One of the first acts of God’s post fall grace was His placing enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 2:15). If not for this act of grace “the seed of the woman” — those who belonged to God — would forever have been joining league with the seed of woman in rebellion against God to the point where the righteous seed would completely disappear. Even with the enmity placed between these two competing seeds we see the constant inclination of the seed of the woman to cast off their allegiance to God. From the “sons of God” (“seed of he serpent”) taking for themselves the daughters of men (“seed of the woman”) for wives to the flood to Babel we constantly read of the tendency of the “seed of the woman” to negotiate away the gracious enmity that God placed between themselves and the “seed of the serpent.”
Many are those who have appealed to “common grace” as a doctrine which allows us to negotiate away God’s gracious enmity. However, as I understand the Kuyperian development of the doctrine of common grace this doctrine was developed so as to account for how believers and unbelievers could work together to advance a common culture on the terms of a preexisting Christian worldview. However what we are finding increasingly today is the doctrine of common grace used as a means to explain how Christians and pagans can work together to build a common culture on the terms of a preexisting pagan modernist worldview. The doctrine of common grace is one thing when it is invoked in order to explain how Christians can work with non-Christians in order to advance a common culture on the terms of a preexisting Christian worldview. The doctrine of common grace is quite another thing when it is invoked in order to allow Christians to negotiate away God’s gracious enmity in order that modernists and Christians might build a common culture on the terms of a preexisting non-Christian worldview.
That contemporary Christians are negotiating away God’s graciously placed enmity are everywhere to be seen. In the denomination that I am affiliated with it can be seen in the push in some quarters to normalize homosexuality, in the recent acceptance of the Belhar confession, and in the attempt to water down the form of subscription. In the larger culture we see the attempt on the part of Christians to negotiate away God’s graciously placed enmity in the reality that contemporary Christians are so relaxed about how the current State is seeking to currently ascend to the most high in order to seize the scepter of God and His Christ. A Christian people who were fully invested with the gracious enmity of God against the “seed of the serpent” would be in visible and constant tension with the current State since it is constantly revealing itself as being occupied and controlled by the “seed of the serpent.”
What shall we say of this negotiating away of God’s gracious enmity that we find in the Church today? Whether we find this enmity negotiated away through pelagian or gnostic theologies that have crept into our fellowships or whether we find this enmity negotiated away through the homosexualization and feminization of our fellowships what shall we say of this negotiating away of God’s gracious enmity?
I believe what we must say is that God has, for some time, entered into judgment against the Church and as that judgment has fallen upon the Church it has rippled across our culture and people. God’s judgment has been to turn us over to our own negotiating away of enmity between ourselves and our enemies. The only cure for this is repentance.
However the repentance that is called for is a repentance that will firmly reestablish the enmity that has been negotiated away. Such a repentance has to be characterized by a repentance in our thinking for a repentance that will reestablish God’s gracious enmity is a repentance that must find the intellectual reasons why the enmity that we have negotiated away must be reestablished. So, the repentance that we stand in need of is not the kind of repentance that is going to be found in your typical Arminian – Pentecostal revival setting as it is the case that repentance found in those settings are most commonly associated with an affectation of the emotions absent a radical change in thinking.
God’s graciously placed enmity between God’s enemies and God’s people. God’s people have historically negotiated that enmity away. Common grace is a doctrine that is often used to justify negotiating away God’s enmity. Signs are abundant that the contemporary Church continues today to negotiate away God’s enmity, especially as seen in its refusal to be at enmity with the current serpent state. Ultimately, all of this is indicative of God’s judgment against the Church — a judgment that ripples across the culture as a whole. The cure for this is a repentance characterized not primarily by the affectation of the emotions but rather characterized by the affectation of the intellect. Historically such repentance has been found especially among Reformed Churches.
Bret, very well put. The American Church is now suffering the just consequences for having turned from the Lord to openly embrace the enmity in the name of establishing mutual peace and prosperity (Ezra 9:12). Repentance means turning back to the Lord and His word as our standard for the whole of man for the whole of life, which means breaking from our unequally yoked communion with the wicked . . . that is, to secede culturally, as has always been the biblical model of repentance for the Lord’s people. 28 Now the rest of the people—the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Nethinim, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and understanding—29 these joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes:” Nehemiah 10:28-29
Now that is what I call pushing the antithesis! Nice job, Bret.