About 28 years ago, I would not at all be confident that I would be addressing you here today. I was talking with my wife about leaving the ministry, and the reason that I was talking about leaving the ministry is I was tired of beating on people, just absolutely worn out. I was a pastor of a very old church, over 175 years old, many generations of Christian having gone through there. And at the same time, I recognized that our church was eaten up with a lot of addictive problems, a lot of depression, and a lot of internal bitterness and anger. And week after week, I would stand in front of people, and I would tell them to straighten up. Do better, stop messing up, stop being angry with one another. What we really need in this church is more love! That sort of thing. And I could not find my way out of that. I could not find my way out of just kind of getting in the pulpit week after week and telling people to do better. So I told her I just couldn't keep doing it. I was worn out, I thought they were worn out on me, and I did not go into the ministry to hurt people, and yet that's what I felt like I was doing. The Lord brought into my life a book, and I can't even tell you at this point how I came across it, or why. It was a book by a man named Sidney Gridonis, called Soloscriptura, and obviously that goes back to our roots, but it wasn't what you're thinking. What he was doing is he was examining a debate, a debate in the Dutch church that had gone on for 100 plus years, and it was, how do you use the exemplars in Scripture? How do you use Daniel and Gideon and Joseph, do you just say to people, and if you just have enough faith, you can beat your Goliaths too, and so you know, straighten up, fly right, if you have sufficient good character, God will bless your life too. And Gridonis simply said, that's not why the biblical heroes are there. The biblical heroes are typically cowards, weaklings, or scoundrels, or all three. The hero is God. God uses weak, fallible creatures to do amazing things by His grace. And if God could use somebody like Gideon, who would take the spoil of the victory that God gave him and turn it into an idol, if God could use someone like Gideon, maybe he can use you too. It was a different way of looking at the Scriptures, to say instead of you straighten up and fly right. God knows you can't, but He has provided a grace greater than you. And by confidence in Him, you will discover the joy of the Lord that is your strength. Now maybe that sounds simple to you. It was revolutionary to me. I remember just kind of reading some of those things that began to come across my path of people like Ritterboss, who would say, you know, that phrase, now many of you know so well, the imperative is founded on the indicative and the order is not reversible. You know, what God calls us to do is based on the fact of who we are, and the order is not reversal. He isn't say, obey me, and then you'll be my child. He says, you are my child. So obey me. I'm the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. Therefore do as I command. He didn't say, do as I command, and then I'll take you out of this land of bondage. Changed absolutely everything in my life. My wife and I began to talk differently to our children. I would say at one point in my life to my son, Colin, you're a bad boy because you did that. I want you to hear what I just said theologically. You're a bad boy because you did that. I said who he was based on what he did. You are a bad boy because you did a bad thing. I based his identity on his performance. It may sound silly to you, but my wife and I begin to put ourselves under a discipline. I would even say to my son, Colin, don't do that. You're my child. I want your actions to be based upon our relationship. And that doesn't change because your actions change. Now, this is simply trying to bring the gospel to bear upon imperatives upon the scriptures upon how we preach, how we counsel, how we lead. And I would say by a wonderful series of events that not only began to affect me, but the institution that I ultimately became associated with, and that was covenant seminary. But we're not at the end of a path that I think God is taking us down. And I want to talk to you about kind of where I think God has led us, but related to where I think where God may be leading you and our whole church, the larger PCA. Let me just maybe give you a quick history. I don't think this is unlike the history of a lot of other evangelical schools. But if I would say what was our founding about, our founding was upon the principles of the Word of God. We had said we were based as a school on establishing an institution that would be true to the inerrancy of scripture, which stand for it. And you all recognize the modernist fundamentalist debate, the battle for the Bible, that was in the 20th century. And all that was going on. And we would certainly put ourselves in that line of seminaries who said we were founded on the battle of establishing the truth of the Word of God. And I would have said that would have been what we stood for for the first 35 years of our existence. That it was that central identity of we are going to stand for the truth of the Word of God. If I said what began to happen about 20 years ago at Covenant Seminary, I