Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 65

Even the Best Sermon Cannot Do Any Good Without a Savour of Christ In It

From Spurgeon’s “Christ Precious to Believers”:

A young man had been preaching in the presence of a venerable divine, and after he had done he went to the old minister, and said, “What do you think of my sermon?”

“A very poor sermon indeed,” said he.

“A poor sermon?” said the young man, “it took me a long time to study it.”

“Ay, no doubt of it.”

“Why, did you not think my explanation of the text a very good one?”

“Oh, yes,” said the old preacher, “very good indeed.”

“Well, then, why do you say it is a poor sermon? Didn’t you think the metaphors were appropriate and the arguments conclusive?”

“Yes, they were very good as far as that goes, but still it was a very poor sermon.”

“Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon?”

“Because,” said he, “there was no Christ in it.”

“Well,” said the young man, “Christ was not in the text; we are not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text.”

So the old man said, “Don’t you know young man that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?”

“Yes,” said the young man.

“Ah!” said the old divine “and so from every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business in when you get to a text, is to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis — Christ. And,” said he, “I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.”

That Time I Sent Letters to the Townspeople Telling Them They’re Not Welcome at Church

They bend their tongue like a bow . . .

– Jeremiah 9:3

Well, that’s how some read it, anyway.

A woman relatively new to our church expressed concern because she had invited someone from our small town to church and they told her that they received a letter from me saying they weren’t welcome. She wanted to know why I would do that.

I wanted to know why I would do that too, since I hadn’t done it. But I knew what she was talking about.

After a two-year process of working with our deacons and new elder board through the very real problem of a bloated membership roll that did not accurately reflect active membership in the church, and after communicating with the congregation the purpose of this process, this is the text of a letter our church sent out to inactive members. (Not a single one of the recipients, by the way, had attended the church in the last 5 years, and many had not in 10 years or more.)

Dear friend,

My name is Jared Wilson, and I’m the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church. One of the tasks before the church in my relatively new tenure is to organize our membership rolls to better reflect active participation in the church and in doing so to make contact with members we’ve lost touch with.

Our records indicate that you have been inactive in church attendance or related activities for six months or more, and therefore your name has been placed on the roll of inactive members. Membership is something dear to our church. Active membership and an accurate membership count are keys to our health as a body of believers. We want to be faithful to God in being faithful to each other in our gathering and service.

We would like to hear from you. If you’ve been unable to attend church due to having moved away or having found a new church home, please let us know. If other extenuating circumstances have prevented your attendance, we would like to know that as well. You may write to the address above, call me at _________, or email me at ____________. I would be happy to talk to you about this matter, in person if you prefer.

Should you respond to this letter within 3 months with renewed interest in maintaining your membership, I would love to speak with you about our renewed Statement of Faith and our new Membership Covenant, affirmations of which are required for continued membership in the church. According to church bylaws, should no response to this letter be made within 3 months’ time, your name will be removed from the membership rolls and your right to vote in church affairs will cease.

This action would not remove you from our prayers and concern. Any time you call we will seek to minister to you faithfully as the church has done in the past. If you are able, we would love to have you rejoin us for weekly worship every Sunday at 10 a.m. You are always welcome.

Blessings in the gospel always,

Jared Wilson, Pastor

You will notice a few things that are true about the letter:

1. It is not only not a letter telling people they’re not welcome, it’s not even a letter saying they’re being removed from membership. It is an invitation to talk things over, to see where someone’s at. (I did not send a letter to more recently inactive members but instead visited them personally.)

2. It acknowledges that some may have extenuating circumstances preventing active attendance.

3. It communicates that this process is not something I whipped up just to tick people off but is actually a stipulation of the church’s bylaws, which were drafted before I came and approved by membership vote. I was acting in conformity with the authority I’m under.

But none of this stopped some in the town, angered by the whole thing, from characterizing the letter to others as a declaration of “You’re Not Welcome in the Church.” And without benefit of actually reading it for themselves, some have assumed that characterization is accurate.

This kind of thing happens all the time, outside the church and in it. It is like the grown-up gossip’s version of the telephone game. “Well, I heard…” And what someone heard becomes what someone said, except they never said it. This is another form of crooked speech.

So you can understand, perhaps, why many of us take more cautious routes in response to outrageous claims and accusations.

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

– Proverbs 18:17

What Do You Need to Offload?

