catapult magazine

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discussion

Thomas More

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laurencer
Jul 30 2004
03:41 pm

Most of Christ’s teachings disagree with our way of living. But preachers, … seeing that men will not fit their ways to Christ’s pattern, have fitted His teaching to human customs, to get agreement somehow or other.

— Thomas More, [i:60997517e1]Utopia[/i:60997517e1] (1516)

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Andrew H
Jul 31 2004
05:56 pm

Reminds me of a similar quote by some Scottish revivalist preacher (imagine cool accent):
“If the world rejected and killed the holiest man that ever lived, how come they have no problem getting along with Christians today?”

And a further challenge from Tony Campolo::
“It is time we stop preaching the gospel about Jesus Christ and start living the gospel that Jesus Christ preached.” (or something like that)

A friend of mine this summer has caused me to adopt the term Christ-follower in place of Christian for situations like this. The world has seen plenty of Christians in the last two millenia for good and for bad. It is past time for the world to see a group of Christ followers who are radically determined to live at the intersection of the word and the world and allow the primary to transform the latter. How often do we actually examine the word(s) of Jesus Christ in such a way that we seek to know how it can and will transform our corner of the world and every corner of the world.

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crlynvn
Aug 12 2004
04:56 pm

do you think that more was making a serious argument with [i:b82c764d33]utopia[/i:b82c764d33]?

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anton
Aug 13 2004
03:55 pm

The problem with fitting Christ’s teaching about how we should live to human customs is that we make the law into something we can keep. An elder once said to me, “The reason we like our traditions so much is that we can keep them.” His point was that we cut the law down to a manageable size. Christians are happy, because they can rest satisfied that they have fulfilled the law, but then, the law fails to drive us to Christ any longer. If we can keep the law and live as Christians ought to live, then we have no need for Christ to keep the law in our place.

I guess one point I’m trying to make is that we cannot live the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience and died on the cross, so that we have his righteousness given to us and he has God’s wrath for our sin poured onto him. The gospel is that our salvation does not depend on how we live, on our ability to keep the law. Our holiness is not a condition for salvation, but is itself the result of our salvation. Our lives, to the small extent that they are holy, is the result of Christ in us by his Spirit conforming us to the image of Christ.

In a book I read recently by Michael Horton, he said that the church has set about trying to make the gospel relevant to the culture, rather than laboring to make the culture relevant to the gospel. Our culture is full of people who have no hope if they have to depend on themselves. It does no good to tell them that Christianity is all about the way you live, because the better they come to understand God’s law, the more they will be driven to despair. Christianity is all about how Christ lived and died in our place. As Paul said, we ought to resolve to know nothing but “Christ and him crucified.” Now there’s a reason to live a life of thankful obedience!!

Would that the church would preach the gospel more often, telling us how Christ lived the victorious life for us, rather than telling us how we can live the victorious Christian life. I don’t know about you, but if my hope and strength comes from may ability to live a victorious life, I’m hopeless.