would say our identity began to be shaped not only by standing on the Word of God, but identifying the power of the grace of God. How does the grace of God affect the way we read the scriptures? Are the scriptures just laws and examples that are the basis of our relationship with God? Or did God do something prior? Did God establish a relationship with it? It's the heart of the reformed faith, is to say, not do you believe in particular retonement, not that, but do you recognize while you were his enemy, he loved you, gave his son for you, this wide embrace of saying, while you had no ability of your own, God provided everything for your salvation. He loved you that much and sent his son to show it. That's still the particular, with a very different tone that still is talking about the nature of the grace of God. If you were to say what happens if you begin to talk a lot about the grace of God, there are three primary objections that will come to your ministry or preaching. If you say the grace of God, or to quote a book, the Christos centrality of scripture, is dominant, then people will first of all question that you are not true to scripture. They're saying it's just not true that that gospel message, that that Christos centrality weaves itself through all the scriptures. And you're imposing something on the scriptures to do that. Now typically, when people are saying that a Christ focus is not in all the scriptures, they are giving an impression of what they think a Christ focus is. They think you are trying to find Jesus in every Old Testament mud puddle and camel track. You know, you're going to make him magically appear from every text. You know, Baylam had a donkey, Jesus had a donkey, therefore Baylam is about Jesus. You know, and you're kind of, that is not where we're going. But rather to begin to say, every text stands in relation to, every text stands in relation to the redemptive unfolding message of what God is doing in Christ. Either his person or his work, it may be predictive of the work of Christ. It may be preparatory. There may be ways in which God is preparing our understanding or his people to understand what God would do through his son. It may be something that's reflective of the principles of grace. Does God provide strength for the weak, food for the hungry? Does he provide for his people what they cannot provide for himself? Is he that God who is the Lord who provides? Is God in some way reflecting his gracious manner? Or is God showing us something that is a result of his gracious provision? Why are we able to boldly approach the throne of grace? Why can we pray? As a result of what God has done by having his son intercede for us. So if we say that all the scriptures stand in relationship to Christ by revealing his redemptive message, that's not doing allegorical method. It is not creating Christ, you know, just out of the shadows. It is trying to do true expository work and say the scriptures have this redemptive message that is unfolding, blossoming, being ever fully, more revealed, and that rightly sees the scriptures in the redemptive context so that Jesus could say on the road to Emmaus. All the scriptures spoke of him. He revealed what was said in Moses and all the prophets, the things concerning himself. He's not doing allegorical method. He's not spiritualizing the text, but saying how they relate to him or the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah appear with Christ on the mount. Moses representing the law, Elijah the prophets, they all culminate in him. Another thing people will criticize and what we hear, I think more often is if you speak too much of the grace of God, you will create antinomianism, right? Too much talk about grace will leave people just feeling that there are no obligations of the scriptures. And certainly this is a great concern if you define grace the way the world does. Grace means license to do as I want according to the world. According to scripture, grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions. Why? Because Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commands. There is a resultant effect of God's people understanding his grace. The famous account of Bunyan while in prison, remember he was arguing with the anabaptists and the anabaptists who would have been Armenian in theology, would have been their terminology, but that would have been their theology. Who were saying to Bunyan, you can't keep assuring people of the grace of God. You can't keep assuring people of God's love. If you keep assuring people of God's love, they'll do whatever they want. And Bunyan's famous response, no. If you keep assuring God's people of God's love, they'll do whatever he wants. Now the reason it becomes important to think that you can't simply forget the grace of God even when you're talking about the law is Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing. So to not get the redemptive message of Christ's work, his empowering, as well as his justifying work into the message, is basically to leave people not antinomian. It's to leave them helpless. Antinomianism certainly can be a danger when there is grace preaching. Don't we have to confess that? We have to say that maybe almost everyone, when they kind of come into a non-performance, understanding