When Paul says that some people have their minds set on the things of the flesh and others have their minds set on the things of the Spirit, he is not using the word mind in a merely intellectual sense. He is talking about our mindset (“…set their minds…”). He is talking about our whole mentality, what we dwell upon, the tilt of our likes and dislikes, what we respect and admire, what we want out of life, what we aspire after. The paraphrase by J.B. Phillips is telling: “The carnal attitude sees no further than natural things. But the spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the Spirit.”

Paul himself was like this. He discovered in Jesus a treasure so rich that he took all his hard-won lifetime achievement awards and junked them in order to have Jesus. And then he looked at that pile of earthly prizes there in the dumpster, threw his head back and laughed: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8, RSV). If you are a Christian, but bored, maybe you need to lose something. You cannot just add Jesus to an already crowded life. So what do you need to off-load, so that your heart can feel the surpassing worth of knowing Christ? And do not stop off-loading until that sense of privilege in Jesus really starts to percolate. When our hearts thrill to his surpassing worth, the world loses its appeal.

– Ray Ortlund, Supernatural Living for Natural People (Focus, 2013), 40-41. Underlining added.

The Gospel and The American Dream

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon . . .

– Jeremiah 29:4

Exile — which is the ongoing state of the Church today as it was for Israel then — presupposes that we are in Babylon, not Jerusalem. And one of the major mistakes the Church has made is expecting Babylon to act like Jerusalem, to be like Jerusalem, to even recognize Jerusalem as something ideal to be. We see this in the way Christians keep trying to convince non-Christians that America is really a Christian nation and needs to start acting like it again.

The reality is that we should not expect Babylon to start acting like Jerusalem. Our calling instead is to live like Jerusalem within Babylon. What does this look like? The prophetic words are helpful:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.

– Jeremiah 29:5-6

First of all, does this give in any way the sense of “just passing through”? Does it look temporary?

Does this give the sense of living, as some say, like “the world is not our home”?

There is a sense in which the world is not our home, of course. But there’s a sense in which it is. When we say things like “This world is not my home,” we should not mean that this world is not the place God has called us to live out his kingdom. Here we are. Where else are we going to live? And in fact, the eschatological forecast of the new heavens and the new earth show us that this world is our home, albeit the transformed version of it that is coming.

When we say “This world is not my home” we ought to simply mean the way of the world that is passing away – the sinful system of the world, the corruption, the injustice.

Therefore: Suburbia may be your home, but consumerism should not be. And America may be your home, but nationalism should not be. Your house may be your home, but Christ should be your security. We ought at all times to remember that even the good gifts God gives us are not eternal.

On the flip side, if we think only in short-term ways, we may become careless. We begin to idolize convenience, comfort, living at the expense of others, as exploiters, users, thoughtlessly burning through resources. There is the idolatrous underside of the not-altogether-bad “American Dream.” Jeremiah 29 would seem to have some parallels to the idea of making something of one’s self, of building, investing, starting a family and plugging away at a career. But there is a stark difference between Jeremiah 29 and the way most Americans carry on about their Dream.

But God calls us to a better way. Not to be so earthly minded that we’re no heavenly good but also not to be so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good (let the reader understand).

We see it in what comes next:

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

– Jeremiah 29:7

Now here is something really unique! A Jerusalem that is for Babylon, a community centered on God that is for the flourishing of the community centered on itself. Here is, put in today’s applicational terms, “love your neighbor” on the ecclesiological scale. “If you want to prosper,” the Lord says, “you will seek the prospering of your neighbors.”

Now, there are two ways we typically go about our relationship with our neighbors:

1. First, we position ourselves as Consumers

We use the community for our comfort and convenience, for our own prosperity alone. The world exists to be used, consumed, profited from.

2. Or, alternatively, we position ourselves as Combatants

Enter the never-quite-dead culture war.

Why do we act like this? The text says it’s because we believe in lies:

For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.

– Jeremiah 29:8-9

False prophets lead us astray. We listen and believe lies from within the camp and lies from outside.

Lies from within sound like this:

“If we just had the right person in the White House…”

“If we just got the right laws in place…”

“If we just got prayer back in schools…”

Lies from without sound like this:

“Get more, be more, do more.”

“He who dies with the most toys wins.”

