Category: Apologetics

Religion as an Inescapable Concept … Thank You Atlantic Monthly

“The notion that all deeply felt conviction is sublimated religion is not new. Abraham Kuyper, a theologian who served as the prime minister of the Netherlands at the dawn of the 20th century, when the nation was in the early throes of secularization, argued that all strongly held ideologies were effectively faith-based and that no human being could survive long without some ultimate loyalty. If that loyalty didn’t derive from traditional religion, it would find expression through secular commitments, such as nationalism, socialism, or liberalism. The political theorist Samuel Goldman calls this “the law of the conservation of religion”: In any given society, there is a relatively constant and finite supply of religious conviction. What varies is how and where it is expressed.”

Atlantic Monthly Article
I would only take exception at the notion of “religion finding expression through secular commitments.” Once those putatively “secular commitments” become the person’s or people’s ultimate loyalty the commitment is no longer secular but religious. Overtly religious commitments surrendered are always surrendered for new religious commitments even if those commitments are now sold subverted as “secular commitments.” Kuyper understood this as we see in the quote above. The author of the Atlantic Monthly piece should have stuck with these “new” secular commitments being properly characterized as “sublimated religions.” Kuyper properly noting that these new commitments were all “faith-based” proves that religion as religion never goes away.

This demonstrates that religion is an inescapable concept. When you throw in the observation above concerning “ultimate loyalty” and understand that wherever a people’s “ultimate loyalty” lies there you have identified their God or god concept we learn that God likewise is an inescapable concept for all peoples. The first step in understanding a culture or social order is identifying their God (ultimate loyalty) and their religion (ultimate faith-based commitments). A people’s religion will be consistent with whatever their ultimate loyalty is and their ultimate loyalty will be consistent with their religion.

This means that no person or peoples are “more religious” or “less religious” than other persons or peoples. All people are uniformly religious. It is just a matter of identifying where their God and religion lie. This also means that all persons and peoples have the same religious furniture in their thinking. Universally all people have categories of origin, sin, redemption, destination, nature of man, etc. etc. etc. Now, most people will not be epistemologically self-conscious about what they believe but that does not mean that they are not acting in terms of these un-articulated to themselves categories.

So, for example, the Communist god is the Communist party. Their religion based on their god concept finds them believing that man is basically good (Communist anthropology). Their religion teaches them an origin story that is based on materialistic time + chance + circumstance. Their sin concept is in rebelling against the diktats of the Communist party. Their redemption category is found in the payment of their own sin of rebelling against the party by confessing their guilt and gladly receiving the bullet to the nape of the neck. Their religious belief regarding their telos is a yet unattained Utopia. The most ardent Communist is every bit as religious as your most committed Medieval Monk.

Some Thoughts on How the Cultural Marxists Weaseled Their Way Into The Church Leadership

After the lesson on Critical Race theory last night a young mother asked me what connection the contemporary church is using as a segue to connect Christianity with Cultural Marxism so as to read Christianity through a cultural Marxist grid (template, prism).

I believe we get pointed in the right direction in what follows;

1.) Cultural Marxist sells itself as being the champion for the oppressed. The Cultural Marxist comes to the clergy and says…”See, you say God is for the oppressed and now you know that we are for the oppressed, therefore, Cultural Marxism is a good fit for Christianity.

 I believe in part the answer to this is as follows;

a.) God is not universally for the oppressed. God is only for His people who are oppressed. Those who are oppressed and are also rebelling against God, God is judging them via their oppressions.

b.) The oppressed that God is for are the righteous. The oppressed that the Cultural Marxists are for are the sodomite, the feminist, the disaffected minority, and the member of anti-Christ religions. Therefore, we see this meme of “oppression” is not common ground between Cultural Marxism and Christianity but the clergy are too stupid to get it.

2.) The Fatherhood of God over all men and the brotherhood of all men. The Cultural Marxist plays on the emotions of stupid clergy by talking about the necessity to “love” all men. And the Christian agrees that we must love all men but insists that loving the wicked means proclaiming their sin and resisting their attempts to subjugate Christians by taking control of the social order. The Christian insists that love to all men means treating them consistent with God’s revealed law and God’s revealed law calls for some pretty stiff sentences for many that the Cultural Marxists are telling us we must love by accepting. However, overwhelmed by this mantra of “the Fatherhood of God over all people, and the brotherhood of all men” the Cultural Marxist dupes the stupid clergy into thinking that when they are not resisting the Cultural Marxist proletariat they are at that point showing love.

3.) The Cultural Marxist plays on the alleged guilt of Christianity of yesterday. The Cultural Marxist finds Christianity guilty of any number of sins in the past and tells the stupid clergy that they can make it all up by reinterpreting Christianity through their anti-Christ grid. Of course, much of what the Cultural Marxist comes up with as against Christianity is just so much false guilt but again … the clergy being stupid doesn’t know history and is too lazy to do the work that is required in order to expose the false guilt heaped on them by the Cultural Marxist.

