The Gospel Coalition

“Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely produced in a state of calm and unruffled repose.  It flourishes in adversity.  It kindles in the hour of danger and rises to deeds of renown.  The terrors of persecution only serve to awaken the energy of its purposes.  It swells in the pride of integrity, and great in the purity of its cause, it can scatter defiance amid a host of enemies.”

Thomas Chalmers, on the eve of the Disruption of 1842, quoted in David L. Larsen, The Company of the Preachers (Grand Rapids, 1998), page 423.

“I walked out to the hill just now.  It is exalting, delicious.  To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tail and the heavens hailing your heart — to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask?  Oh the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth!”

Jim Elliot, diary, 15 January 1951, quoted in HIS, April 1956, page 9.

“I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness.  Do bear with me!  For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.  But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”  2 Corinthians 11:1-3

I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness.  Sometimes the most urgent message of all can appear simplistic.

I am afraid.  As the apostle looked at this church, something frightened him.  If Paul were to visit our churches today and look us in the eye and say, “Something about you worries me,” we’d want to know what that was.

As the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning.  The devil has a plan for every church, he’s working his plan, and he never sleeps.  We’re no smarter than Eve was.  We’re no better.  We are in danger.

Your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.  The virginity of a church consists in this — a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.  It is so unimpressive to worldly eyes, in a way so unproductive and impractical.  But this is the soul of authentic Christianity.  Everything else that is right flows from this sacred center.  Anything else, however “right,” if it displaces this sanctity, dishonors the Lord and violates a church.

It is possible for our thoughts, the corporate soul of an entire church, to be led astray without anyone even realizing it.  Distractions are constantly trying to insinuate their way into the deepest place in a church’s affections.  In a way, everything good is a potential enemy of this best.  And the higher and nobler the distraction, the more difficult to discern.  Part of a church’s wisdom is to preserve the secondary and tertiary places of honor and priority and keep the secondary and tertiary things where they belong.

Community is good, but it doesn’t come first.  Mission is good, but it doesn’t come first.  Sound doctrine doesn’t come first.  Marriage and family life don’t come first.  Etc.  Jesus himself comes first in the thoughts and heart and passion of a virgin church.  Whatever the claim or cause may be, if it won’t come first on that great and final day when we will be presented to the Lord himself, then it shouldn’t come first today.

Churches that have lost their virginity can get it back.  In the grace of God, purity is wonderfully recoverable.  “Remember from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5).

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. . . . For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. . . . Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.  Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.”

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York, 1961), pages 9-10.

“A man may love another as his own soul, yet his love may not be able to help him.  He may pity him in prison, but not relieve him, bemoan him in misery, but not help him, suffer with him in trouble, but not ease him.  We cannot love grace into a child, nor mercy into a friend; we cannot love them into heaven, though it may be the greatest desire of our soul. . . . But the love of Christ, being the love of God, is effective and fruitful in producing all the good things which he wills for his beloved.  He loves life, grace and holiness into us; he loves us into covenant, loves us into heaven.”

John Owen, Works (Edinburgh, 1980), II:63.  Style updated, italics added.

I appreciate the theological care, missional awareness and personal candor here.

“What a wonderful open door God has placed before the church of today.  A pagan world, weary and sick, often distrusting its own modern gods.  A saving gospel strangely entrusted to us unworthy messengers.  A divine Book with unused resources of glory and power.  Ah, what a marvelous opportunity, my brethren!”

J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent (Edinburgh, 1982), page 154.

Week One:

Walk into church this Sunday and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are.  Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now.  Take note of every person who displeases you.  Take note of all the new people whose presence is changing your church.

Meet for coffee next week with another member and “share your heart.”  Discuss how much your church is changing, how you and others are being left out.  Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.”  Agree together that you must “pray about it.”

Week Two:

Send an email to a few other “concerned” members.  Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church.  Problems have gone unaddressed for too long.  Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”

As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church.  Circulate the petition quietly.  Gathering support will be easy.  Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing too.  Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.

Week Three:

When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands.  Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward.  Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.

Whatever happens from this point on, you have won.  You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own negativity.  To some degree, you will get your way.  Your church will need several years to recover.  But at any future time, you can do it all again and keep your church exactly where you want it.  It only takes three weeks.

“Declaring such things as have done me evil:  1.  A legal spirit.  When Satan presses duties violently and boastingly, with thunder and lightning overdriving me, laying more upon me than I am able to bear, putting new wine in old bottles, seeking such and such duties and so much, exacting them by weight and measure.  This weakens my hands, irritates me, makes me do nothing, seeing I cannot get what is enjoined done, makes me act slavishly.”

Rev. James Fraser, taking personal stock, in W. K. Tweedie, editor, Scottish Puritans: Select Biographies (Edinburgh, 2008), II:285-286.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.  Galatians 5:1