We buy into these lies and bring them into the camp and de-Christ our Christianity with them. Simply put, the world does not need more Combantants or Consumers. It needs Christians. It needs Christians who will commit to “living invested” in the Jeremiah 29 sense while doing essentially three things:

1. Exegete their communities.

When Paul entered Athens, he saw that the city was full of idols (Acts 17:16). It is important to “interpret” our communities by understanding the motivations and appetites and wounds beneath the symptoms, the sins beneath the sins as it were. Identifying idols is important because it prevents us from falling sway to them ourselves — hello, suburbanites — and it helps us actually help people with solutions they need.



2. Love their communities.

You cannot love somebody and use them at the same time. When Christ saw the crowd of sinners around him, he did not turn up his nose in disgust, he did not put together a petition or a picket line. Instead, he saw them as lost sheep, hurt and harassed, and he had compassion.

To love our neighbors means sacrificially serving them, and it means doing so in primarily this way:



3. Proclaim Christ in their communities.

Christians exegete their communities, love their communities, and proclaim Christ in their communities.

We bear witness with our words and deeds to what we believe about this world, what we believe about this nation of ours. Some Christians believe in America so much that it is clear that is where their belief really lays: America. But it is Christ who is king, it is Christ who is God, it is Christ who is our only hope. And God’s plan for the world, America included, is to saturate every nook and cranny, every deep sea trench and every highest mountain peak with the radiance of his glory. Let that be our dream.

The forecast is breathtaking:

For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

– Jeremiah 29:10-14

Of course one of the most famous verses of Western Christianity is in that passage. It’s one we realize is for us and therefore make about us. But Jeremiah 29:11 is only about getting what you want if what you want is Christ.

The gospel is not incompatible with aspects of the American Dream, especially as it relates to providing for our families, seeking the good of our fellow citizens, providing jobs and therefore flourishing our neighbors. But the gospel is very much against the prevailing American Dream because the gospel seeks to galvanize our affections towards the only One worthy of them.

As we live invested in our communities, let us decrease that he may increase.

Exiles Don’t Swagger

“Being Christian exiles in American culture does not end our influence; it takes the swagger out of it. We don’t get cranky that our country has been taken away. We don’t whine about the triumphs of evil. We are not hardened with anger. We understand. This is not new. This was the way it was in the beginning — Antioch, Corinth, Athens, Rome . . . It never occurred to those early exiles that they should rant about the ubiquity of secular humanism. The Imperial words were still ringing in their ears: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). This was a time for indomitable joy and unwavering ministries of mercy.”

– John Piper, writing 10 years ago this week in an ever-relevant, must-read piece called “Taking the Swagger Out of Christian Cultural Influence.” Go read the whole thing.

10 Surprising Realities of Mission in New England

I hear regularly from folks interested in the future of church planting, revitalization, and gospel ministry in the New England states. Some have history with the region, some don’t. (I did not when I moved up to Vermont a little over four years ago.) The following ten items are meant to help those praying and planning adjust their expectations in one respect or another.

Of course, some of these “realities” will seem as they if they go without saying to many and none will be any surprise to native or long-time New Englanders, but I do think being advised against any ill-conceived preconception could be helpful to many. So, in no particular order:

There is Really No One New England Culture

A lot of us are talking about “New England culture” in broad-brush terms — and I’m going to do some of that in this very post — but while there are some traits that tend to characterize the people of the region generally, there is really no one specifically definable “New England culture.” Coming from the South, I have a pet peeve when people talk about a “Southern accent.” There’s no such thing as a “Southern accent.” Do you mean a Georgian accent? Tennessean? East Texas? Etc. In the same way, the six states of New England host distinct state cultures and even distinct subcultures within states. There are urban New Englanders (think Boston or Providence) and there are rural New Englanders. Mainers and Vermonters are a lot alike but there are also some significant differences. With my own state, the culture of my church town — rural population of 600 — is much different from the culture of metro Burlington up north — more urban, roughly 200,000. So it behooves missioners to New England to learn about specific areas of ministry, distinct regions, and prepare not for “New England” but for whatever specific area they may be moving to.