4.) Much of the weakness that Cultural Marxism is currently exploiting is due to the Church being unwilling to construct a Biblical doctrine of benevolence. Because the Church and its mission sending agencies, by their financial support, work to the end to overturn God’s connection between obedience and blessing and disobedience and cursing the Cultural Marxist is able to come along and worm their way into the Church and Mission sending agencies because the Cultural Marxist also desires to overturn God’s connection between obedience and blessing and disobedience and cursing. The Church continues to create “rice Christians” by the way it practices benevolence. God’s means of drawing and destroying is bound up with the blessings that come from obeying the Gospel and the cursing that comes from rebelling against Christ. Man-centered churches think that their way is more higher and loving than God. Our supposed help is typically not helping but working against God and distorting a clear view of reality and this distorting a clear view of reality by seeking to be “nicer than God” is right up the Cultural Marxists alley.

5.) The Cultural Marxists showed up in the Church speaking of “Social Justice.” The churchmen said, “sure, we’re for justice” without asking what the Cultural Marxists meant by the term. Now Cultural Marxism defines justice in almost all the churches. This is a worldview issue and reveals a continued unwillingness on the part of the Church to understand that words only mean what they mean as existing in a particular weltanschauung. The Church cannot continue to lend credence to people who show up bleating about “Social Justice” without demanding a worldview examination of what the bleaters mean by “Social Justice.” If that question had been asked and the responding answer closely examined the Cultural Marxists would not have taken over the modern Church in the West.

6.) An unbalanced, distorted understanding of the “Golden Rule” is probably the most common vehicle that Marxists use to subvert Christian thinking. By interpreting Matt 7:12 (Golden Rule) as a mandate for radical egalitarianism rather than a standard for equal treatment under God’s law and Biblical justice, then any situation where one party (e.g., white men) is in a higher position of authority or status or wealth relative to the other party (e.g., people of color), can be caricatured as a violation of Christian ethics.

Because of this wrong reading of the Golden Rule, the Cultural Marxist has been able to come inside the Church by the means of demanding that the Church follow the wrong definition of the Golden rule as provided by the Cultural Marxists. Take patriarchy as an example. The Cultural Marxists in the Church are now railing against patriarchy with the allegation that people who believe in biblical patriarchy are not following the Golden Rule because they are not doing undo women what they would want to be done unto them. Nevermind Scripture teaches male headship, leadership in home, church, and the civil order.

Carol Swain and “The New White Nationalism”

The most impressive study by far on this topic comes from the Princeton scholar Carol Swain and her book “The New White Nationalism in America.” Published in 2002, Swain argued that what she called the new white nationalism is different than the white supremacism of old, which intuited whites as biologically, genetically, and intellectually superior to non-whites. The new white nationalists are instead motivated by something entirely different: they’re making the case that the current project of multiculturalism is unfairly and arbitrarily discriminating against white people and white interests on behalf of non-white constituents whose interests are taking a priority in terms of national policy. In other words, if we are society that is increasingly built upon the leftist notion of identity politics, where blacks have their own political interests and Hispanics have their own political interests and Asians have theirs, then it logically follows that white people must have their own unique political interests as well. And yet, when whites assert such logic, they are scolded for exemplifying bigoted and racist sentiments!
 
Swain argues that concern over this blatant double-standard goes way beyond white nationalists; it resonates deeply with the wider white population and is causing significant resentment and backlash. A recent study found that more than half of white Americans believe that “whites have replaced blacks as the ‘primary victims of discrimination.’”
 
Dr. Steve Turley
Excerpts from Newsletter
 
I would only add here that we have to keep the ideological aspect of all this before us as well as what Turley brings out. At the end of the day, this isn’t only about Identity politics as if people from different races can’t be in opposite racial camps then what the identitarians insist only exist for particular races. For example, there are HUGE numbers of White people who are identifying with minorities in the BLM movement in this country, and that because the minority political movement is ideological as much as racial. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist movement and what it is achieving is it is convincing a large percentage of the black community (93% plus) that to be black or minority is to be Marxist. The resistance to that Black Lives Matter movement is found primarily in the white community, which ideologically speaking, is Anti-Marxist. However, there are plenty of white people (in the Academic, Feminist, Pervert, Journalism, and Ecclesiastical communities) who support BLM and the Marxism it shovels. So the Identity politics does not fall exactly along racial lines. What is really going on underneath reveals itself when people of other races cross Identity politics lines to join people of different races in order to support their majority ideology in those racial movements. In brief, a small percentage of the minority community hates the Marxist movement(s) and a substantial percentage of the white community (via perversion, Academia, Feminists, the Church etc) support the Marxism characterized by BLM and anti-fa.
 
The unfortunate thing here is that the political fault lines do indeed end up being largely racial in terms of who is and is not in the different Marxist vs. Anti-Marxist camps and when that happens generalities pile up to the point that people in all races just begin assuming on the basis of race alone that the people they are seeing automatically belong to the ideological camp that is most often associated with their race.
 
