Values Reversal in the Gospel Message

In a previous post (August 6, 2007), I reflected on the idea that the true Gospel is in complete opposition to many values people almost universally consider correct and normal (even Christian people). By the standards of the world, they (that is the teachings of the NT and their resultant values) must actually be considered insane. (The word usually used by the politically correct is eccentric.) The apostle Paul gave voice to this attitude by saying, “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23). In the forgoing post I said, “The New Testament…proclaims a complete surrender to the will of God. It proclaims the way, not of plenty, comfort and complacency, but of poverty, sacrifice, and struggle.”

I am constantly amazed that most contemporary Christians don’t seem to get this simple fact. They glibly assume that their faith is about “being nice”, “getting along”, “feeling good” or “love” without for instance examining what true, Christian love really is, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, emphasis added). Love, real love, is sacrificial, it is not about being nice, getting along or feeling good.

This train of thought was started by a comparison of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3-11) with those from the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20-23). I have always been struck by the tone of this portion of the Lukan sermon. Apart from its shortness, it is stronger than that from Matthew, more to the point. And as I observed in the previous post, it has a clear eschatological profile somewhat obscured in the Matthean sermon. Luke captures this sense of strength by his recording of the word “now”, thereby building a frightening comparison between what happens now and what will happen then (upon the Day of Judgment).

In this sermon from Luke, Christ makes it very plain that the Kingdom of God (“Heaven” in Matthew’s Gospel) is as different from the world of men as it could possibly be. Everything we take for granted as normal and desirable, even as Christians, Christ says is not worth the struggle to get or to keep, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt 6:19-21).

Being a true follower of Christ (“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”, John 14:15) is costly. It requires sacrifice and total commitment in ways that we simply refuse to acknowledge seriously, including a willingness to suffer and die for Christ’s sake if that is what we are called or required to do (Rev 12:11). Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Matt 10:34-39 emphasis added). When we read words such as these, our first response is to trivialize them, to remove their sting, to explain them away as mere hyperbole. Do you think Christ was hyperbolizing? Do you think, in light of what He knew would later happen to Him at Calvary and what He told His disciples would also happen to them (John 15:18-21), that he was exaggerating? How can we explain these words and so many others just like them? What are we to do with them?

These ideas of suffering and death for the sake of Christ, do they not border on the insane? Can you imagine such a thing in today’s complacent, easy-going, post-Christian, materialist society as someone being persecuted and actually dying for Christ, perhaps horribly? But it is happening in other parts of the world. Even as I sit at my desk and write these words Christians somewhere are being threatened, beaten up, thrown in jail and killed. But we have grown fat in our wealth, materialism and spiritual complacency just as Moses describes in Deuteronomy and have shielded ourselves against the costly truth of Christ’s words.

Whenever I go through the exercise of reading the words of Christ from all four gospels, I am always struck by the essential other-worldliness of the statements. Modern Christianity has marginalized these passages, partly through the doctrine of the “carnal Christian” verses the disciple. We have fooled ourselves into believing there are two kinds of Christian: the ordinary, garden-variety who does not believe he is required to sacrifice his own worldly comfort and materialism for the sake of Christ, and the “super-Christian” who is able and willing to do so. This comfortable fallacy is not biblical and has nothing to do with being a Christian. Paul testifies of his own hardship as well as the danger of death in 2 Cor 11:23-27. And we also have the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John, as further evidence of the power normally resident in the early Church.

In the modern era, the best known martyr is probably Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resolutely condemned the whole idea of Christians who were not willing to sacrifice for the sake of Christ by describing the complacent attitude as “cheap grace”, that is grace without cost, without sacrifice. To quote Bonhoeffer from his best known work, The Cost of Discipleship: “The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving [Matt 7:6]... But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.”

I’ve been talking about sacrifice and commitment as well as other-worldliness and the reversal of values and have probably confused you no end, Dear Reader, by not making clear what I believe to be the relationship between them. The point I’ve been trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that biblical Christianity is not, nor could ever be a compromise with the world. It is other-worldly in its very essence. Its values are not those that we naturally hold dear. They are strange and foreign. They are meant to be enjoyed in the fullest sense after we die, not before. It is this element, this idea that there will be no real return on our investment—other than as it were in small measure—until after our death, that is so difficult for us, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14).

Please don’t understand though. I’m not suggesting that it is the duty of Christians to turn themselves into cannon-fodder or to become like the fanatical fundamentalists of Islam who gladly die (and kill) for Allah. Nor am I saying that the command given by Christ to the rich young ruler is necessarily binding on every one of us. I’m not saying wealth is bad, nor am I saying death is good. What I am trying to say is, first, we must not mistake the worldly blessings bestowed on us by God as having the same value and worth as the spiritual blessings we most often come to through struggle and sacrifice. Further, that we must not seek our reward here, in this life. Or more to the point, we must not look for the fulfillment of our reward here and now. While being a Christian will give us a foretaste of our reward in heaven, the fulfillment—the consummation of our marriage to our Bridegroom Christ—must wait, even for the Day of Judgment and the resurrection of the dead. Nevertheless, we have this first fruit made available to us through the atoning blood of Christ’s sacrifice and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, if we do not quench or grieve Him. But if our love for Christ is not sacrificial in its essential nature—if our love is not servant love—we will indeed quench the Spirit. Rather, our love, our commitment must be characterized by a willingness to go where we are called and to do what we are commanded, regardless of the personal cost. How many of us can say we demonstrate that kind of love? I can’t, at least not to the degree that I know—by the testimony of Scripture and inner conviction—is required of me. You see, I am the weakest of the weak. I often feel as did Paul, that I am the chief of sinners. Yet is that not how we all should consider ourselves? For it is not by our own power or will that we have the strength to make these sacrifices, but by the grace of God and the indwelling power of His spirit working in us.

I will probably have more to reflect on later, as I consider some of the real-life implications of this train of thought. Until next time.

Soli Deo Gloria.