the Christian faith, can swing that pendulum and say, oh, it doesn't matter what I do. And then they find out the empty way of life, the futility and folly of not walking in the safe path that God designed, or the path that glorifies Him. And they begin to discern my heart longs to walk with God. And he has given me a path that is good. And it is actually love for God that is the more powerful agent to keep me on the path. Paul understood it when he would preach the grace of God and yet was condemned by his critics for creating antinomianism. He said, this does not give us more license to send. It is the power of God for holiness. The last thing that people will say, if you talk too much about the grace of God, is that it creates ego-centrism, that the entirety of the gospel is just about Jesus and me. It is about my salvation, my sanctification, it is about Jesus taking care of me. And so by talking too much about the grace of God, you create narcissism. You know, the whole gospel is just about me, God taking care of me. And I must tell you, I think that is a very real danger. But you have to say, if you love Jesus, what will you love? You will love what He loves. And as much as you have done this under the least of these, you have done it unto me. I actually think that it is the grace of God alone that actually enables us to love lost people. Because if I'm simply driven by performance, God is going to love me if I get enough evangelism notches on my belt, then I may evangelize, but it will be so I will be okay with God. And the consequence of that is, I may obey God, but I won't like Him very much. Because His love for me is so conditional. It is the understanding that my love for Him enables me to love the unlovely because He does, that drives me beyond my own resistance to care for the poor in material things as well as spirit. And the grace of God ultimately drives us into kingdom concerns. And it is my sense if you say, where are we as a seminary these days? I would say we are talking more and more about the kingdom of God as a consequence of where the grace of God has led us. Now I'm going to talk about that a little bit more, but I want you to recognize a parallel path. And this is just a opinion. I don't have a scripture verse for what I'm about to say, but I'll be interested if you think it's the same. Anybody know the motto of the Presbyterian Church in America? We say that we are true to what? Through the scriptures, true to the reformed faith and true to the great commission. If anyone would have examined us right from our beginning, they would have said the early battles of the PCA, leading up to our founding and our founding, were battles almost all about being true to the scriptures. I mean, while the reformed faith was certainly in the discussion, the real battle with modernism and liberalism was over where we going to be true to the scriptures. And in the years leading up to our founding and certainly in those founding assemblies, there is no question that what we were establishing ourselves upon was being true to the scriptures. What did we debate for the next 30 years? What it meant to be true to the reformed faith? How we would hold ourselves accountable for being true to the reformed faith and all the tensions and the pressures and the things back and forth, you would have said there's hardly anybody, I'm not saying these are just hard lines and you don't stop it. Hardly anybody was talking about whether we were being true to the scriptures. The debate was over whether we were being true to the reformed confessions or not. How we would hold each other accountable for the standards. And we depated that hard vigorously and sometimes not very healthily for more than 30 years. Only four years ago did we finally have constitutional standards which said how we would hold ourselves accountable. Now obviously lots of debate and still some disagreement on the appropriateness and goodness of all that but it has certainly led to a quietness of our assemblies over the last few years. I mean we are, forgive me for teasing a little bit, we are now a denomination in search of a controversy. Because the thing that motivated us for 30 years is now not so much on the table. Now it's not because we all agree but it's because we know the difficulty of bringing in the other constitutional amendments to deal with such an issue. It is such an overwhelming task that it's unlikely that we're going to change much in the way we hold each other accountable. So this debate is not as heated as it once was. What is the debate that's heating up? How are we going to do mission? How are we going to as a church go forward? And so we have, hopefully, I mean this is not news to some of you, we have kind of conferences in different parts of the country. We have people with different affinities and perspectives and so forth who gather and kind of gather people around them and advocate what they view as the proper course forward. How are we going to do this thing now? A lot of discussion, not just in Presbyterry circles or in these affinity groups but even in the scholarship level is, what is the nature of the kingdom? What is the proper role of the church in bringing the gospel standards into the church, into conversionist issues