Covenant Presbyterian Church

I can still remember the impression Romans 2:24 made upon me when I first read it interactively and personally: "For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, as it is written." I was about sixteen. I started thinking about my own life and decisions, about the impact my life was having upon unbelievers. What was I communicating about God to the world? Was I the cause of God’s name being blasphemed? Was I giving the unbeliever, my next door neighbor, an excuse for remaining an unbeliever?

As the years have passed, these questions have retained their imperative in my thinking. In the brief quarter-century in which I can profess to have had any significant reflective existence, I have seen the world, or at least our little corner of it, intensify its opposition to God and his law. Activities known only through locker-room whispers are now discussed and paraded before the bewildered ears and eyes of our children. Almost unopposed, the devil marches through our nation roaring, deceiving, and devouring. The seeds of our cultural distinction are everywhere bearing fruit, not from foreign armies but from within. Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto begins with a very pertinent observation: "Before a culture is destroyed from the outside, it collapses from within."

The name of God is definitely being blasphemed. But why? On one level, unbelievers are intrinsic blasphemers of God. Each sunrise, season change, and meal for which they do not give praise to God for his goodness is an act of blasphemy, of taking his name in vain by refusing to recognize his name, i.e., his goodness, faithfulness, and love. We cannot expect unbelievers to be anything other than unbelievers. This is as it has always been. But Paul’s indictment of the Jews in Romans 2:24 gives a second possible explanation for the unbeliever’s blasphemy - the godless lives of those who profess to know God, but who in their lives and words deny him. We need to apply his condemnation of his Jewish countrymen to ourselves.

I have also come to realize that it is relatively useless to talk about "changing the world" or "reforming society" until the Church is revived by the Spirit of God. This is not a novel observation, but it is a pressing one. An abundance of Christian groups are trying to "reclaim," "restore," and "reconstruct" this or that. Many of these are good and necessary, but the first work is rebuilding the Church upon the foundation of Scripture. How, for example, can we seriously think that abortion will ever be abolished when a significant portion of those who obtain them profess to be Christians? When the majority of professing evangelical Christians affirms that "no one can know anything for sure," do we even have an objective standard to reclaim, restore, and reconstruct? When the immodest dress, disrespectful demeanor, and sexual promiscuity of professing Christian young people are little different from their unbelieving counterparts, can we really position ourselves as moral examples? If we are not having success "saving our families, can we really save others, provide direction for them, claim any moral superiority? And when millions of professing Christians make their daily decisions by "gut instinct," experience, or feeling, who are we to hold up the Bible and demand our fellow-citizens to subscribe to it? These are only a few examples of many that might be cited. Each of them is a vindication of Paul’s indictment: "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." Our lives often belie our profession. Our lives weaken our witness. Our lives give the unbeliever an excuse for his life.

Several years ago one of our missionaries came and spoke to the congregation. He related that in ten years of living among the people of the Czech Republic, he and his family had succeeded in gathering only a small number of converts together. His explanation for this slow progress has often haunted me. He said that it took years of living consistently before the watching eyes of his unbelieving friends and neighbors just for them to realize that there was a reality and power in his words, that he was not simply another one of those religious people, trying to sell something, claiming to be speaking for God but lacking any credentials of a changed life of love, service, and truth. I remember thinking then as I do now: Matthew 5:12. This is what my missionary friend had had to learn. Unless our light shines before men so that they see our good works, they will never glorify our Father in heaven. And, I strongly suspect, this is the present condition of the Church in the United States. The world, our culture, has watched our dissection of the Bible, our squabbles about peripheral matters, our laziness and lies, our sexual and financial infidelities. At the same time, they have heard our pompous claims. They have rightly seen a chasm of contradiction between our words and our lives, our agenda and our practice. We may profess to be speaking for God, but in our works we deny him. When most unbelievers think of Christians, the gospel, and the Bible, they undoubtedly at some level see us but as another group trying to get our share of the political pie. They see the shiny faces of the television moguls, kissing babies while stealing their lollipops. It is an ugly picture, but, alas, a justified one.

The picture is not wholly bleak. There are thousands of sincere Christians in this nation, men, women, and young people who truly love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. They are grieved by their own sins and endeavor to repent of them and live in the light of God’s word. Their profession is vindicated by the power of godliness, deeds of love and service, and words of kindness and hope. They work hard, try to raise their families in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and faithfully speak God’s word whenever they have the opportunity to do so. Their lives, our lives, are largely uncelebrated. This is the way it should be and the only hope for the future. God has never used the glamorous and the dramatic. He will not, for the simple reason that he will not share his glory with us. Our programs, our political agenda, our "faith gets riches" mentality, each of these undermine the servant orientation of the Christian life and muddle our message. Faith is not a means of financial gain, of political acceptance, of cultural domination. It is the way of the cross, of service, of humility.

I suggest that we must give closer consideration to the relationship between "saving the culture" and "living the Christian life." Our friends and neighbors are in desperate need of watching real Christians really live. This certainly includes our words, for the proclamation of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. But there is a strong connection between our witness and our walk. When so many talking-heads are regularly exposed as frauds and religious profiteers, and the closets of "family value" politicians are filled with a slew of skeletons, it is no wonder that few take the Christian faith seriously. It is not that the word of God has lost its power or relevance. It is that those who profess to know and speak the truth do not manifest its power and relevance in their own lives. Hence, the common claim that the "church is filled with hypocrites" is not only partially true but also evangelically devastating. Their blasphemy is intensified by our backsliding. We, collectively, are giving the unbeliever reason for his blasphemy.

It need not be this way. I know we all feel like "crunch time" has arrived in our nation and throughout western culture. It’s the fourth quarter; time is running out. We need to pull out all the stops, the trick plays, the "Hail Mary’s." We must not. In God’s providence, whatever quarter we think we are in, we live in his world and must play by his rules. What is needed at present is not a Constitutional amendment protecting the family, but families who are leading consistently clear Christian lives in their neighborhoods, lives of kindness and service, compassion and hope. We do not need boycotts of this and that; we need believers whose proclamation of the law of God is matched by lives of humble submission to his wondrous revelation. Instead of political, educational, or marketing fury, we need the meekness and gentleness of Jesus Christ. And, before we stridently march through the land exposing and correcting the faults of others, we need to take a look at our neighborhood. Does the world look like it does because of the lives we as God’s professing people are leading? Are we a source of the world’s blasphemy? Let us repent, walk more closely with Jesus Christ in faith and obedience, and the good works that will glorify our heavenly Father will be a powerful testimony to our friends and neighbors. And remember, they will glorify our heavenly Father because they will be changed from blasphemers to believers, through the combined force of a faithful witness to the truth of God’s word and the power of changed lives.

I realize that this appears rather humdrum. We have been so infected with top-down paradigms of social, political, and religious change that we are looking for the cultural homerun, the bomb, the buzzer-beater. If we would stop deriving our paradigms from politics, sports and movies, and pay more attention to Scripture, we would realize that this is the exactly the way the Lord Jesus had ordained to disciple the nations and unite everything under him as Savior and King. Long-term faithfulness to his word produces sanctification in your life; it will do not less familially, congregationally, and culturally. Consistent, fervent prayer, believing obedience to his word, and self-denial enables you to overcome besetting sin; the same results will follow in our churches and nations. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not built in a day, in one generation, by a sudden, dramatic plot twist. It comes like a growing tree and a slowly rising stream. It comes when you, professing disciple, dedicate yourself to a life of Christian discipleship, cross bearing, loving service, and a witness to the truth backed up by a transformed life. At the least, we will not give unbelievers an excuse to remain unbelievers.