Martyn Lloyd-Jones on True Christians and the Sermon on the Mount

Posted on February 19, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

In the introduction to Martyn Lloyd-Jones‘ Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, he writes this:

I suggest to you that [the Sermon on the Mount] is the best means of evangelism. Surely we all ought to be urgently concerned about this at the present time. The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians. I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, ‘What is the secret of this?’

He goes on to compare Christianity with communism (a serious threat in the 1950’s) and how Christianity, when lived out, provides in reality what communism promises but fails to provide.

While communism may not be the largest challenge to the church today, the need for living out the Christian life is still more urgent. We have the answer to what ails society but our failure to display it in our lives prevents the answer from being accepted.

Mr. Lloyd-Jones calls us to face up to our failures in this regard, repent and begin really living the life of faith.

Teaching Evolution in the Church?

Posted on February 15, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

This post is in reaction to an article written by Paul Wallace that I read in the Huffington Post. In it Mr. Wallace writes about his efforts at teaching evolution in the Church.

What the author seems to assume is that belief in evolution is the only reasonable response to the question of origin. If evolution is the only reasonable explanation of what we see, then it would be foolish to deny that claim.

I will set aside the difficulties inherent in evolutionary theory because there are many voices more qualified than I to enumerate them. Even if we granted that evolution is an adequate explanation, it is not the only reasonable explanation.

My point is that those who hold that evolution is the only reasonable explanation of origin do so because of their fundamental assumption that there could not be a creator or intelligent designer. They do not find a creator because they assume that he cannot exist and therefore ignore any evidence that he does. The first wrong assumption is that God cannot exist and therefore he could not have created.

The second wrong assumption in this article is that there is a dichotomy between faith and reason. This is the “if you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church” fallacy. God, in Scripture, does not ask us to suspend our reason, he asks us to allow him to transform it. Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that this transformation is the most reasonable response to God. In fact the word translated reasonable (NKJV) is logikos from which we get our word logical.

We do not suspend our reason in order to believe, but we do open ourselves to the possibility of God having acted in the past, present and future of human history. Without this possibility we do not have Christianity. The whole focus of Christianity is Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh who came specifically to intervene in human history on our behalf.

My question for those who would teach evolution in the church is why would you seek to undermine the foundational truths of Christianity and still try to call it Christian? Why call it Christian if you don’t want Christ? Call it whatever you want but it is not Christianity.

Perhaps the drive to undermine Christianity lies in the demands that Christ places upon us. Jesus doesn’t bid us come and evaluate his philosophy, he bids us come and die with him. He does not offer neatly packaged explanations of reality, he offers mystery. He does not offer transcendent conquest of life’s difficulties, he demands surrender and contentment.

At the core, I suspect that this evolution vs. creation debate is more of a submission issue than an intellectual one. If there is a God who is powerful enough to create what we see than it would be foolish to refuse submission to him.

Therefore since we refuse to submit, it is much easier to pretend God doesn’t exist. If I don’t look at him or acknowledge his presence, perhaps God will go away and leave me alone.

But then oh, how alone I would be.

The temptation of anger in response to militant atheism

Posted on February 1, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 26 Comments

In Rhode Island, Jessica Ahlquist has been the front for a lawsuit against her school district. The result of the lawsuit is that the school must remove the School Prayer
from their walls. It is also reported that threats have been made against the girl and she has been the target of verbal abuse. A photo of the prayer pulled from the linked article is shown at right.

I understand the anger at and frustration with a court system which is increasingly opposed to Christianity. I understand how difficult it is to see a militant minority run roughshod over what has been the foundation of our culture for over 200 years. So I get the anger and the desire to lash out.

I feel the need to remind myself and others of a few things in response to this.

James reminds us that we are to be “slow to anger” because “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19-20) Nothing of eternal value will result in responding in anger.
Matthew 22:39 tells us that the second great command is to love our neighbor. Jesus used the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate who our neighbor is. This girl in Rhode Island is our neighbor and we are commanded to love her.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1 that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead. We should not be surprised when spiritually dead people make spiritually dead choices.

