Cultural Christianity & the Message of the Cross (Part 1)

I hope it’s in your diary! This year’s God’s Glory our Joy conference – planned for Saturday 10th October at the usual location: the Emmaus Christian Centre in Warrington.

What’s the subject this year? Cultural Christianity & the Message of the Cross.

That was the subject that the new committee chose. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more important it’s seemed.

But what does it mean? What is ‘Cultural Christianity’? And why is it relevant to us?

Those are the questions I want to tackle. But there’s no way I can do it briefly. So I’m going to divide this article into two parts. In part 1, I’m going to try to lay some Biblical foundations. And then in part 2, we can start thinking through the issues we face.

‘Christian’ or Christians?

We’ll start with a very basic question. What does the word ‘Christian’ mean? People use the word all the time. They talk about the Christian religion. Or the Christian faith. Or Christian values. Or a Christian school. Or a Christian country. Or a Christian society. I’m sure I’ve used some of those phrases myself.

But it’s important to remember that the Bible doesn’t use the word ‘Christian’ in that way at all. You’ll only find the word Christian three times in the Bible – and each time, it’s used to mean people. We’re told in Acts 11:26 that it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians, people who believed in Christ – the Messiah. Look up the other two references (Acts 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16) and you’ll see that it’s the same there. A Christian is a person, a disciple of Jesus, a person who believes in and belongs to Christ, the Messiah.

The moment people use the word ‘Christian’ to describe a building, or a book, or a country, they’re using the word in a way that the Bible doesn’t use it. That doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily forbidden to use it in that way. But it means we should be very cautious before we do so. We should never label anything as ‘Christian’ without first asking ‘are we giving it (whatever ‘it’ is) a status that the Bible reserves for people – Christ’s people, Jesus’s disciples?’

So here’s the question again – but in a slightly different form. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to believe in Christ? To belong to Christ? To be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

Here’s the answer. To be a Christian means first, that you believe certain definite, unchanging truths. Here are three that are utterly vital. Christ was and is truly God and truly human. He died for our sins and rose again. He is able to save us from our sins and to give us peace with God.

Those three statements are a bare minimum. There are many other important truths that the Bible teaches and which every Christian needs to know. But every Christian knows at least that those three things are true. If a person couldn’t say, ‘I believe those things’ we couldn’t think of him as a Christian at all.

But we must remember this. Believing those things in itself does not make a person a Christian. The devil knows that those things are true! A Christian is a person who not only believes those things are true: he actually turns to Christ. He (or she) repents of his sins against God and trusts Jesus Christ alone to rescue him. And that repentance and trust are not just a one-off momentary experience. He lives his whole life repenting of sin, trusting Christ, committed to obeying all Jesus’s commandments.

So being a Christian is something intensely personal. Every Christian knows Jesus Christ personally, trusts him personally, loves, worships and obeys him personally. And he can say that he knows God through Jesus Christ. A Christian is a person who has an ongoing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Christians… and others

According to the Bible, the human race is divided into two camps – and only two. On the one side there are people who have that sort of personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. On the other side, there are people who don’t.

The people in one camp are saved. They love God. They are led by his Spirit. They are on the way to eternal joy. The people in the other camp are lost. They hate God and are in rebellion against him. They are in the grip of the devil. They are on the way to eternal misery.

Yes, it’s true that the people in both camps – Christians and non-Christians – have some things in common. They are all human. They are all made in God’s image. They all receive many favours from God, given by his common grace. They all have a duty to for care for his world, to subdue the earth, to live by the law that he has written on their hearts, to uphold justice. And yet the difference between the two groups is absolute. The people in the first group are alive. The people in the second group are dead. ‘Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life’ (1 John 5:12).

When it comes to what matters most, Christians and non-Christians have nothing in common.

Think of it this way. I am an elderly, white male, born in England, a Cambridge graduate, who reads John Milton and listens to Handel’s Messiah every Christmas. I stand with two people in the bus-queue. Nigel is a man of the same age as myself, the same racial background, the same university, the same cultural interests. Ami is a young, black woman, born in Sierra Leone, who speaks not a word of English and has never learned to write. Which one do I have more in common with?

