the same thing.

The tendency to stall in a state of immaturity also existed in New Testament times. Paul appeals to Christians repeatedly to grow up spiritually. In Ephesians 4:14–15, he writes, “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may
grow up
in all things into Him who is the head—Christ”(emphasis added).

How do we grow spiritually? By “speaking the truth in love” to one another. We grow under the truth. It is the same truth by which we are sanctified, conformed to the image of Christ, made to be mature spiritually (John 17:17, 19). As we absorb the truth of God's Word, we grow up and are built up. We might say accurately that the process of spiritual growth is a process of training for discernment.

Hebrews 5:12–6:1 underscores all this:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to [maturity].

The writer of Hebrews is telling his readers, “You're babies. You've been around long enough to be teachers, but instead I have to feed you milk. I have to keep giving you elementary things. You can't take solid food. You're not accustomed to the rich things of the Word—and that is tragic.”

Notice that in verse 14 he says that discernment and maturity go hand in hand: “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Knowing and understanding the Word of righteousness—taking in solid food—trains your senses to discern good and evil.

The word “senses” in that verse is not a reference to the feelings, emotions, or other subjective sensory mechanisms. The writer of this epistle is explicitly encouraging his readers to exercise their
minds.
Those who “because of practice have their senses trained to discern” are the wise, the understanding, people who thrive on the solid food of the Word of God. Discernment results from a carefully disciplined mind. It is not a matter of feelings, nor is discernment a mystical gift. Notice from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament how closely discernment is linked with a seasoned, developed, biblically informed mind.

Psalm 119:66: “Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments” (NASB).

Proverbs 2:2–5: “Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the LORD, and discover the knowledge of God” (NASB).

Proverbs 10:13: “On the lips of the discerning, wisdom is found” (NASB).