Certainly threats and abuse toward Jessica are the wrong response on both a practical and a moral level. They accomplish nothing of temporal or eternal value.

The response of the Apostle Paul when he encountered the paganism of the Athenians is instructive here. Luke records in Acts 17:16 that Paul was provoked by the city full of idols. He was not provoked into anger, but provoked to respond with a defense of Christianity and a presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

God changes people from the inside. It is of little use for us to force change from the outside. So to do legal battle over a prayer on the wall seems like a futile effort.

We should, however, take events like this as a wakeup call. Parts of the church have engaged with the culture to the extent that their form of Christianity is almost indistinguishable from the society around it. Other parts of the church have so disengaged from the culture making themselves doctrinally pure, but irrelevant. Neither extreme puts the church in position to be effective in making disciples, the mission given to the church by Jesus.

If we live out the two great commands to love God and our neighbors, if we do this well, then we can trust that God will change us and he will use us to change our culture. Jessica needs God’s love and she needs our love, not our anger. She has plenty of that already.

Grace, Truth and Difficult People

Posted on January 18, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

It may not be a universal experience, but most of us are forced to interact with a difficult person in either our personal or professional life.

There are a variety of sources for the difficulty.

Some are difficult because they don’t perceive feedback about how they impact others. This is the person who continues the story when all the people in the room give indication of being bored or hostile. This is the guy who thinks he’s doing well in the presentation when all the attendees are checking their smart phones, chatting or sleeping.
Some are difficult because they are so worried about offending others that they are amorphous, it is hard to discern the real person inside them. These are so tuned in to feedback that they often overreact to it. They are hard to interact with because anything you say might prove overwhelming to them.
Some are difficult because they are self-absorbed; it is indeed all about them. The self-absorbed take every difficulty that arises as a personal attack. If a friend is distracted for an unrelated reason, the self-absorbed will take that as evidence of rejection. The self-absorbed will latch on to any sympathetic ear and fill it with a catalog of injustices done to him.
Some are difficult because they are unabashedly selfish. These are similar to the self-absorbed, but this self-absorption is intentional. These will do whatever they think they can get away with to get what they want.

I’m sure there are other categories of difficult people but these four come immediately to mind.

Jesus tells in Matthew 5:44 that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. John 13:35 tells us that love is to be the mark that identifies us as Christians. In Ephesians 4:15, Paul tells us we are to speak the truth in love.

Nowhere in my Bible does it give me any indication that this is easy to do, nor does it give any indication that love is optional. I am called to love difficult people, people who often do not want, or struggle to receive that love.

How do we go about this then? I think that the evangelist gives us a clue when he describes Jesus as “full of grace and truth” in John 1:14. In his dealings with mankind, the difficult and the loving, Jesus was both gracious and truthful. He always told the truth but the truth was softened with grace and acceptance.

Jesus’ ability to do this is directly attributable to his being God. His divinity and sinlessness gave him the power to maintain this balance perfectly. I, on the other hand, do this imperfectly at best and often do not maintain the balance at all.

In our imperfection and based on our personality, we will tend to err on one side or the other. Some of you are more likely to err or the side of truth. “He had it coming to him” may be your motto after imparting a dose of truth to someone who you thought desperately needed it. Others, like myself, will try to avoid the difficulty, erring on the side of grace.

Grace without truth leaves the difficult person in his difficulty with no-one to guide him out. Truth without grace often makes the truth-giver feel a little bit better but the lack of grace can impede reception of the truth.

The two combined, grace AND truth, as we see it modeled by Jesus can be used by God to positively impact the difficult person. We love best when it is done with both grace and truth.

Question 1: What other types of difficult people have you encountered?
Question 2: Do you have any stories of how the combination of grace and truth positively impacted the situation?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on True Christians and the Sermon on the Mount

Teaching Evolution in the Church?

The temptation of anger in response to militant atheism

Grace, Truth and Difficult People

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