but also into transforming culture? What is the proper role of the church in that regard? And we are greatly torn about what we should do in that regard. Now examples, some of you will remember the General Assembly a few years ago when Jim Kennedy brought forward a request from the United States senator from Missouri, Jim Talent. And the request was that the PCA would issue a statement condemning partial birth abortion. Do you remember that? That was the debate in the Senate at the time. Jim Talent asked that Jim Kennedy presented overture and it was done, kind of right at the very beginning of the assembly and Jim Kennedy went to a microphone and said, I move that we as a church make a stand to ask the government to outlaw partial birth abortion. Did we do it? We did not do it. We did not do it. Is it because all those men were for partial birth abortion? No. What was the issue? It's got a name. Anybody want to do it? What were we so mindful of? The spirituality of the church. The spirituality. Historically, one of the greatest statements of the spirituality of the church was given by the Southern Presbyterian church in 1861 saying why the Northern and the Southern Presbyterian church should not align. And the reason that it was said was they should not align because the Northern church thinks that we should bring the issues of the forum, I think what that means, the Roman debate political system, we should bring the issues of the forum into the debates of the church. But the church is a spiritual body, the state is a civil body, and the two should not intermingle, and we should not be dealing with the issues of the forum in the church. What issue in particular did the Southern church not want to deal with? Slavery. By not dealing with the issue of slavery, what did they, in fact, do then affirm the status quo? And of course, that's the big issue. Almost all of us are offended if somebody would stand in the pulpit and say vote Republican. On the other hand, we say, how do we have a proper voice in social issues, issues of justice? We have concerns, not just on the political side, but how do we show mercy to the poor without, at the same time, simply making it social gospel the way the liberals did through the 20th century, the whole gospel. How do we do kingdom mission without compromising the spirituality of the church? And just as we are probably beyond these issues and moving now into a discussion of how does the concern for the hearts of individuals move us into being concerned for their lives as well, it is my guess that you will see a lot of debate in future years about what the church should be doing in the nature of kingdom transformation, which is another way of talking about the great commission. Now, just some thoughts and hopefully these are things you as a Presbyterian are thinking about, talking about, and I'll just give you some at least of my perspectives, which don't count for much of anything, but hopefully just are ways that you begin to help us think as a church about some of this. If we're going to move forward into thinking about how do we deal with the matters of grace, not abandon the kingdom and not so pursue issues of kingdom concern that we abandon the issues of grace, one way that what's one problem that we have to be aware of is the temptation of the past. One temptation of the past is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism in essence is a formula that says the gospel says it's all about me. And you say, well, how do you get there that the gospel is all, it's a short circuiting of the gospel. Fundamentalism is basically unfolding this way. Here's how the gospel works. It moves from conviction to conversion and repentance,
which leads to personal piety, which leads to personal blessing. If you were to look out into the world as a whole, into global Christianity, and you were to say, what is that version of Christianity that is spreading throughout the developing world? What is, I mean, I hope you know, Christianity is experiencing its most rapid expansion in the history of the world right now in our lifetimes. Most expansion of Christianity in the world's history is happening right now. What form of Christianity's expanding? Pentecostalism. And often on the health and wealth model, right? So it's some sort of what's called dominion theology, but it really is taking over strongholds so that you will benefit. And of course, in developing and poor nations, this is a very strong allure. But the idea is that everything is leading to personal blessing. The consequences of this are pretty well known to us. I mean, we recognize it. One consequence of fundamentalism is legalism. Right? If my blessing is based upon my personal performance, then my piety becomes everything. And it goes back to Richard Lovelace's statement of, you know, even most evangelicals who in the 20th century lived a fundamentalist mindset that most people base their justification on their sanctification. Am I okay with God? Well, how am I doing? Right? So I base my justification on my personal performance and fundamentalism drives that by basically making ultimately the end of the gospel my personal blessing. Another thing that often happens with fundamentalism is you develop what Tim Keller is called tribalism. If the goal