Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)
37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Last month I wrote about how Christians should live in a post-Christian culture. We live as Ambassadors representing the King of Kings. How do we live as Ambassadors to a culture that rarely wants to discuss or hear about Jesus, redemption, and eternal life? Al Mohler, the President of Southern Seminary spoke at Moody’s Pastor Conference this year and put it like this. “The key to cultural engagement is to know that we are to love the Lord with all we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” I found that to be quite obvious. Of course we love God and our neighbors. What does this really mean then for us in 2016 and beyond? First we love God our creator. How do we do that? We spend time with Him, develop a relationship with Him. We can get to know our spouses, siblings, friends, maybe even co-workers so well that we know what they will say or do in advance. Do we know God that well? We get to know Him through His Word and then we begin to see Him working in and around our lives and we join Him in what He is doing. What is He doing? God is calling the world to be reconciled to Himself through His Son, Jesus. God is calling people to Himself to be redeemed through the Gospel. Through that He is also showing His love for sinners, for creation, for peace, justice, and righteousness. As we love God we end up doing what He does, loving those who are made in His image. That leads us to the second way we engage our post-Christian culture, we love those made in God’s Image. Many of them are sinners who are far away from God. Many of them are believers growing closer to God. Yet we “love them as He does, more than they love themselves.”[1] God’s love is a self-sacrificing, self-denial kind of love. The kind of love Jesus lived out for us on the cross. We know the Bible says that “all have sinned” but yet we sometimes think that some people sin too much and therefore we can ignore them. That’s not how Jesus loved sinners. Jesus died for all who sinned and He told His followers to go to all who have sinned and tell them how much God loves them and longs to forgive them. We are Ambassadors and we don’t get to choose which ones we love; we love them all. We must get rid of the lie that to love someone is to agree that the way they live is good and right. God doesn’t agree with how sinners live and yet He loved us anyway. Even many who profess Christ do not always live like it and they also need a love that is patient and leads towards repentance. (Romans 2:4) So we love those who are the hardest for us to love. Pastor Andy [1] Al Mohler, “Engaging a Post-Christian Culture”; Moody Bible Institute: Engage the Culture Conference, May 2016.
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2 Corinthians 5:20 (NIV)
We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. Today I read an article about an organization that is filing a complaint with the Department of Public Instruction against a local Christian School because of their discrimination policies against LGBT students. The school maintains the right as a private Christian school to “discipline and dismiss (a) student” for adherence to an LGBT lifestyle[i]. This is another story that highlights the fact that we in America are living in a post-Christian Culture. A poll out this past year showed that many non-religious Americans believe Christianity is extreme/extremist. “The perception that the Christian faith is extreme is now firmly entrenched among the nation’s non-Christians. A full forty-five percent of atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated in America agree with the statement “Christianity is extremist.”[ii] Barna research also discovered that in 2013 37% of Americans qualified as post-Christian while in 2015 44% qualified as post-Christian.[iii] This is not the America anyone over the age of 18 grew up in. That isn’t all. Consider the rulings coming down from the Supreme Court, the “orders” from our President, and the legal battles in Kentucky and Alabama. All of them in some way are about weakening and tearing down Biblical morality in both the private and public sector. If this is true and we are living in a post-Christian culture, what does this mean for followers of Jesus Christ moving forward. I believe that there are three things we need to keep in mind. First, we need to remember that the New Testament was lived out and written in such a culture. Christians were the extreme minority for centuries and suffered at the hands and legal system of the Roman Empire. Christians were considered to be Atheists because they didn’t worship the Emperor or the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods. As history demonstrates the persecution of Christians is nothing new. Secondly, we need to remember that Jesus told us we would face trouble in this world; John 16:33. We need to remember to have the same mind of Christ who did not retaliate when He suffered but entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly; 1 Peter 2:23. Jesus faced a culture that was against Him and He submitted to injustice, was humble, meek, and loved His enemies. Finally, as we see in the 2 Corinthians 5:20, we remember that we are here on this earth as Ambassadors for Christ. Our mission is to make disciples, to call the world to be reconciled to God. As we live each day in a country that is more and more hostile to our values, beliefs, and practices we remember that our “struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12. [i] http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/atheist-organization-files-complaint-against-christian-school-for-disciplining-lgbt-students.html [ii] https://www.barna.org/research/faith-christianity/research-release/five-ways-christianity-increasingly-viewed-extremist#.V03iE4-cHIU [iii] https://www.barna.org/research/culture-media/article/year-in-review-2015#.V03jz4-cHIU |
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