Ami is a Christian. She is a child of my Father in heaven. Nigel has never trusted Christ. He is an enemy of God. Ami is indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus. Nigel is a slave and tool of Satan. Nigel belongs to the kingdom of darkness. Ami belongs to the kingdom of light. Ami is my sister. Nigel has no place in God’s family to which I belong. If I treat him as my brother in his present unbelieving state, I deceive him and I damage the life of the family. I have everything in common with Ami – everything that really matters. I have nothing in common with Nigel – nothing that ultimately counts.

The work we have to do

Next question. What is the principal work to which Christians – as Christians, distinct from others – are called to, here in this world? Jesus answered that question before he left the world. He summoned his disciples – the people who had a personal relationship with him – to a mountain in Galilee. And then he said to them, ‘Go.. and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age…’. (Matthew 28:19 – 20).

Luke likewise records the parting command Jesus gave to his disciples just before he ascended into heaven. ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things’ (Luke 24:45 – 47).

So that was the task he entrusted to his disciples. Those were the marching orders he gave them, the Great Commission. They were to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’s name to all nations. They were to win other individuals to become Jesus’s disciples as they themselves were. Their task was to persuade people to do what they themselves had already done – to repent and to trust Christ alone to save them from their sins. They must baptise those who were ready to become Jesus’s disciples. And then when those people were baptised, they must teach them to obey all Jesus’s commands as Jesus had taught them.

Make disciples – baptise them – teach them to obey all Jesus’s commandments. That’s the work Jesus has given to Christians. And Jesus made it clear that that is our task for all generations – until he returns: ‘to the end of the age’.

Christ’s action plan

Third question. What organisations or agencies are needed for Christians to carry out that great task? Jesus spoke only of one organisation that would carry out his work. He talked about the church – the assembly, the gathering, the body of Christians. In Matthew 16:18 he spoke about the Church universal which is made up of all the elect spread across history and across the world. And then in Matthew 18:17 he spoke about the local church which is made up of the Christians who gather together in a particular place at a particular time. He said he would be there in the local church with those Christians. Jesus never told his disciples to start any other organisation or to look to any other agency to fulfil his commission.

As we read the New Testament, we can see how Christians set out to fulfil the Great Commission. They were to be Jesus’s witnesses first in Jerusalem and Judea, then in Samaria, then to the most distant places in the world (Acts 1:8). So they preached the truth about Jesus in Jerusalem and baptised those who repented and believed in him. They brought those people together to be a church and taught them to obey all Jesus’s commandments (Acts 2:36 – 42). They travelled throughout Judea, made disciples, baptised them, added them to the existing church or formed new ones. They did the same things in Samaria. And then they travelled further afield and did the same things all across the Roman Empire. Churches were born, made up of Christians, believers in Jesus Christ. That was the way Christians carried out the great commission – they made disciples, they formed churches.

Christians, churches and the society around

Next question. How did those New Testament Christians, gathered in their local churches, view the people around them – the people who had never repented and come into a personal relationship with Jesus? Paul’s words, written to the Christians in the church in Ephesus give us the answer: ‘And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind’ (Ephesians 2: 1 – 3).

Paul is shockingly clear. These Christians, before they came to Christ, were dead, dead in their trespasses and sins. They followed ‘the prince of the power of the air’: Satan himself. They lived in the passions of their flesh. They were children of wrath – facing the wrath of God. In short, they were lost, guilty, wicked. And, says Paul, that’s what the people you live among still are!

Paul and the Christians who read his letter knew that even the best and most upright of the people round them were in Satan’s grip and were under God’s wrath. That was what they themselves had been before Jesus saved them, so they had no illusions about their neighbours, workmates, government officials or religious leaders.

How does the New Testament picture the communities – the nations, the societies – in the midst of which Christians and churches have to carry out the Great Commission? This is how Paul saw them:‘All, both Jews and Gentiles are under sin, as it is written, ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; no – one does good, not even one…’ (Romans 3:9 – 12).