New Englanders Are Not Rude

Okay, well, some are. But no more than there are in the South or the Rust Belt or Pacific Northwest or whatever. When I was preparing to move to Vermont, I met with someone in Tennessee who was going to prepare me for life in the great Northeast. “The people up there are rude,” he said. “But they’re honest.” Well, the last part was true. I have found the first part vastly overstated. What many mistake for rudeness is usually simply stoicism, cultural introversion, or privacy. New Englanders — and here I’m broad-brushing, because I have to — are not an effusive people. They are not an extroverted culture like, for instance, “Southerners.” But they are not rude. They may be hard in many ways. But they are typically hard-working, own-business-minding, live-and-let-live people. And they are straight-shooters and (typically) suspicious of outsiders. But they are very friendly in conversation, especially when out and about in rural areas, and willing to help anybody any time for any reason. The phrase you might best use to characterize the typical New Englander is “salt of the earth.”

New Englanders May be Godless But They Aren’t Unhappy or “Immoral”

This is a mistake evangelicals make in thinking through evangelism in almost every place, not just the Northeast. We assume that lost people feel lost. That they walk around with a God-shaped hole, sensing something missing, dealing with a vague sense of unfulfillment that the gospel is the answer for. But while this is sometimes true, it isn’t mostly true — not in my experience, anyway — and it is certainly not true in the Northeast where you’d most expect it to be the case. If New England is the least religious, least churched region in the nation, you’d expect it to be the least happy, wouldn’t you? Well, you can rethink your assumptions. New England states regularly rank near the top of “happiest states” surveys, as well as in “healthiest states” surveys. There are a lot of miserable lost people here, sure, but in general, people without Christ are doing pretty well for themselves and don’t sense anything missing in their lives. And most of them are good — as I said, “salt of the earth” — people. The “Godless heathens” in my neck of the woods are kind and polite and pleasant and homeschool their kids and don’t let them watch television and they recycle and look after their neighbors, etc. If you’re thinking behavior modification, you need to think differently. Many are already “good.” And that’s their problem.

New Englanders Are Not Averse to Spiritual Conversations

There are many throughout New England who are hostile to Christian theology or Christianity, mostly because they equate it with being non-intellectual or with right-wing politics. Just read some of the comments on New England online newspaper stories about churches or church planting. But one to one, relationally, New Englanders generally speaking are not hostile to having spiritual conversations. Many have a great affection for spirituality, even if they are not religious or churchgoers themselves. On a cultural level, you may feel hostility to the presence of churches or “Christians,” but relationally, you will likely discover that folks will be interested in know more about your theology. And of course what you will invariably discover is that most have never heard the gospel and assume the message of Christianity is “be good.”

New Englanders Are Not Turned Off By Tradition

Generally speaking, the natives and long-timers in the region do not have the same hang-ups about “traditional church” as many in the Bible Belt do. They may not be interested in attending your church, but it’s probably not because you’re in a traditional building with a steeple and what-not. In fact, they probably like that about your building. But their hangup about church has nothing to do with architecture. And should they ever actually darken your church door, you will probably find that many expect it to be somewhat traditional in atmosphere and music, etc. Most will not care. Most don’t know any different. Of course, this is another truism that may differ area to area. In more urban areas, a more modern atmosphere may make more sense but in many other places, the locals have such an affection for the history of their place, they have an admiration and affection for the religious spaces, even if they don’t participate in them any more. A friend of mine planted a church in a rural area of Vermont a while back and hosted their worship gathering in a variety of spaces from town buildings to a local bar. When they finally moved into an abandoned church building, they saw more unbelievers show up. Why? Some said it was because they weren’t sure what the church was before. They thought maybe it was a cult. Somehow being in the church building let them know it was a church. New Englanders have hangups about religion but your traditional church building probably isn’t one of them. Similarly, having a “rockin’ band” is less important here. In fact, having one may seem like trying too hard, appearing too produced, showing off. On that note:

New Englanders Like Authentic Authenticity

It’s weird to qualify it that way, but in many church strategies, authenticity is produced. It is seen as a “style.” Which of course makes it inauthentic. But real authenticity just is. New Englanders, generally speaking, see through production really easily. This does not mean they like crappy stuff. It just means they value realness — in a worship service, for instance — more than a tightly-scheduled, expertly-conducted production. Showing up in town with what looks like a show will likely be a huge turn-off. These are some of the starkest differences between church ministry in the Northeast and church ministry in the Bible Belt. And again, there are places where this is more or less true, but New Englanders tend to value simplicity, relationality, and authenticity.