of my gospel is my comfort, then anything that disturbs my comfort is not welcome, like different kinds of people. And so you get homogeneous unit principle. You get people of like class, like color, like mind. And everything develops very comfortably. Even church growth is often driven to give us greater significance in our eyes and our circles. So we don't want that which will challenge our growth. As we know, the gospel moving across race and class lines does. And so we develop a form of tribalism. And then again, to move quickly, another thing that is the consequence of fundamentalism is narcissism. And narcissism simply says, my significance is based on my righteousness. My significance is based on my righteousness. Or to touch a little closer to home, my significance is based on my doctrinal understanding or correctness. And so I don't have to be perfect. I just have to be better than you. Right? So everything is kind of about my comfort, my status, or my significance. And basically, I would say this is short circuiting the gospel. This isn't wrong. If you said does piety lead to blessing, it should, if I'm faithful to my spouse, is there blessing? It should be. There is not, you know, an automatic wrongness in this. It just short circuits the gospel, which we'll talk about in a bit. Now, that's one temptation of the past to be aware of. Is a fundamentalist approach to kingdom issues, which basically says, I'm not concerned about the kingdom. Basically what fundamentalism is doing is it's saying, I'm concerned about a personal relationship and not about a kingdom perspective, right? I mean, fundamentalism is basically just putting all the emphasis here. Are these caricatures, of course, if you take where the essence is. Another difficulty of the past is the reverse. It says that I can be concerned about a kingdom relationship, a kingdom perspective without a personal relationship with Christ. That everything in the gospel is really about changing the kingdom. It's not about personal piety, matter the soul, and love for Jesus, that leads to personal piety. In this, which I'm going to call accommodation for the moment, in an accommodation as gospel, it's all about you. Not it's all about me, but it's all about you. This is not short circling the gospel. It's kind of overriding it. What you would say often happens here is you get the gospel moving this way. It starts with discipleship. Can you all see this orange pen at all? Can you see red? Can you see that? A little bit. The discipleship in this form leads to witness and this is through words of deeds, deeds, mercy, all those sorts of things. So what you get is you get discipleship, should have said justice here, deeds of mercy and justice create witness that lead to kingdom transformation, lead to kingdom transformation. Because this is so much about a kingdom perspective, a kingdom perspective, without so much a personal relationship with Christ, it is very attractive to the world. We can get lots of people who will say you know what I'm really concerned about is caring for the poor and feeding the hungry and overcoming racial injustice. And this is bringing Christ and his values into the culture and the culture actually likes this message. The trouble is if discipleship is only defined as kingdom transformation, there will be times that the cultural consensus will not support what the Bible says.
Like we say, it would bed for the culture if we eliminate all the retarded, all the people who are Jewish or elderly or disadvantaged in some way. As long as the cultural consensus supports the church, this is easy, but when the cultural consensus and the Bible begin to conflict, then you have to have something that is heart-oriented toward Christ or discipleship just becomes a accommodation. Now, this notion that the gospel is really about disciples transforming the world from for a kingdom perspective, if we had if we were in the early 20th century, who would we have been talking about holds that model of the gospel? By the name of Roush and Bush, we would be talking about the social gospel, we would be talking about the populist movement. We would be talking various forms of the social gospel, and by the middle of the 20th century, we would be talking about mainline liberalism. It would be our sense that the social gospel got substituted for the gospel of the spirit. In an essence, what you had is an overriding, not short circuiting, but things moving too quickly, instead of dealing with a personal relationship with Christ, which led to discipleship and kingdom transformation, personal relationship got left behind, and so you can have a liberal church that is very concerned for feeding the poor and very unconcerned for personal piety. In fact, begin to look at evangelicals concerned for personal piety and call them the hypocrites, because they're so concerned about whether they cuss or not, but have no concern at all for the poor neighbor down the street. We thought we had the high ground because we were concerned about personal piety, and they actually felt we had abandoned the faith because we were not concerned for others because their view of the kingdom was this. Now, who is saying this now, not mainline circles, where is this message of the gospel is really about discipleship