In Part IV, we saw that resistance thinking is an essential prescription for what ails the evangelical church in American and Western civilization and is a characteristic of God’s prophetically untimely people who have the courage to give voice to a message that stands against the church’s cultural captivity by the humanistic spirit of the age.
The second prescription for the church is a return to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements found in the first century church.
Restoring New Testament Christianity
There are several norms or hallmarks that give shape, definition, and context to New Testament Christianity. All of the distinguishing elements found in the early church (except for the writing of the New Testament Scripture) are available to the twenty-first century church. Space does not allow more that a cursory mention of the more significant observations and findings with regard to some of the missing fundamentals of New Testament Christianity. A more extensive examination of these elements can be found in Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity.[1]
To a lesser or greater degree in many evangelical churches, the hallmarks of New Testament Christianity are no longer found. Before the church can make the necessary course corrections, it must first identify the essential elements that are missing and have allowed it to slide into cultural captivity by the humanistic spirit of the age. Eight of the standards or hallmarks are listed below and include a brief discussion of the modern evangelical church’s departure therefrom. As stated above, the list is not meant to be complete or the discussion comprehensive.
• Irreplaceable power and presence of the Holy Spirit – Many modern churches have dispensed with the irreplaceable power and presence of the Holy Spirit in all aspects of church life which accounts for their powerlessness, spiritual poverty, and shallowness. The Holy Spirit will not allow Himself to be merely an accessory occasionally added to a church’s agenda. He is either the center or He will have no part of the program. Because many in the body of Christ and its leaders are more interested in doing church than being the church, they fail to wait upon the Holy Spirit and His enduement of power. His absence is the missing ingredient that leaves the church’s efforts a dry and tasteless imitation of the real thing. Unless the church moves and operates in the power of the Holy Spirit, its attempts to recapture the missing norms and hallmarks of New Testament Christianity will be in vain.
• The Old Rugged Cross – Many in the church have substituted a new cross for the old cross. The new cross seeks to comfort, please, and entertain. However, they are preaching another gospel and not the message of the cross found in Matthew’s gospel which has reverberated across two thousand years of Christianity and still means today what those words meant when first written. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” [Matthew 16:24. KJV] Beginning at Pentecost, a small group of Jesus’ followers believed this message, preached the cross of which Jesus spoke, and turned the world upside down.
• Christ – Our Savior and Lord – New Testament Christianity’s concepts of sin and salvation have been replaced in many modern churches by the discredited doctrine of a divided Christ in which Christ the Savior and Christ the Lord have been separated. According to this doctrine, a sinner may accept Jesus Christ as Savior without surrendering to Him as Lord. But, the sinner who accepts Christ as Savior and walks away without accepting Christ as Lord perseveres in his sin. Yet, many evangelical preachers emphasize the acceptance of Christ as Savior and de-emphasize acceptance of Him as Lord. Some will say that the “Lord” part of one’s commitment to Christ comes later, sometimes even after church membership, because it is a process that takes time. In other words, the “saved” Christian will at some point also decide to make Jesus Christ the Lord of his life. But A. W. Tozer wrote that, “It is altogether doubtful whether any man can be saved who comes to Christ for His help but with no intention to obey Him.”[2]
• Repentance and turning from sin – The world’s definitions of love and tolerance have invaded the church and compromised the gospel message. As a result, the message of many churches is that God’s nonjudgmental love is so vast that he will overlook sin for a season if not altogether ignore it if one will only acknowledge Him. The new definitions of love and tolerance require unconditional acceptance of the sinner and is presumed superior to the biblical approach that requires repentance and turning from sin. Cheap grace is the end product of preaching the world’s definition of nonjudgmental love. If the church does not make this distinction clear, it is guilty of misleading people as to their eternal destination.
• Doctrinal purity – For the last several decades many in American evangelical churches have tampered with the meaning of scripture. One source of this doctrinal corruption is the pervasive and careless use of unfaithful translations and even less reliable paraphrases. A second source is the demise of serious expository preaching. There is a greater danger of doctrinal mischief when there is an over-reliance on topical messages that tend to cherry-pick verses which are inappropriately divorced form the larger meaning and context of the biblical passages. They do this in order to “prove” a point or prop up man’s opinion. The third reason is that many evangelical churches ignore serious preaching of major themes of the Bible such as prophecy and end time events. These are seen as not being culture-friendly and therefore a hindrance in growing the church. As a result large portions of the Bible are not included in their preaching and teaching—a form of taking away. These practices water the soil in which heresy grows.
