The Secular Church

Scripture
2 Timothy 3:1-5; 14-17

Theme:
God's Amazing Word.

This week's lessons teach us the importance of abiding in God's Word alone.

Lesson
Now, how about the world's theology? Here's a subject you can deal with more briefly because the world's theology is perfectly obvious. It says that there's nothing much wrong with men and women and that we don't much need a savior, perhaps only a little bit of help. The church has begun to buy this theology as well. This does not mean that the church of Jesus Christ going by that name necessarily abandons the terminology. It will still speak of sin and salvation and faith and evangelism and Jesus and all these things, but it doesn't mean by these terms what the church has traditionally meant.

When the church used to speak of sin, it meant transgression of the Law of God. It meant rebellion against God. It meant what was basically wrong with the human race. In the new theology, the word sin is used, but sin basically means something that is wrong with the social structures and can easily be changed.

When the modern theology speaks of salvation, it doesn't mean salvation from sin by the work of Christ unto holiness, being made over into the image of Christ by the grace of God. It simply means deliverance from the oppression inherent in the structures.

When it speaks of faith, it means commitment to social change.

When it speaks of evangelism, it means proclaiming the gospel of revolution.

And when it speaks of Jesus, it doesn't speak of the One who is God come to this earth to redeem us from our sins. It speaks only of one who is an example whom all of us should follow.

The third aspect of the secular church's worldliness is the matter of the world's agenda. The secular church says that whatever the world does we ought to do; and, furthermore, if the world has something that is a high priority, this should be our priority too. Is the world interested in hunger? That should be a priority of the church. Is the world interested in revolution, liberation? That should be a priority of the church. Whatever it is, this should be our priority. This is not to say that the concerns of the world should not also sometimes be the concerns of the church. Perhaps evangelicals have been guilty of not being concerned enough with that which concerns our secular contemporaries. But I do deny that the priorities of the world should be the church's priorities. Our priorities must be determined not by what we hear on the news at 6:00 or 6:30 on a weekday evening, but rather by those priorities that are set forth for us on the pages of the Word of God: the proclamation of the Gospel, the building of the Church, and the establishing of righteousness, first of all in the Christian community and, God giving us grace, in the world at large.

I have one last point: the world's methods. What are the world's methods? The world's methods are politics and money, and this is where the thirsting of the secular church is today. Politics and money. That's why the secular church doesn't care much whether evangelicals proclaim an evangelical theology. That's okay; they don't care much about theology one way or the other. They're not liberal in theology anymore than they're conservative in theology. What they're interested in is power and money, and the two go together.

A number of years ago I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker concerning two pilgrims. They were coming over on the Mayflower, obviously, and they were having a conversation on the deck. One was explaining his motivation to the other, and he said, "My short-range goal is religious freedom, but my long-range goal is to go into real estate." Well, this is where the church has come in the long range.

Study Questions
How is Jesus viewed in secular theology?
How does the world's agenda shape the church?

Further Study
In today's lesson, Dr. Boice gave several definitions. For the following terms, give both the biblical and secular definitions:

Sin
Faith
Salvation
Evangelism