New Englanders Are Already “Doing Community”

In many places, churches establish small group programs of some kind to facilitate community experience among Christians. In most of those places, the program is meant to actually create the desire for community that the program is meant to satisfy. This is why most churches struggle with small group programs. The program cannot create the desire; it is only meant to channel it. Kinda like the trellis and the vine. When I moved to Vermont I wondered about community group programming for our church — and we do have community groups — but I quickly realized I didn’t need a program to make the locals do “life on life” with each other. Because they were already doing that! They were already up in each other’s business on a nearly daily basis. Christians with Christians, Christians with non-Christians, etc. This is another truism that may be less or more true place to place in the region, but in rural areas and smaller towns especially, you will discover that the value of community already exists. The shaping of suburbia with its values of comfort, convenience, and control hasn’t taken place. (Of course, self-interest is still a problem, but it manifests itself differently.) So many church planters will need to understand that the value of community doesn’t need to be invented, but more spiritually shaped.

New Englanders Are Not Averse to Sermons

Again, we are speaking generally here. But from the urban areas where the personality may be more “intellectual” to the rural areas where the personality may be more “traditional,” if people do come to your church, they will not be automatically turned off by the sermon element. I know dialogue is in fashion in many missional movements and the sermon is seen as an outdated mode of information relay, part of the bygone days of Christendom, but this is not a view to hold too tightly in planning for mission in New England. Now, people may be turned off by the content of your sermon; but they won’t often be turned off by the presence of a sermon itself. (And this is also setting aside bad preaching from good preaching. I’m speaking only about preaching as a mode of discourse.) You will likely find that many don’t mind the genre of sermon and in fact expect it. And in plenty of areas, good preaching — compelling in content and excellent in delivery — will be fairly attractive to even outsiders who are invited or otherwise get wind of it, even though you will have been told by many that the “old way” of doing church doesn’t work any more.

Mission in New England Costs More and Takes Longer

It’s hard soil and an expensive one. This is an important point especially related to fundraising outside of New England for fundraising in New England. I attended a speaking appearance by Tim Keller in Nashville, Tennessee a few years ago where the pastor host of the event was remembering being on the board that helped send Keller to Manhattan, lo, those years ago. He said one person spoke up in objection at one point, saying essentially, “I could plant ten churches in Birmingham, Alabama for the cost of this one church in Manhattan,” to which this pastor said, “We don’t need ten more churches in Birmingham; we need one in Manhattan.” Now, of course, Birmingham and every other town needs more gospel-centered churches, but his point was that mission should not be thought of in terms of “bang for your buck.” Manhattan isn’t in New England, but the financial realities are similar. My friend Stephen Um once said he reminds outsider funders that church planting in New England takes twice as long and costs twice as much. Those planning to bring gospel ministry for the long term, who plan to invest and put down roots — which is the only way to do mission here — need to prepare for this reality. You don’t just hang up a sign, send out a postcard, and throw a band on stage. You die.

Native Christians in New England May be More Hostile To Mission Than Unbelievers

This may be the hardest truism to handle. You come expecting brotherhood, unity, kingdom-mindedness. You have dreams of cooperation and collaboration. You expect hostility from the lost. But not from brothers and sisters in Christ. Again, this a huge generality and is not necessarily typical in every place in the region. But you may discover, church planter, that much of your opposition in ministry comes not from the lost locals — who may not be interested at all, or who may consider your endeavor a curiosity, but who otherwise don’t care what you do — but from 1) the false converts of Christless churches who oppose conservative evangelicalism, 2) the bigoted congregants of liberal/progressive churches who oppose conservatism, the “neo-Reformed,” charismaticism, or whatever your brand of evangelicalism may be, or who just oppose something new and seemingly attractive in their old and crusty environment, or — most sadly — 3) other evangelical churches who feel threatened by the newness of your ministry or its appearance of success. Some of your own brothers and sisters may begin to give you cold shoulders or spread gossip because of a sense of “turf” or a fear of losing congregants. This is a hard reality. So stay humble, stay faithful, stay lowly and meek, and of course — don’t recruit from other churches.

—

Related:

What Are New Englanders Like?