Paul and the other New Testament writers held out no hope that any nation on earth would ever become a community of pure, wise, moral, caring people. Yes, as Christians preach the gospel to non-Christians, many of those non-Christians might repent and turn to Christ in true faith, be baptised, be added to the churches. But the wider community would still be a community of ungodly people ‘under sin’ – a community of people ‘following… the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience’.

Pulling together?

So how do the New Testament writers expect Christians and the local churches to which they belong, to relate to the wider community around them?

Here’s Paul’s answer: ‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing…’ (2 Corinthians 6:14 – 17).

Paul uses the picture of two different animals yoked together to complete a task – say, an ox and a donkey yoked together to pull a plough. It’s bound to fail. And so with any attempt for Christians and churches to be partners in the work Jesus has given us to do. It’s bound to fail. Paul says, don’t even think about it! Why not? Because Christians stand for righteousness while non-Christians live in lawlessness, incapable of keeping God’s law. Christians dwell in light while non-Christians dwell in darkness. Christians are obedient to Christ while non-Christiansare subjects of Belial – the devil. The church is the temple of God while the community around worships its idols. What’s Paul’s bottom line? ‘Go out from their midst and be separate from them..’ Paul was not calling on all the Corinthian Christians to leave Corinth and look for a desert island. But he was urging them to abandon any thoughts of co – operation with unbelievers, and to put a distance between themselves and the community around.

He never suggested that if the Christians in Corinth only did their work rightly, Corinth could become a ‘Christian city’, with a ‘Christian culture’, living out ‘Christian values’. Nor did he suggest that the Christians should make that their goal. No, Paul remembered the commission Jesus gave to his disciples – not to transform society, but to make disciples, baptise them, teach them to live holy lives in local churches. The only society that can be called Christian is the society made up of real Christians, saved by Christ and indwelt by his Spirit – ie the local church.

Should Christians ever get involved in projects to reform society, to persuade law-makers to pass better laws, to root out injustice and poverty? Well, individual Christians may honour God by doing those things just as they may when they build businesses, teach swimming or play the violin. God has commanded all mankind to develop the resources of creation and to safeguard our fellow human beings; every Christian must decide how he can best fulfil those duties. Bach wrote music that keeps me sane through times of stress and anxiety. Paul Brand researched the causes and treatment of Hansen’s disease. William Wilberforce campaigned against the slave-trade. Members of this congregation have worked as cleaners in hospitals and nursing-homes. All these folk were obeying the directives God gave to humankind at creation and then after the Flood.

But we should never imagine that working for a better society is the same thing as fulfilling the commission Jesus has given us as his disciples. We build Christ’s kingdom not by enhancing the world we live in, or by making non-Christians behave as if they were Christians. We build Christ’s kingdom by bringing people to submit in repentance and faith to Christ the King.

The fact is that nowhere in the book of Acts do we see the apostles initiating any programme for the improvement of society. Nor is there any suggestion in any of the New Testament letters that churches should do so. Chattel slavery, infanticide, child prostitution, gladiatorial shows, public idolatry: these evils pervaded society across the Roman Empire. Yet the apostles neither campaigned against them, nor urged the churches to do so.

The apostles knew what their great priorities must be – what Jesus had mandated them to do. First they must preach the gospel of salvation and then they must call believers and churches to a purity that would shine out against the dark background of the world around them. Paul was horrified by the idolatry he witnessed in Athens. Did he organise a petition to abolish the shrines? No, he went into the synagogues and market – places, ‘preaching Jesus and the resurrection’ (Acts 17:16 – 18).

We have no right to rewrite the mandate Jesus gave to his first disciples. Their priorities should be ours. The work we have to do has not changed. And it is a work in which it is simply impossible for us to co – operate with non-Christians. How can we ever look to non-Christians to help us win people to Christ and build holy churches for him? It would be like one army in a civil war appealing to the enemy to help them service their weaponry.

OK. We’ll leave it there for now. Take time to think through what we’ve said so far. And then in part 2 we can move on to think about ‘Cultural Christianity’ and why we’re devoting the God’s Glory Our Joy conference to the subject.

All Bible quotations in this article are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, published by HarperCollins Publishers © 2001.