And to be honest, while may not be ideal this is understandable. When conflict begins to heat up generalities are a good thing to operate by if one has to make snap decisions upon which the survival of one’s family may depend.

Galatians 3:26f & The Indiscriminate Nature of the Gospel AND the Foolishness of Social Egalitarianism

Galatians 3:26-29

26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

—

BACKGROUND

To pick up the stream of thought of that which is going before in Galatians we find the emphasis here on Sonship explained by the earlier teaching that before the advent of Christ the people of God were as children under the tutelage of the ceremonial law (3:24-25). The problem in Galatians is that the Judaizers desired to foist upon Gentile Christians the ceremonial law. The Judaizers were in effect saying that in order to become Christians one had to become cultural Jews observing circumcision and Jewish food laws. St. Paul in Galatians argues a resounding “NO” to the Judaizing idea that the Gentiles had to become cultural Jews in order to be Christian.

Christ has come and so the ceremonial law had served its purpose. The ceremonial law were to the people of God before Christ what braces were to a child with weak legs. Once those legs gain their strength the necessity for the braces end. The ceremonial law had the intent of placarding Christ before Christ came but once Christ had arrived in order to be an aid to faith. However with the arrival of Christ those ceremonial law braces are fulfilled and are no longer needed. The case with the Judaizers in Galatia however is that they were telling these non-Jewish converts they had to put the legal braces back on.

The Holy Spirit argues that with the advent of Christ there is no longer a need for braces. The old age that required the law as a tutor for children has passed and the new age wherein we are no longer children but sons of God has dawned.

This is where St. Paul starts in vs 26. There are all Sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Of course the Sonship that Paul speaks is a son-ship by Adoption. Jew or Gentile those brought into the family of God are brought in by Adoption. We have passed through the courtroom and have been declared righteous because of the finished work of Jesus Christ wherein as our substitute our sins are owned by Christ as His own and His righteousness is reckoned to our account. Now having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ we now have access to the family room. The court room has an exit that leads to the family room and there we find adoption. We are not treated as the former criminals and sinner that we were but now we have concourse and fellowship with God and all the Saints who are now and who have gone before.

We are adopted. We have all the privileges of family. There is the sense of intimacy, the ability to cry out Abba Father, the confidence that God as our Father will provide, protect, comfort, and discipline, each as in turn we need. We are adopted and because of that we can have confidence of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

And the inspired Apostle says that this adoption is through faith in Jesus Christ just as our Justification was through faith in Jesus Christ. Like Justification, this adoption is a forensic / legal category. Our Adoption is not a matter of our emotions or feelings at any given time but it is a matter of being legally true. Because of the finished work of Jesus Christ it is a legal fact that can’t be altered that I / we belong to the family of God. As a legal fact nothing can change that.

Our faith in Jesus Christ holds on to that Adoption just as it holds on to our Justification. Faith in Christ is the key that upon regeneration unlocks all these blessings.

It is interesting that the moment Paul talks about faith in Jesus Christ he immediately turns to Baptism thus joining at the hip again faith and baptism. Faith and Baptism have the closest possible relation. This faith that Paul talks about has as its badge of identity in baptism. Baptism is God’s sign and seal – His token that bespeaks the presence of faith.

So, intimately bound up is Baptism with faith that Paul can say that all of you that have been Baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. This is yet another objective category statement. Being baptized we have legally identified with Christ. Having been identified with Christ there is no need to go back to those ceremonial laws that the Judaizers wanted to press on the Gentiles. There is no need to run back to the ceremonial law for help with salvation. Instead we have but to look to Christ … look to our Baptism which proclaims Christ … remind ourselves of the faith that was given us as a gift of God.

We should mention here… and I mention this as a self-described theonomist that this is one of the dangers of some versions of theonomy. There is such a high regard for God’s law that it becomes a low regard for Christ. Theonomy if not built with guard rails can become a Judaizing error.

Next, with the mentioning of Sons of God we should briefly remind ourselves of the antithesis this implies along with the concept of adoption and baptism.

Either you are Sons of God or you are not. If you are not you are sons of your father the devil and so are Christ haters. It does not matter how civil, how nice, or how polite you are. If you are not Sons of God through faith in Christ God is opposed to you. Opposed to you every single day and with every single breath. This is what the Scriptures teach and this is what our Heidleberg catechism teaches,

God is terribly displeased with our inborn as well as our actual sins, and will punish them in just judgment in time and eternity, as he has declared: Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them (Deut. 27:26).

This is God’s attitude towards all those who do not have faith in Jesus Christ … towards all Christ haters. He is not a neutral God. He is a God who is either all in for His people as His Sons or He is all in as opposed to those who oppose Him. God is angular and will never be made smooth.

But the Gospel commands all men everywhere to repent and have faith and be Baptized and so clothe yourself with Christ. God commands…. will you not give up on your life of weariness characterized by a heavy laden-ness that no man should bear and look to Christ and so become a Son of God? God commands you to give up on gnawing on the vile and unseemly ends of your pathetic selfish life and come to Him to have life and life abundantly. Why would you ever rebel against such a life-giving command?