and forgive me, not so much about conversion, but about discipleship leading to kingdom transformation. Where is that language coming from these days? Not the gospel of conversion, but the gospel of discipleship. It's the emerging church, right? And so if you pay attention to folks like Brian McLaren, now this is very interesting because this is not coming out of mainline Christianity, these are people with background and evangelical Christianity who believe that evangelicals sold the gospel for consumerism. If you heard this language, I mean, I hope you have because there's a lot of truth to it. We get concerned for bigger churches, more numerous churches, and comfortable lifestyles. And the consumerism says, of course, if I'm not happy with the message in this church, I will go to the next church. Do I get a message that I'm happy with and so forth. So I'm driven by a consumerist mindset, but the consumerist mindset says the reason I go to church is so that my life will be better. It's basically all about me. And whether we knew it or not, we were adopting that fundamentalist, consumerist model, and people who are in the emerging church, many of them, our children, who are looking at us and saying, you hypocrites, you talk about the love of Jesus, but when it comes applying your wealth or caring for people, unlike yourselves, you have an interest at all. All you're concerned about is your own interest. And so we get emerging churches, I'm sure there's some in Orlando and there are other parts that just boom, right, with 20 somethings and younger, right? If you're 30, you're an old foggy and many of the emerging churches. And sometimes what is pointed at is not just the sense of belonging before believing. You've got to meet all these criteria and then you can be a member of your church, but in our church, we just accept people where they are. We accept them where they are. They come into our church. They don't, you know, they don't believe everything yet, but we are going to love them and care for them as Christ does because we're going to be disciples of Christ, caring for all kinds of different people. They don't have to meet the standards before they come in, and then we will teach them discipleship and they will begin to care for people and as they care for people, the ministry of Jesus will go forward because they have learned to belong before they believe the right thing. And the mark of discipleship then is not the church is not marked by conversionism, it's marked by discipleship. The great danger, of course, is what? You develop a new legalism. What's the mark of the church? We do good stuff. We care for people. How much care is going to be enough? When do you qualify? And therefore, whether you intend it or not, a lot of the things that we're driving us with altruistic motives become devastating to people when they begin to say, but we haven't taken care of the poor yet. We haven't fixed the problem. We haven't given all of our wealth yet. So when you short-circuit the gospel, you end up with another form of legalism that ultimately becomes destructive in itself. What's the challenge? If it's not a personal relationship without a kingdom perspective,
and it's not a kingdom perspective without a personal relationship, obviously you know where I'm going to be going, that it's a personal relationship plus a kingdom perspective. In my view, this is what we are going to be arguing, debating, working our way through, as a church for years to come now. How do we maintain an emphasis upon a personal relationship and not forget the kingdom work of Christ? In essence, we have the ability to deal with it. It's simply maintaining the fullness of the gospel. And to put that in very brief form, what we say as reform believers is that our relationship originates in him. It is sanctified and maintained by him and what that leads to is a culminating concern for his glory, which of course leads to our good. Now that may be not be language, but it's what is man's chief end, or if I got to enjoy him forever. But it's saying we will have a personal relationship with Christ. If we say our relationship originates in him, he loved us when we could not love him. He claimed us when there was no reason to. And our sense of belongingness, because of what he has done of being able to rest in him, even knowing that our sanctification is maintained by him. Right? God is making perfect those who are already holy. He has made us holy. You know, we're living out the qualification. No, not qualified. We are living out the conditions that he has already established. It's not just believing in progressive sanctification, it's believing in positional or definitive sanctification, because God has made us right. We therefore have a response to him. It's a natural supernatural response. He has loved us without any action from us. We will love him. And it is love for him that relates to then a culminating concern for his glory. If you love Jesus, you will love what he loves. His values will be your values. His concerns will be your concerns. And ultimately, what is is driving you now is love for him, rather than love for others or even self. Ultimately, what I'm believing we have to say, and I'm running out of all kinds of room here to say what's needed.
