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Part one of a series
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July 4, 2023 - A recent news story in The Washington Times began as follows:
President Biden has framed his presidency and reelection run as a battle for "the soul of America," which his campaign defines as a fight for causes such as abortion and transgender rights.
Some Christian leaders are bristling. [1]
Only some? Such a statement - which is sadly true - shouts over most of the visible church, not only in America but across the globe, the Divine pronouncement given three thousand years ago through the wife of a priest whom the Lord had just killed because of his lawlessness: "Ichabod... The glory has departed from Israel!" (1 Samuel 4:21). Truly "the glory has departed" from America, and from all the nations that have rejected God's Law.
We live in a time of lawlessness, such as I do not think any of us have ever seen before - in government, in the church, and among individuals.
Lawlessness in Government
Most obviously, we live in a time of lawlessness in the government of our society at large. We live in a time when God's moral Law is suppressed and even scoffed at by our legislatures and courts, and the executive officers of governments. We live in a time when God's moral Law is not merely ignored by sinful man, but sinful man has the audacity to try to outlaw God's moral Law.
Man tries to outlaw God's moral Law against murder by making abortion and euthanasia legal. Man tries to outlaw God's moral Law against fornication and adultery. Governments try to overturn God's Law mandating marriage between one man and one woman.
Man tries to outlaw God's moral Law that mandates the Biblical family by making it legal for same-sex couples to adopt children and even artificially conceive children. For the first time in American history, the majority of children are growing up in a home environment that is completely foreign to God's Law. And so now on American passports, and those issued in a number of other countries, instead of having parents listed as "father" and "mother" the government is listing them as "parent one" and "parent two." And why not add "parent three" or "parent four"? Nothing in the perverse minds of most of our contemporary rulers would speak against it.
Also, the concept of individual responsibility for sin has become foreign. Whenever there is a mass murder, the news media are quick to tell us that the evil individual who committed the crime is not the one responsible. The news media try to tell us that society is responsible, that talk radio is responsible, that certain politicians or political elements are responsible. They will even try to tell us that the Bible-believing church is responsible. And tragically, much of the visible church joins in this chorus of lies against the Word of God. But what says the Lord? The individual who devises an evil scheme and pulls the trigger, or thrusts the knife, or drives a car into a crowd, or sets off a bomb - that person is responsible before God.
Lawlessness in the Church
We not only live in a time of lawlessness in civil government. We also live in a time of lawlessness in church government, and even in the ministry of the church.
Many churches are engaging in doctrinal lawlessness, abandoning God's Law by not dealing decisively with heresy within the church. Many churches are encouraging moral lawlessness among the membership, by tolerating sin within the body, by refusing to preach against sin, and even affirming people in their sinful lifestyles. Congregations are told that they do not need to change their sinful ways, that God accepts them as they are. "Come as you are" - yes, that is Biblical. As the hymn writer put it, "Christ receiveth sinful men." But it is not permissible, under God's Law, to stay as you are. The truly redeemed individual will seek to become more and more like his Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, forsaking sin and pursuing holiness.
Lawlessness in Individuals
We live in a time of lawlessness, not only among those who openly reject Christianity, but moreover in the lives of many individuals who profess Christ. Today the average evangelical church has made it far too easy for the individual who professes to be a Christian to say, "I am not responsible" - and in fact much of contemporary preaching encourages that kind of thinking. You do bad things and make bad choices, the church says, because of your upbringing. It is because of your spouse who you cannot get along with. It is because your parents are too hard on you; they do not make it their first priority to inflate your self-esteem. Nothing is your responsibility.
Many churches today have "support groups" of various kinds that are really nothing more than vehicles to affirm people in their sins. What many of these groups really do is to support the falsehood that people are not individually responsible for their sins before God.
We live in an environment in which it is far too easy for the individual who professes to be a Christian to call sin something else - and that "something else" does not recognize the essential nature of sin. We may simply call it a bad decision. A wrong choice. A mistake. A misstep. An error of judgment. A moral lapse. But not sin. Not an offense against God the holy Lawgiver, against Christ the righteous Judge.
Lawlessness is the Rejection of Objective Truth
We live in an environment in which postmodernism has infiltrated and is even welcomed in many evangelical churches. Postmodernism says that there is no such thing as objective truth, and therefore no such thing as an objective standard of right and wrong. Postmodernism says that it is intolerant and therefore intolerable to say that sin can be objectively defined. Postmodernism says that it is intolerant and therefore intolerable to say that there is only one way to God. Postmodernism says that there are many ways to God, and no concrete definitions of sin.
According to reliable surveys, over half of professing evangelical Christians do not believe that Jesus Christ is a sinless Savior.
And what is the result of this state of lawlessness? We need to understand that much of the postmodern evangelical church, having descended into lawlessness, has become just as much of a mission field as any remote village on the Amazon, or any city of the Muslim or Hindu worlds.
We live in an environment in which we have many professing Christians sitting in our churches today, who do not really understand the Gospel and therefore have never truly believed the Gospel. Many professing Christians who are sitting in evangelical churches today have experienced some kind of psychological conversion, or perhaps some kind of moral conversion. But they have not experienced genuine conversion. That is a very different matter, because it has a very different starting point.
The Only Cure for Lawlessness
Praise God for the churches in America and around the world, few and precious in our day, that preach the one true Gospel faithfully - and most important of all, fully. These remnant churches do not preach a half-way "gospel". As we continue this series we shall examine what that means.
Mr. Biden and many others characterize the "battle for the soul of America" as a struggle to take the nation ever more deeply into lawlessness - and many, even in the visible church, are supporting such an outcome or at least tolerating this horrible possibility.
But what says the Word of God? In this series I want to put a critical question before us: What is the cure for this lawlessness - in government, in the church, in the lives of individuals, and especially in the lives of professing Christians? We find the cure given to us by the Holy Spirit in Paul's epistle to the Romans:
Now we know that whatever the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:19-20)
We shall examine this profound statement, and its implications, as we continue.
References:
1. Jeff Mordock, "Biden's Fight to Restore 'America's Soul' Clashes with Tradition, Christian Beliefs", The Washington Times, June 9, 2023, as viewed at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jun/9/joe-biden-keeps-americas-soul-political-fray/
Next: The Irrefutable Facts of God's Law
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