St. Paul then moves on in vs. 28 he demonstrates that regardless of very real distinctions that exist in their lives when it comes to this matter of Sonship – which is the subject at hand – there are no exceptions. Jews, Greeks, Slaves, Freeman, Men and Women are all alike Sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ … all who have clothed themselves with Christ in Baptism are Sons of God. When it comes to the issues of justification and adoption the ground at the Cross is level. Nobody has more status when it comes to being Sons of God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

This needed to be said because these Judaizers that the Apostle is contending with had a natural tendency to think of themselves as having a leg up on the Gentiles when it came to this business of being sons of God.

Something we need to realize though is that this text is very specific in the subject matter of which it treats. It is dealing with the issue of how the ground at the Cross is level when it comes to becoming Sons of God. It is not teaching a vapid egalitarianism. We know this if only by the fact that God gave Elders and Pastors to the Church as leaders for the Church. This teaches that there is such a thing as godly hierarchy and that even in the Church. Galatians 3:28 or its parallel passage Colossians 3:11 in no way teaches social egalitarianism.

We pause this morning to give more consideration to Gal. 3:28, if only because this text has become the center of a firestorm in the life of the contemporary Western Church.

In the last few decades, vs. 28 has been appealed to in order to legitimize the understanding that traditional, and heretofore thought to be Biblical role distinctions between men and women, both in the home and in the Church, are invalid, improper, and wrong.

It has been appealed to in such a fashion as to suggest that once people are converted all their creaturely distinctions are destroyed so that in becoming a son of God grace destroys nature. According to this Anabaptist type reasoning, the Church is the one place where enlightenment egalitarianism should be pursued.

Vs. 28 is appealed to as being the text that informs us that as Christians a new social order has dawned that sloughs off the consequences of the fall, which includes the consequence of Male headship in the home and in the Church. Those who make this appeal reason backwards from Galatians 3:28 to suggest that in the creation order and before the fall there was no notion of male headship and it is only with the fall and sin coming into the created order — they reason — that we find male headship. Put concisely, this ‘evangelical’ feminism argues that male headship is a consequence of sin that is reversed in Church and home (and culture where Christ’s rule sways) with the coming of Christ’s Kingdom. Galatians 3:28 is seen as a hermeneutical North star for many in the ‘Evangelical’ feminist camp. This text becomes the healing astringent that all other texts that deal with male and female relationships must be read through since it provides the constant that corrects all the other cultural relative situations with which all other New Testament texts are putatively infected.

We want to note that while this is an interesting and even innovative argument it hopelessly shipwrecks and splinters upon several significant boulders of reality.

First, there is the boulder that up until recently in Church history, no known major Church Theologian outside the Anabaptist camp read Galatians 3:28 in such a way as to suggest that because of the advent of Christ and the arrival of His Kingdom what arrives is this idea of an egalitarian social order that flattens out of all authority (Male and Female), class (Slave and Free), and ethnic (Jew and Gentile) distinctions. What we see then is that the recent hailing of Galatians 3:28 as the text of social egalitarianism is unique and has no historical legs upon which to stand.

Now, we must admit that it is possible that 2000 years of Church history got this text all wrong and further missed the egalitarian New Testament theology that it teaches. Further, we must concede that there may yet be found some Church Theologians in history who read Galatians 3:28 the way that it is being read today. Still, one would think that this lack of clear precedent would cause people to go slow on embracing Galatians 3:28 in a way that no Church Theologian in history, except for the Anabaptists, that we know of has ever embraced it.

Instead, we read from the Fathers quotes like this,

Difference of race or condition or sex is indeed taken away by the unity of faith, but it remains embedded in our mortal interactions, and in the journey of this life the apostles themselves teach that it is to be respected, and they even proposed living in accord with the racial differences between Jews and Greeks as a wholesome rule.

St. Augustine on Galatians 3:28

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3)

Second, there is the boulder of the rest of the New Testament Scripture. If it were the case that the Kingdom of Christ eliminates the idea of gender roles, class roles, and ethnic roles we would expect to find a consistent testimony to that end in the NT record, and yet quite to the contrary we find the opposite testimony. The New Testament retains distinction between male and female in Godly homes in passages like I Cor. 11:1-16, 14:34, I Tim. 2:11-14, Ephesians 5:22f, and I Pt. 3:1f. The New Testament retains distinctions between Jew and Gentile in passages like Romans 9-11 where the discussion centers on how Israel will be saved vis-à-vis the Gentiles and retains distinctions between nations that are inferior in some way from other nations (Titus 1:12). The New Testament retains distinctions between Slave and Free in passages like Philemon, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1, and I Timothy 6:1-2. There is simply no way that a fair-minded person can read the New Testament and conclude that it teaches some kind of social egalitarianism. Everywhere on the New Testament pages is the reality of gender, ethnic, and class distinctions and not in the sense that these distinctions are automatically evil.

