The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first. That is how revival comes. That must also be true of us as individuals. It should not be our ambition to be as much like everybody else as we can, though we happen to be Christian, but rather to be as different from everybody who is not a Christian as we can possibly be. Our ambition should be to be like Christ, the more like Him the better. And the more like Him we become, the more useful to the world we will be.
The second quotation comes from Paul Edwards (new to me) at The God & Culture Blog:
Our Lord attracted sinners because He was different. They drew near to Him because they felt that there was something different about Him…And the world always expects us to be different. This idea that you are going to win people to the Christian faith by showing them that after all you are remarkably like them, is theologically and psychologically a profound blunder.
I do not have the locations of these two quotations. The first one comes from Preaching and Preachers, but I do not have the page number. Tchividjian's book, Unfashionable, on this subject, comes out in April.
Keep an eye out for a later blog which deals with the invitation system where evangelists have made a practice of calling for decisions. Is this biblical? I'll be drawing from Lloyd-Jones.
2 comments:
The church is committing the error of parameters to the people under a gospel human progranmado limited, religious, and unrealistic.
The man wants to see a church more in line with what it preaches.
Thank you, Luis. Happy to have a brother pastor commenting. The Lord bless you!
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