10 Reasons New England Suffers for Mission

No, Ma’am — New England Does Need Conversion

Challenges in Church Re-planting in New England

11 Blessings From My First 3 Years in Vermont

Rural Ministry is Not Second Rate

Winners of the T4A13 Giveaway

Tried posting these in the comments of the original Together For Adoption promotional giveaway, but didn’t hear from any of the winners. Soooo, bumping it up to a post of its own. Here are the winners of a copy of either Scotty Smith’s Everyday Prayers or Mike Reeves’s Delighting in the Trinity:

Wesley

Stephanie

Daniel

Nick Horton

Matt Mow

Delane Ramey

If one of those is you, please email your preferred mailing address to jared AT gospeldrivenchurch DOT com, and the T4A folks will get your book out to you shortly.

Together For Adoption 2013

The next Together For Adoption conference is coming quickly. October 4-5 at Louisville’s Southern Seminary.

Join speakers Scotty Smith and Mike Reeves, among others, for an exploration of “The Story that Changes Everything for Us and the Fatherless.”

Registration and more info here.

For Gospel-Driven Church readers, here’s a special giveaway offer:

We’ve got 3 copies of each of Smith’s Everyday Prayers and Reeves’s Delighting in the Trinity for those who’ll help get the word out about this great event. Here’s how to be eligible:

1. If you use FB or Twitter, post a link to the Together for Adoption conference page. If you’re planning to attend, include that info for your FB friends and fellow-Twits.

2. If you’re not a FB or Twitter user, use whatever means of communication you choose-email, phone, etc.-to tell some others about the conference.

3. Post in the comments to tell me how you’ve spread the good word.

Comment by Friday morning, the deadline, and I will announce the winners randomly selected then.

Nobody Ever Came to Christ Because He Knew Himself To Be Elect

“‘If I knew I were one of God’s elect, I would come to Christ; but I fear I am not.’ To you I answer: nobody ever came to Christ because he knew himself to be one of the elect. It is quite true that God has of His mere good pleasure elected some to everlasting life, but they never knew it until they believed in Christ.

Christ nowhere commands the elect to come to him. He commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. The question for you is not, ‘Am I one of the elect?’ but ‘Am I a sinner?’ Christ came to save sinners.”

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Christian Men Think Clearly Christianly

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

– Jude 10

I just read an article about a YouTube social experiment where an attractive woman walked up to men on the street and asked if they wanted to have sex with her. According to the report, she asked fourteen. The yeses and no’s were split down the middle, seven and seven. Some of the yeses might have been joking. Some of the no’s were apparently offended, some simply uncomfortable because they were with girlfriends or relatives when approached.

I wonder if any who said no had a cognitive dissonance between lustful thoughts and surface opportunity. Maybe this thing, this offer, this holy grail of craven sexual appetite — no-strings-attached instantaneous sexual availability — proved shocking, mentally discombobulating when put right out on the table.

There is a way fallen men tend to think about the sexual attractiveness of women. And then there is a way Christian men are commanded and empowered to think about the sexual attractiveness of women.

A man in bondage to his flesh will think blunt, fleshy thoughts: “She’s hot. I want her. The things I would do . . .” The thoughts aren’t even that articulate in the mind. They are impulses, images, urges. But make no mistake, there are clear statements of desire underneath the surface, buried by the immature groanings of lust. The statements are these: “I want to make her mine. She exists for me. I want to treat her like an object of my pleasure. I want to use her.” But of course if we were striving for authenticity, we’d probably replace “her” with “it.” The objectification in lust is that severe.

Those are the real aims of the appetite-driven man, even if he never acknowledges them or even thinks them.

The Christian man is faced with the same temptations. But having been indwelled by the Spirit and united to Christ, he is learning to discipline himself, to make a covenant with his eyes (Job 31:1), to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). So he thinks actual thoughts — clear, articulate, intentional thoughts. He says things with his mind, not just feels things with his libido, that address the sexual attractiveness of the woman he has encountered. He brings clear thoughts up to the surface. He is not a dog in heat. He has the fruit of self-control. He may think in the moment, “She is hot,” but he also thinks, “She is a person with a soul, a person made in God’s image, not to be used or exploited, not even in my imagination.” He thinks, “She is somebody’s daughter. She could be my daughter or my sister.” He thinks, “She is to be cherished, protected, honored. She is not to be exploited by me or anyone. She is not to be lusted after.”

Of course these sound like alien thoughts to many. They are not “natural.” And that’s the entire point. Christian men are men who have been supernaturalized, so they will think these thoughts. Christian men will think clearly and Christianly and clearly Christianly.

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

– Galatians 5:24

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

– 1 Peter 1:13