Third, there is the boulder of the whole context of Galatians 3. From what we have seen as we have together worked through Galatians 3 the labor of the Apostle in this book is in no way connected to the issue of gender, labor or ethnic roles. Rather the issue in Galatians is how it is that Gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to become Christians. The issue is the freedom that the Gentiles have in Christ quite apart from the desire of the Judaizers to foist upon the Galatians Jewish old Testament covenantal boundary markers that are obsolete because of the finished work of Christ. Galatians speaks up the completely gracious character of God’s salvation. To suddenly come upon vs. 28 and insist that it is the interpretive key that unlocks the revolutionary egalitarian nature of the Kingdom of God is to do egregious violence to the whole text of Galatians. Interpretively, such action is hermeneutical manslaughter.

Context is central in this matter. If I walk into a closed room and see and a 55 year old man hugging and kissing an 18 year old I need context in order to understand what is happening. It may be the case that this is a pervert that is forcing himself upon some young lady in which case I have need to come to her rescue. It may be the case that this is a May — December Marriage in which case I may need to tell them to get a room. And it may be the case that he is her grandfather and he is trying to console her over some kind of loss in which case I should shut the door and mind my own business. Context means everything.

What egalitarians do with Galatians 3:28 in order to support the idea that with the advent of the Gospel role distinctions are eliminated is the same as happening upon a May December Marriage and concluding that the gentlemen needs to be hauled off to jail. ‘Evangelical’ feminists in appealing to Galatians 3:28 in order to support their agenda are contextually challenged. Context means everything and the context of Galatians 3:28 has nothing to do with the elimination of gender, class, or ethnic distinctions that continue to exist in the Kingdom.

John Piper offers here that ,

The context of Galatians 3:28 makes abundantly clear the sense in which men and women are equal in Christ: they are equally justified by faith (v. 24), equally free from the bondage of legalism (v. 25), equally children of God (v. 26), equally clothed with Christ (v. 27), equally possessed by Christ (v. 29), and equally heirs of the promises to Abraham (v. 29).

I would only add that the same is true of Masters and Slaves and Jews and Gentiles.

Galatians 3:28 does nothing to overturn the Historical and Biblical categories that maintain social differences between different people. Now, to be sure Galatians 3:28 does eliminate things like hatred of the brethren that are different from us, precisely because we are all in Christ and are all children of God. The historical hatred of Jew for Gentile, the historical maltreatment of Master over slave, the historical abuse of men upon women was never God’s design but with the advent of Christ and with the bringing in of all these different relationships into the Church the former animosity between these groups is vanquished. BUT saying that former animosity is vanquished and saying that all are now equal in role is to say very different things.

With the advent of Christ and the presence of His Kingdom what the leaven of the Gospel works through home, church, and culture is not the elimination and flattening out of the richness of the varied social tapestry that constitutes life but rather the putting right of the social tapestry that was rent by the fall. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ what we should expect to find is neither a gender blender society, nor a society where labor and capital distinctions are gathered up into some kind of socialistic nirvana, nor a society where ethnic or racial distinctions are effaced. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate the restoration of true masculinity and femininity is on display in marriages where incredibly intelligent wives eagerly submit to incredibly humble husbands, who are in a haste to love their wives sacrificially. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate a renewed harmony of interests between Master and Slave where each realizes that their own interests are best served by looking out for the interest of the other. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate the different nations (ethnos) being brought into the Kingdom so that on that last day they will enter into the new Jerusalem nation by nation so that what is heard is the beautiful harmony of a multi-part Choir where every still distinct tribe, tongue and nation render praise unto the King of Kings. The extension of the Kingdom of Christ does not result in a situation where all the ‘colors bleed into one.’ That is a socialistic humanistic vision. The extension of the Kingdom of Christ results in the old Puritan notion of the ‘harmony of interests.’

Returning to our boulders we must mention one last boulder that the ship of hermeneutical feminism crashes against as it seeks to twist Galatians 3:28 to its end. The last boulder is that the reading that ‘Evangelical’ Feminism is trying to use for Galatians 3:28 proves too much. If it really is the case that social order distinctions are eliminated in Christ, including that of maleness and femaleness then the Church has little room left to oppose homosexuality in the Church. If Galatians 3:28 teaches that there is no longer male or female in Christ, and if that means that traditional distinctions between men and women no longer exist because of Christ’s Kingdom, then how can we maintain that sexual distinctions are an exception? More then that if the presence of Christ’s Kingdom provides the kind of egalitarianism that these hermeneutical wizards insist upon then where is the room for parental authority over children? If children are equal to parents because they are all in Christ then on what basis can parents require obedience? If that reductio sounds stupid it is supposed to. The only reason that otherwise normal people no longer find the reasoning of ‘Evangelical’ feminists to be equally stupid when it comes to their egalitarian appeals is because we have slowly been conditioned to accept it. In this culture and in the Western Church I may have to live with it but I don’t accept it.