Is the thing that will help us is reminding us always the gospel. It's all about him. What are the consequences of that? Go very quickly here. It will mean, and this is why I think we'll struggle as a church. It will mean Christianity is not fundamentally defined as either a belief system or a code of conduct. And we're going to struggle to know what the other thing is then. If Christianity is not primarily a belief system or a code of conduct, but is about relationship with Christ, it's having his preeminent concerns become the love of our lives. You have to recognize, of course, all of us do this. If if we preach a sermon, what we're primarily thinking about from this text, what can I tell you to do or believe? My primary, what can I tell you to do or believe? But what if my primary concern were to create love for him? Not saying the others aren't on the table, but the primary concern is now relationship with him, knowing that relationship with him is going to drive proper conduct and belief. Can you have a relationship without proper belief and conduct? Can you love your wife if you don't do anything for her? The answer is no, the conduct is related. If you believe that loving your wife is being cruel to her, will you love your wife? No, but the thing that is driving belief and action is understanding of what love is. I don't know if that sounds too small, see, and swarm me, but let me just go. What happens if Christianity is primarily a belief system? That's primarily what Christianity is. The consequences will be this. Other coherent belief systems will begin to appear attractive. If Christianity is only a belief system, then you've either got to believe that you're just smarter than Muslims and Buddhists or there's something different about your belief system and that has to be founded upon a relationship with Christ. Ultimately, the the rightness of what you believe is not just because you've got a better system. It's got to be based upon an understanding of the reality of Christ in your heart and life.
If Christianity is just a belief system, then the complexities of any belief system will ultimately make it unattractive. That's part of what's going on with our young people right now. You know, the great call for authenticity, right? And we're offering them doctrinal precision and they are looking for relationship with someone. Now, I'm not saying that's always a good thing. But if Christianity is justified as my doctrine being better than yours, we will find people who have other arguments that are internally as coherent as ours. And the thing that drives our unwillingness to accept that belief system is knowledge of Christ.
And to say, what's the sermon about? What's the church about? What's my life about? It's bringing the reality of Christ into your life, not just a right belief, not just a right belief system. What if Christianity is only defined as a code of conduct? If Christianity is only defined as a code of conduct, then we are going to have the problem of first, people looking for more authentic codes of conduct. Regardless of who we are, we will inevitably define Christian conduct by what we are culturally comfortable with. And we don't even know we're doing it. And so, for a fundamentalist in the mid-20th century, the code of conduct was clear. You don't drink or smoke or chew or go with the girls that do. On the other hand, I mean, I can remember, and I was raised a Bible about Christian, and I can remember the first assembly in which I was supposedly one of the young leaders in the PCA, and I was invited to a meeting with Osganis after he had preached at one of the general assemblies. Now, you have to kind of take right the first place we were meeting was the problem to me. We were meeting in a bar. Well, wow, this must have been the only place available. So, we all sat down all these young ministers to order our sodas or cokes, but they didn't. What do these ministers order? In the PCA! Beer! I thought, oh, total, we are not in Kansas anymore.