• The narrow path – The church has become worldly because it has accommodated the spirit of the world within. There is a dynamic tension in which the individual Christian and the church must live—being in the world but not of it. We cannot avoid this tension for it is an inherent part of every Christian’s walk and every church’s ministry. To attempt to lessen the tension is to fall into the ditch of worldliness or, conversely, to disobey Christ’s command to share His message by separating ourselves from the world. In spite of the best of motives, a large majority in the modern evangelical church appears to have fallen into the ditch of worldliness through an accommodation of the spirit of the world within the church. When the world’s value system invades the church, the church becomes worldly and is the true church no longer.
• Preach the Gospel message – The church has failed to adequately and effectively proclaim the gospel. If the chief function of preaching is to unleash the word, then we should be concerned with how that word is to be unleashed. We have previously mentioned the decline of expository preaching. Topical preaching, polemical or disputational preaching, historical preaching, and other forms of preaching have their rightful places. But these forms have replaced expounding the Word of God to a substantial degree in many of today’s evangelical churches and have greatly contributed to a rapidly growing biblical illiteracy within the church. The message of the Bible has been dumbed down and therefore is made a husk without the life sustaining core from which the Christian finds spiritual nourishment. But such is foolish preaching (as opposed to the foolishness of preaching) and also inhibits the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the sinner. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, both the minister and the sinner are utterly powerless to change the sinner’s condition from death to life.
• Avoid being unequally yoked – Under duress from a culture heavily saturated with humanistic concepts of relativism, tolerance, and inclusion, many evangelical leaders and Christian organizations have embraced an ecumenicalism that reaches beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith. [See: culturewar.net for articles on “Ecumenicalism – Evangelicalism’s misguided group hug – Parts I, II, and III”] In their efforts to be ecumenical and culturally relevant, they have attempted to find common ground with apostate churches which are Christian in name only, with anti-Christian organizations, and with false religions that stand in opposition to God’s word. When ministers, ministries, and churches mix the light with darkness, they effectively have disobeyed God’s word and bring reproach on their ministry and the gospel of Jesus Christ. [See: 2 Corinthians 6:14]
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In their quest to reinvent and re-energize itself through human efforts, many churches have pushed aside, trampled upon, or forgotten the essential foundational standards of New Testament Christianity including the eight listed above. It appears that many modern accommodating church leaders believe the disciples’ ministry in the first century could never be successful in the twenty-first century because it is too hard, too narrow, and too dull for the modern generation. It is said that it offers little to maintain their congregants’ interest or capture the attention of the post-modern generation. Therefore, the Bible’s old-fashioned, austere message is judged to be out-of-tune with the times and must be modernized to win friends and make converts. To that end the gospel message must be revamped by softening the rhetoric to make it seeker-friendly. The Christian church must also be overhauled and reorganized around sound business principles. It should identify its purposes in light of the culture and be driven by specific goals whose achievement in numbers and dollars can be properly measured and success gauged. It must also hire a first-rate public relations firm to survey the market and construct a ministry theme to best attract and connect with the community and meet its wants and felt needs. Next its leaders must rent or build a high-tech, multi-media, theater-style auditorium; employ a well-educated and socially acceptable ministry team to replace that scruffy band of disciples; and mount a multi-faceted media campaign to enlist members into Christ’s new church—The Church of the What’s Happening Now. In time the spiritual side will take care of itself if we can just get the seekers in the door and help them become better adjusted. Then the Holy Spirit will be free to do His thing as long as He doesn’t lay any guilt trips on the people.
During his visit to America in 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the condition of the liberal church in America. While attending one New York church, he described the church’s profusion of social and charitable activities to the virtual exclusion of the pursuit of its true calling. “One cannot avoid the impression, however, that in both cases they have forgotten what the real point is.”[3]
But almost ninety years later we can say that the evangelical church has also forgotten what the real point is. The point forgotten is that the church must declare the eternal truth of God and His relation to man. This was done in every generation from the first century church to the present in cultures that were uniformly hostile to the message of the church. But in our modern day, instead of evangelizing the world, the world is evangelizing the church. To a large degree the value systems of the church and the world have become indistinguishable. As a result the church has abandoned its role as “…a holy, powerful remnant that is consecrated and available to God…[4]
By returning to the doctrines, teachings, and practices that guided the first century Christians, the modern church can once again gain a comprehensive, integrated, and unifying understanding of New Testament Christianity. In light of that understanding, the church will discover its critical departures from the New Testament’s standard and can make the necessary course corrections. Restoring New Testament Christianity is the tonic that will revitalize the church and empower it to escape from the cultural captivity of the humanistic spirit of the world.
In Part VI, this series will conclude with an examination of the final prescription necessary to restore spiritual health to the evangelical church – revival.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Larry G. Johnson, Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2016). Chapters 25-32.
[2] A. W. Tozer, The Root of Righteousness, (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: WingSpread Publishers, 1955, 1986), pp.96-97.
[3] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 107.
[4] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Power, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), p. 22.