There remain functional differences between gender, labor and ethnic categories. We all are ontologically human but functionally speaking there remains God honoring differences. We all have the same value before God, all being made in God’s image, but just as in a choir both the mezzo Soprano and the Alto are ontologically human, they remain functionally separated. Both of their functions are needed for a good choir and are to be esteemed in their place. A good choir doesn’t get better by making every one sing the same bland part. The same kind of thing is true when it comes to the insipid blandness that is being reached for in terms of male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile by the egalitarians among us.

Now returning to Galatians 3:28 we may ask ourselves why the Apostle chooses the three couplets of ‘male – female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile?

Of course we can’t say authoritatively because the text doesn’t authoritatively say but we perhaps can make a pretty good guess. The answer may be very much in keeping with the context that is going on here.

In vs. 29 the Church is reminded that they are ‘heirs according to the promise.’ Now in order to be an heir their must be an inheritance and quite obviously that inheritance is all the blessings that we have in Christ Jesus. In choosing the couplets that he chooses the Holy Spirit may be intimating the superior character of the new and better covenant as opposed to the old and worse covenant. Under the Old Testament law, Greeks, slaves, and females could not inherit land and property directly. These were restricted in the life of the old covenant. However in the New and better covenant the anti-type inheritance has come to which the inheritance of land and property in the OT was only a type, and it comes in such a way that people from every tribe, tongue, nation, class, gender, and economic strata can directly inherit. The inheritance cocoon that was the Old covenant produces a butterfly inheritance that is beyond and above what anybody in the Old covenant could have anticipated. No boundaries are erected to the inheritance of salvation. All may inherit. All may become sons of God.

And the effect of the fullness of that inheritance coming to more and more people including the renewal that is part of it is not an ugly egalitarianism where all distinction and diversity is crushed. That can only be some kind of Unitarian vision where the singleness and unitary character of God produces a bland and unitary character of culture. No, the Trinitarian Christian vision is that the effect of the inheritance coming to more and more people makes for a renewal where people in their different God honoring roles and places work increasingly together to advance the Glory of God by honoring God in the places and roles to which they have been placed and called.

The Word “World” In a Structure and Direction Paradigm

Today we want to start with the fall in Genesis. We know from the Genesis text that resulted in a lack of intimacy with God and man. Instead of God and man walking in the cool of the Garden in a harmony of interest, there is a summons by God for man to come forth that is resisted by a fall-driven emotion called “fear” (Gen. 3:8), and reveals a first time conflict of interest between God and His creation. Sin has entered the world via Satan’s temptation and man’s disobedience and the immediate consequence is a disordered world between God and man.

This disordered world then ripples out to man as seen in the lack of taking responsibility or ownership for their role in the fall. Adam blames God and Eve … Eve blames the Serpent. The conflict of interest that was absent in the Garden becomes a conflict of interest not only between God and man but between man and man.

Of course we know that these are not the only consequences of the fall … of man’s sin. Romans 5 tells us,

12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—

This is the common teaching we find here that Adam’s fall, acting as mankind’s Federal covenant head meant that all men share in the culpability of Adam’s sin. The puritans taught this to their children in their rhyme books, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” So the fall had a universal impact on mankind.

However, the negative impact of the fall is not only restricted to Adam and his human descendants but we also learn that the impact of the fall reaches beyond our first parents. We see that most immediately in Gen. 3:17 God curses the ground because of Adam’s sin. Already we see here that the Fall is not restricted to mankind. We get a fuller reading of this later in Scripture

Romans 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of [f]corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Here we see that the fall was cosmic so that not only did all of mankind fall in Adam but also all creation fell with the entrance of sin.

Scriptures teach that the fall was an event that resulted in all of God’s good creation being twisted and distorted from how it dropped originally from God’s hand. All of creation is involved in the drama of the fall and all of creation is involved in the drama of God’ restoration.

This is how serious the Fall is. We are living in a fallen world and sometimes that is more obvious to us than at other times. As we age we feel the fallenness of the world more. As we find dreams we once had for the future not coming to pass we feel the fallenness of the world much more. When relationships become tense and full of friction we feel our fallenness. We come to have an existential understanding that nothing in creation remains unaffected by the fall.

There is a term used in Scripture that tries to capture the impact and vast measure of the fall and that is the word “world.”

However, it is a sneak word that has been much mishandled over the centuries leading to some very suspect theology. The word “world” referring to the idea of the negative consequence of the fall we find in passages like,

Romans 12:2 where the Spirit says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.”

Now here clearly the word “world” has the meaning of fallenness. I am going to suggest that what Paul is saying here that Christians are not to conform any longer to the pattern of this world as this world lies in the grips of the fall.

We are going to see that Paul is not saying flee this world or give up on this world. He is using the word “world” in a very specific sense and that specific sense is the idea of the world in connection to its fallenness.