Now, I'm just talking about out of my gut, right? I mean, I don't have a biblical objection to this. It was just the way I was raised. I just had this fundamental, you know, this can't be right, you know. But, of course, I've got no biblical basis for what I would be objecting to in that regard. I mean, I weaker brother, all those sorts of things. I recognize the arguments, but I'm guessing most of you would say, even if you choose a total abstinence position, you're probably unwilling to say the Bible insists upon it is my guess. That may be right, but even the fact that we would disagree about that means that the code of conduct is not holding. So, if the Bible is only a code of conduct, there's going to be a problem in holding a code of conduct just because people will look for what they think of as being authentic. What do you see as authentic now? Those of you who may have gone to or participated in emerging churches, and you hear things of language and movies viewed and entertainment participated in and you think, man, you know, this doesn't sound very Christian to me, but there are people who are saying, you have put on a veneer of Christianity, you put on the uniform and you avoided the matters of the heart. So, if young people are asking for the authentic, which often means just we have the right to cut and cut up a little bit, saying, is that the gospel? If they view your code of conduct as being hypocritical, it becomes one. Another trouble, of course, if Christianity is just a code of conduct, is people will substitute new codes. They will begin to say, your code is not the real code. We need a new code or we need an old code. And so, a lot of young ministers, even in the PCA right now, when they are looking for what does it mean to worship rightly in the PCA, where are they looking? They're not looking to the 1950s church, what church are they looking to? They're looking either the 1600s or to the first three centuries, right? And so, we get kind of a regrowth of icons. A new emphasis on sacraments like has not been in our church probably in a century or more. As people begin saying, this code, we don't like anymore, we are looking for another code. If Christianity is only a code of conduct, then ultimately, the church will just waver between codes of conducts. Ultimately, what Christianity has to be about is union with Christ, but ultimately has to be about. And seeking always from that position of union with Christ to discern what do the scriptures say, not based upon cultural comfort, but upon what the scriptures say. What would make us loyal to what the scriptures say? Relationship with Christ. Preeminence of him. Primary concern for him. The gospel then will ultimately function both inside out and upside down inside out. That's the Galatians perspective, right? Galatians 327. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. There will be this, if I, if I love Jesus, it will come out in my desire to crucify the flesh, in living for him, in seeking to find what the scriptures say. That's that's personal relationship coming back on the page. But there will also be an Ephesians perspective, which will be an upside down living of the gospel, in which kingdom obligation is saying it is God's intention to transform the world for the church by the church into the first chapter of Ephesians that it is God's intention, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way with his body, which is the church, that the church has this transforming plan for the larger culture. God placed all things under Christ's feet, a point in to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. And ultimately, what I think we're going to have to do as we debate and work and seek and prayer our Lord for wondering what it means to be a church fulfilling the great commission is to believe the big story. God is transforming everything for the church by the church. That's the big story. And at the same moment, live the little story. Those he uses are those who are daily, faithful to him because they love him since he has redeemed them. As we live out the little story, it means Ray was saying it earlier, we learn to forgive one another. We learn to live as a church in community, giving of self, giving of material things, living for one another, so that the city on the hill becomes something the culture does not cannot ignore. The church transformed becomes the age of God's transformation because what ultimately has to happen is that the personal relationship that we have with Christ drives us to fulfilling his values. Here's what I think is going to have to happen at covenant seminary. What I'm mostly concerned about is this, not that this will just lead to this, will lead to this. It is that there could be this chaining of these things together. The liberal church long ago lived for that and forgot about the grace of God in personal relationship. The fundamentalist church talks about the grace of God in personal relationship and forgot about kingdom perspective. How we keep these things chained together, not walking away from one another, that we remain a church concerned for personal conversion, that that becomes still part of what we're doing, that that we do social justice because we know that the church living with integrity is credible when it speaks of the cross and not credible if it does not take care of the poor, that the reason that we do kingdom things is because we are concerned about the grace of God and the same is true over here in the PCA, that it's our concern to be true to the scriptures and to the reformed faith that will make us true to the great commission, that we don't walk away from the early ones to accomplish the last one. Because if you talk about just real honesty here, some of the people who are most concerned about the PCA not being true to the great commission are saying the reason it is not been is because it's been too concerned for a biblicalist understanding of the scriptures and therefore has not ever taken its full responsibility for the great commission. That can hurt us if we don't say these things are intricately tied and you cannot walk away from any of these to accomplish the last, they must maintain, be maintained by believing the big story and living the little one through a faithful relationship to Jesus Christ daily.