When in Rome

How are we to live as Christians in an age that seems to be increasingly at odds with what fealty to Jesus demands? If the local public schools are teaching kids to take on novel and strange ideas about the nature of gender - should we say anything? Should Christians simply keep their mouths shut and start quiet enclaves of traditional Christian ethics elsewhere? Should Christians try and adapt the Bible's teaching to these new ideas? Should Christians loudly protest what they see as the dehumanization and rebellion at the heart of these teachings? How are Christians to live, to speak, to interact with neighbors and a society that teaches these sorts of things? What's a Christian to do when so many trends in the public square are squarely at odds with what the Bible actually says?

We've entered an interesting age of the interactions between Christianity and Western Culture. For decades now a number of theologians have warned that the greatest divisions the church would see would be over how the church should relate to an increasingly secular culture (see notably Niebuhr's Christ and Culture and Carson's follow up, Christ and Culture Revisited). The cracks they saw coming in the church's future were not over classical theological debates, say baptism or predestination, but over how the church would relate to a culture increasingly and self-consciously in denial over God's actual existence and authority. Kevin DeYoung and others have written helpfully about different postures faithful Christians can take in these discussions. He breaks them down into charitable descriptions: Contrite, Compassionate, Careful, or Courageous - helping us to see the appeal of the various approaches. Niebuhr's classical categories of Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox and Christ transforming culture is another way of breaking down the question. But what a number of these writers have seen is that often in the history of the church theological and biblical compromise hasn't come first, but instead have followed a pre-disposition to how Christians should interact with the world around them. We are often more prone to allow our theology to be formed by these varying postures rather than letting our understanding of the bible and its theological truth determine how we should relate to the world's life around us.

And these questions are no longer speculative in nature. We are no longer merely considering postures and attitudes generally, but real relationships with neighbors, with co-workers and with family members. How do we obey Jesus' commands to love our neighbor, seek the lost and to abide in the Word of God? Answering these questions faithfully is one of the fundamental questions of discipleship in our day (perhaps it always has been.)

For the next few weeks at Trinity we want to consider how the Bible frames these concerns. It does so with incredible wisdom and clarity. God calls us into a life in the world marked by conflict, love, humility and biblical clarity. Jesus' own promises concerning the suffering of God's people does not come in a kind of religious vacuum, but as the often necessary expectation of seeking to live faithfully in societies that will often (if temporarily) be in conflict with God's commands and with the way that God has made the world.

We're going to look at four texts in the coming weeks, and explore their implications for faithful worship and living in Denver during our days:

1 - In John 17 Jesus prays for his people to be united in a world where the Evil One is still very much at work. He grounds that unity and God's keeping of his people in two big ideas, namely in God's very words and in a covenant identity grounded in the name of Jesus. He does not allow for his people to be taken out of the world, blissfully ignoring the trajectory of our cities and neighbors. Rather he calls us to a kind of faithfulness in the midst of the world that is committed to every word of God and in his saving work on our behalf. We'll start here on August 14.

2 - In Ephesians 5, Paul takes for granted that life in society's still opposed to the reign of Jesus will often be a war. There is no avoiding a very real war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But we want to look closely at what sort of warfare the people of God are to wage. It is a fight of faith - to believe and to wield the word of God as the lone weapon of our assault. We declare what as true, and hold fast to the person and work of Jesus as our defense against the rulers (and ideas, and politics, and media onslaught) of this present age.

3 - In 2 Corinthians 5 we gain an understanding of how the good and gracious reign of Jesus will be received. It will bring life to some and death to others. The people of God, conquered by Jesus are led through every city by our Lord and Savior and Brother - bearing witness to his supremacy. Paul warns us in this text that this will always engender two very strong responses in all the places we go: the joy of life and the ridicule of death. The response of those who see and hear the truth and beauty of the rule of Jesus is not the measuring stick of faithfulness. Our faithful following of Jesus in grace is.

4 - In 1 Corinthians 5 the people of God are called to a particular kind of holiness as a community, even as they live and interact with a world that will often be hostile to that holiness and love. Christians are to live holy lives together that seek to love and demonstrate hospitality - even to those who are their cultured despisers.

At the heart of faithful living in our time is a seeming dichotomy. We are at war and we are to love those with whom we are at war. We are to be humble and stubbornly committed to the truth of the bible. We are to show generous hospitality to those who may believe our deepest commitments are hostile and unloving. Let's consider what it means to live this way in our cities and neighborhoods in the coming weeks as we pray that God would use us to demonstrate the conquering hospitality of Jesus.