Another example of this usage of the word world is found in Colossians 2:8 where he talks about,

“… deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

We find the same sense when James writes,

“1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Peter chimes in with this kind of usage of the word world

II Pt. 2:20 – If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing out Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In all of these cases, the word world is used in a negative sense. But we have to realize that all words have a range of meaning and in this case world in it usage refers to life as it is lived under the aegis of sinful rebellion outside of Christ.

One of our theologians put it that this usage of the word world, “refers to the totality of unredeemed life dominated by sin outside of Christ.”

So “world” in this usage is the resultant consequence of what the fall did to make abnormal the creation as it fell from God’s hand all well and good. In the usage of the word in this way wherever you find the inversion of God’s created order to purposes that defy God’s original structure of creation there you find “world.” It is in this sense that James can say, “Friendship with the world is enmity towards God.” Friendship with that which is the opposite intent of God in his creation is hatred towards the creator God.”

This is important to grasp because the lack of a proper understanding of this has led to some very unfortunate conclusions that have in turn led to some very unfortunate theology – so-called.

Instead of this understanding of the word “world” as meaning “the created order operating as in sinful rebellion to God,” the Church has to often snatched on to the word to refer to some distinct aspect of creation that is in and of itself “evil.” Whatever those areas might be we tend then to refer to those areas as “worldly”… or later we used the word “secular.” In doing so we created a category of sacred vs. secular where we listed some things that were sacred – things which were to be honored – and we listed some things that were worldly – things that we need to stay away from.

An example of this type of thinking is found in the film “Chariots of Fire.”

In that film Eric, the Christian Olympian has a close sister named Jennie. Jennie wants Eric for the China mission field and is not wild about her brother running in the Olympics. She believes that Eric has more important things to do. Jennie tries to convince Eric to come to China with her and forget all this running and racing. In the way we are trying to explain things this morning Jennie has turned running and racing into something “worldly,” and pleads for Eric to leave that in order to do the important “sacred” thing of going to China to do missionary work.

What we are going to continue to try and advance this morning is that is not a Biblical way to think. It is not Biblical to create “sacred” and “worldly” realms that find God automatically not present in some handling of the creational structures of His world while God is uber present in other fields like the ministry or being a missionary.

What has happened is that we have created unbiblical compartmentalization in our thinking where some fields are profane/worldly – fields like politics, or journalism while other fields are automatically “sacred” like being a minister or missionary. This fails to take into account that there can be in the ministry (and often there is indeed) worldliness while sacredness can be found among magistrates.

Scripture teaches us that whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. There is no restriction of that command to being applicable only in the sacred realm and not being applicable in some worldly realm.

It simply is the case that the fall can get into every area of life so that every area of life is “worldly.” Doubt me? Just come along with me as I briefly chronicle worldliness in the Church. Karl Barth, whom Billy Graham once said was the greatest theologian in the 20th century lived with his wife and mistress for years. This has only recently been found out. The chap who took over a huge ministry in Florida some 12 or so years ago was quickly bounced for his sexual indiscretions. A chap who had a huge homeschool Christian ministry running out of Texas had to give up the profitable business because he thought the Nanny was one of the perks. I could go on for quite some time but this is just to illustrate that the ministry or the Church is not a compartmentalized place where “worldliness” can’t come in.

And on the other side, it is clear from all kinds of examples in history that the sacred attached itself to areas we tend to label as worldly. We can think of Elector Fredrick protecting Luther as a Magistrate. Was not that a sacred work? We can think of Patrick Henry’s or Edmund Burke’s stirring speeches as Magistrates and easily conclude that those were done for the glory of God. What about Gen. Anton Denikin the leader of the White Christian Russian army that resisted the Marxists. Could not Denikin fight to the glory of God?

So, what we are seeing here is that while the fall affected everything in creation, the structures of creation can still be handled by Godly men in a Christ-honoring direction and so give glory to God or the structures of creation can be handled by the godless in a Christ-hating direction and so bring disrepute upon God.

The fall does not make certain structures of creation out of bounds in terms of experiencing Redemption when handled by God’s Redeemed people who in handling those creational structures according to God’s law are moving those structures in the direction of God’s glory.

Let’s take some examples.

Everyone knows that sexuality and sex are creational structures that God made. Everyone also knows that sex and sexuality as fallen can become an ugly thing but the fallenness of sex and sexuality does not automatically make sex and sexuality “worldly.” Sex and sexuality can be handled by Christians in the boundaries of Marriage as holiness unto the Lord. Christians can handle sex and sexuality in a Christ-honoring direction.

War might be another example. Everyone knows how ugly war can be, but war in and of itself is not automatically “worldly.” War is a structure of creation and it can be handled in a godless direction and so lead to Americans putting a 1million German non armed combatants in death camps after Germany had been defeated in WW II (See book “Other Losses”) or war can be handled in a godly direction and so lead to Americans defending their homes in just war against unjust invaders. War as a creational structure is not inherently worldly. The only question is will we handle the creational structure of war in a godly direction as before God’s face or will we handle the creational structure of war in a godless direction.

