Some of the greatest lies you’ll ever believe are told by your eyes as you gaze into a mirror. Lies fueled by your own doubt and a culture that worships a false standard of beauty and worth. Beauty is formed in the eye of the beholder. But your beholder is God. He made you in His own image; He gave you that crown.
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 45
Some claim that to constantly be striking a “note of grace, grace, grace” in our sermons is not helpful in our culture today. The objection goes like this: “Surely Pharisaism and moralism is not a problem in our culture today. Rather, our problem is license and antinomianism. People lack a sense of right or wrong. It is ‘carrying coal to Newcastle’ to talk about grace all the time to postmodern people.” But I don’t believe that’s the case. Unless you point to the “good news” of grace, people won’t even be able to hear the “bad news” of God’s judgment. Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won’t know the difference between moralism and what you’re offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there’s a difference – that what they really rejected wasn’t real Christianity at all – will they even begin to consider Christianity?
– Tim Keller
as quoted by Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location2182
Daniel and some of his fellow believers at court fell into disfavor when they refused to participate in idolatry, but in all other respects they honored the king. The same advice is found in I Thessalonians 4:9-12: no blueprint for a godly commonwealth of transformation of culture, but a call to faithful members of the church and “to live quietly and to mind your own business, so that you may live properly before outsides and be dependent on no one.” In other words, it is an era of participating in the common culture together with non-Christians and participating in the heavenly communion of saints that is made visible on earth only in the church.
Horton, Michael; The Gospel Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World; Baker Books; Grand Rapids, MI; Copyright 2009; page 246
Invoking a by now faded ad from an Oldsmobile commercial, the president of a large confessional denomination recently said, “This is not your father’s denomination.” So much for God’s promise to be the God of the fathers and their children after them. For a faith that is passed along “from generation to generation,” capitulation to the culture of marketing is not a means of grace – the new creation breaking into the old – but a means of surrender to this passing age.
Horton, Michael; The Gospel Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World; Baker Books; Grand Rapids, MI; Copyright 2009; page 195
One thing we can be sure of: If we do not actively seek to come under the influence of God’s Word, we will come under the influence of sinful society around us. The impact of our culture with its heavy emphasis on materialism, living for one’s self, and instant gratification is simply too strong and pervasive for us to not be influenced by it. Once again, there is no such thing as a neutral stance on the continuum of influence. We are being drawn more and more under the transforming influence of Scripture, or we are being progressively drawn into the web of an ungodly society around us.
– Bridges, Jerry; The Disciplined of Grace:God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness; NavPress; Colorado Springs; copyright 1994; p. 166-167
A large part of our problem as evangelical believers is that we have defined sin in ints more obvious forms – forms of which we are not guilty. We think of sin in terms of sexual immorality, drunkenness, lying, cheating and murder. And in more recent years we’ve tended to focus on the societal sins of abortion and homosexuality. We see the ever-increasing pervasiveness of these more flagrant sins, and we see ourselves looking good by comparison.
Certainly these more gross sins of society are deep cause for concern, and I am grateful for the prophetic voices God has raised up to expose these moral cancers in our society. But we must not become so preoccupied with the sins of modern-day culture that we ignore the needs in our own lives.
– Bridges, Jerry; The Disciplined of Grace:God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness; NavPress; Colorado Springs; copyright 1994; p. 32
Living as Christians, the missional church seeks the welfare of the broken and sinful culture while never condoning sin in the church. We remind Christians and Christian leaders that the missional church is willing to take risks, make changes and suffer through mistakes as needed. We commit to become what Jesus ultimately desires for the church to be and do as it is led by leaders filled with the Spirit and guided by the Scriptures.
– Driscoll, Mark and Gary Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, 2008, p. 239
Believers in Jesus Christ seek the welfare of the city where God has sent them to live (Jeremiah 29:7) and pray to the Lord on behalf of its rulers (Ezra 6:10; I Timothy 2:1-2). They live as good citizens of the state while recognizing that they are first citizens of the state while recognizing that they are first citizens of the heavenly kingdom (Philippians 3:20). As the church proclaims the gospel and seeks to win people to Christ, it proclaims righteousness in the culture by deed and word and exposes its evils in a context of grace.
– Driscoll, Mark and Gary Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, 2008, p. 59
Jesus’ unparalleled humility is one of his most shocking attributes. Our culture believes that pride is our greatest friend although it is the reason why Satan himself was kicked out of heaven.
– Driscoll, Mark and Gary Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, 2008, p. 13
The truth of the matter is this: false ideas about truth lead to false ideas about life. In many cases, these false ideas give apparent justification for what is really immoral behavior, For if you can kill the concept of truth, then you can kill the concept of any true religion or any true morality. Many in our culture have been attempting to do this, and the past forty years of religious and moral decline trumpet their success. Unfortunately, the devastating consequences of their efforts are not just true for them – they are also true for all of us.
– Geisler, Norm and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, copyright 2004, page 40-41
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