So, what we are saying here is that while the fall did have a cosmic wide impact, it is also the case that with the Redemption that comes in Jesus Christ those creational structures that fell from God’s hand in Creation can all be handled to the glory of God. We dare not compartmentalize creational structures and say that some creational structures are automatically out of bounds because they are “worldly.” We dare not create a theology that talks about the glories of the “bi-furcated life.”

I mean … many of us grew up with this mindset. You can’t play cards because “cards are worldly” but you can play “Rook” because Rook is not worldly. You can’t do square dancing because dancing is “worldly.” You can’t study politics because that is worldly but you can study theology because that is holy.

Do you see what happens when we wrongly bifurcate the world this way?

1.) First, we become un-engaged. If we keep absenting our Christian witness from all those areas we consider “worldly” … so fallen they can’t be handled by good Christians then by default we surrender those fields to those who hate Christ. If we conclude that politics is automatically worldly then what chance will politics have of being Redeemed? If politics is not animated by Christians handling the creational structure of politics in a Christ-honoring fashion how will our Magistrates not just keep going from bad to worse? Do you want to know why our social order is like a snowball headed for hell? One reason is because of this kind of bifurcated “theology.”

2.) When we bifurcate the world this way we become practicing Gnostics. This is the fault of many pietists in the past and it is the dreadful fault of Radical Two Kingdom Theology. When we bifurcate the world this way so that there is a realm of nature called “worldly,” or called “common,” and we make that distinct from a realm of grace that is called “Holy” we have essentially deprecated all that falls in the realm of nature in favor of this super holy realm of grace.

3.) We give up on the ancient Reformed maxim that “grace restores nature.” The Reformers have always taught this idea that grace has an effect on the creational structure (nature) that when the creational structures (nature) are touched by God’s grace those creational structures (nature) experience a restoration that promises ongoing restoration in a Christ-honoring direction.

Allow me a brief rabbit trail on this one. We have so much given up on the idea that grace restores nature that we are now effectively embracing the idea that grace destroys nature. There is teaching existing in the Church that elucidates the idea that once one is converted one no longer retains their creational identities. We are all one in Christ has become a slogan that means that we all lose our gender identity, or our ethnic identity, or our class identity once we become a Christian. This so-called thinking is completely alien to the Scriptures and is taking the good principle that all men regardless of their creational identities are welcome at the Cross and turning it into a Cultural Marxist meme that at the cross men lose their creational identities. To push this is to push rank heresy.

So…let us briefly summarize where we have been.

1.) The fall affects all of creation and until Redemption comes to release a structure of creation from the baleful effects of the fall it continues to be under “the prince of this world (John 12:31).

2.) However, the Redemption that Christ brought when He as the Kingdom of God brought in the Kingdom of God rescues fallen men who then in turn handle the fallen structures of creation in a God-honoring direction.

3.) There are no creational structures as falling from the hand of God in creation that cannot be handled for the glory of God and so take part in Redemption.

4.) The business of all Redeemed Christians is to bring the fragrance of the Kingdom of God to every creational structure so that it serves the King in the direction it is being used.

Implications

This means that as we seek to wrest these creational structures from the godless direction in which they are being put to service by unredeemed men that friction will be the result. Those outside of Christ like operating God’s creational structures in a God-dishonoring way. They like, for example, twisting sex and sexuality so that it results in the most grotesque expressions. They like, for example, twisting God’s design of creation so that men and peoples are gifted with differing abilities into an egalitarian and equity Utopian social order that mocks God’s intent.

The Christ haters won’t like those creational structures partaking in Redemption when in the hands of Redeemed men and women, and when that begins to happen in any quarter they will squeal like a two-year-old who has been denied for the first time his will.

We have to understand this in order to understand our times.

By way of implication, we have to understand that all this is complicated by a Church that itself acts like a creational structure that is now in the hands of the unredeemed who are operating the church in a Christ-dishonoring direction. We need to note this because as the Redeemed seeking to bring a Christ-honoring direction to creational structures we are consistently being told by those who identify as “the Church” that we are being godless… that we are being haters of Christ ourselves.

We have to steel ourselves for this. The Church, generally speaking, has given into the Cultural Marxist zeitgeist. They have reinterpreted Christianity through the philosophical prism of Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, and Max Horkheimer among others. The result is the biggest enemy of Christianity in the West today is the heretofore Conservative Reformed and Baptists Churches. They are the ones pursuing CRT, Intersectionality, and the Great Reset. They are the ones who are sitting on their hands as “celibate sodomy” pushes its way into their clergy class. They are the ones who have crafted an alien Christ and placed him where the true Christ is to be ruling. They are the ones who are crucifying again Christ to their own harm by imputing Christ’s acceptance of the foulest of social order sins and irregularities. They are the ones despising 2000 years of church history on everything from what it means to be male and female to the natural relations that God has sanctioned among families and people groups.

And unless they repent they are the ones who will hear … “Depart from me you workers of iniquity for I never knew you.”