NOTES ON THE REAL MEANING OF BECOMING BLAMELESS LIGHTS IN A WORLD OF DARKNESS

SCRIPTURE. “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.” ― PHILIPPIANS 2:14-16, NKJV

QUOTATION. “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what Light I have.” ― ABRAHAM LINCOLN, c. 1863, Bob Blaisdell, Editor, ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln,’ 2005; edited

FIRST THOUGHTS

I love this passage from Paul to the Church at Philippi since it strikes at the very heart of what is of premier importance to the American Church in this hour: INTEGRITY:

“‘Wholeness;’ entireness; unbroken state. ‘Purity;’ genuine, unadulterated, unimpaired state; as the integrity of language. The entire, unimpaired state of any thing, particularly of the mind; ‘moral soundness, honor;’ incorruptness; uprightness; honesty. Integrity comprehends the whole moral character.” – NOAH WEBSTER, American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828; edited

Yet must I quickly follow that glowing definition with one of the greatest laments I have experienced in my long life, over 40 years of it as a follower of Jesus Christ. Today’s American Church has largely jettisoned its historic commitment to Integrity for the expediency of material gain and political power. This tragic fact has been documented in hundreds of studies and articles in the last seven years or so, especially since the rise of the Christian Nationalism Movement spawned by former president DONALD TRUMP (arguably soon to become elected a second time on Tuesday November 5, 2024).

The Scripture under study today uses such terms (Amplified Bible) as “without disputing,” “blameless and harmless,” “without fault” and “holding fast the Word of Life,” as ideally distinguished from “a crooked and perverse generation.” Beloved, I both sadly and angrily tell you straight out that the majority of the White Evangelical Church has trampled Integrity fully down under foot, and now casts the darkest of shadows over the very Name of our King.

Therefore, this Commentary will again briefly address how it is this happened, what the Biblical Canon requires of us to repair it, and where America is likely headed if we do not do so.

II. THE SHATTERING OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

In order to address this matter of towering political, historic and spiritual importance, it turns out that a dear friend of our Fellowship just sent me a

‘fresh off the griddle,’ brilliant analysis by TIM ALBERTA writing for Vanity Fair. His piece is titled, appropriately: “‘This Is the Final Compromise;’ Donald Trump and the Implosion of the American Evangelical Movement” (Dec. 4, 2023; edited).

THE IMPLOSION. As is my practice for the sake of efficiency, I shall Bullet-Point his main ideas in what follows. I pray that every American pastor reads his work.

CAL THOMAS was a leading figure in the Moral Majority’s rise, yet as Tim Alberta writes in an excerpt from his new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, the conservative Christian columnist has now broken with the Religious Right.

[HE] HAD BEGUN to tune out the main-stage speakers by the time Jim Jordan was introduced. It was the second day of ‘Road to Majority,’ the annual symposium organized by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, and this year’s headliners were doing more wailing and gnashing of teeth than usual. Donald Trump was the show-stealer, naturally, vilifying his former vice president, Mike Pence, and egging on the crowd to boo their longtime Christian comrade for his refusal to subvert the Constitution eighteen months earlier. The dozens of other politicians and Evangelical leaders who stepped to Reed’s podium were only slightly less unhinged: warning that it was open season on Christians, denouncing the Satanic Agenda of the Democratic Party, urging attendees to vote Republican in the upcoming 2022 midterms and end the reign of those godless, child-grooming, America-hating Liberals.”

WHEN IT WAS HIS TURN, Jordan, the collegiate wrestling champion turned Ohio congressman, hit all the same notes. He slammed “The Lefties” who “don’t like freedom” and “have disdain for the folks in flyover country.” He observed that, “Next to Jesus, the best thing that ever happened to this world is the United States of America.” It felt like the teleprompter had been stuck on the same page for hours. I stood up to leave the ballroom. “I love the comment that Cal Thomas made one time,” Jordan told the audience. Jordan continued, “Cal Thomas had a great line. He said, ‘Every morning, I read the Bible and the New York Times, so I can see what each side is up to.’”

WHAT JORDAN DIDN’T MENTION is that five years after giving that C-SPAN interview, Thomas wrote another book. It was a contrition-laden confessional called Blinded by Might, coauthored by Pastor Ed Dobson, the onetime Liberty University dean and Falwell confidant who had been present at the founding of the Moral Majority. The authors provided a damning window into the rise of the Religious Right: Given how the Scopes Trial had humiliated Fundamentalists in the 1920s, and how Progressives had hijacked both Church and culture in the 1960s, Thomas and Dobson recalled believing that Ronald Reagan’s presidency represented “the greatest moment of opportunity for conservative Christians” since the dawn of the twentieth century. “We were on our way to changing America,” the authors wrote. “We had the power to right every wrong and cure every ill.”

THE WORDS JESUS SPOKE to His disciples at the Last Supper — “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”—are phenomenal and inspiring. Yet, read in a vacuum, they can create a misconception about God’s truly benevolent nature. Jesus didn’t take on flesh to play favorites with a chosen few; according to Paul, God’s Love is revealed in the fact that His Son died for us ‘while we were still His enemies.’ This is the Gospel we are to proclaim both in word and in deed: To be a Christian is ‘to sacrifice,’ not for the benefit of those we already have around our table but for the betterment of those we have never considered to invite.

PAUL’S CODICIL. “But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? ‘Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore put away from yourselves the evil person.’” – 1 CORINTHIANS 5:11-13, NKJV

Beloved! Do you not see the massive THEOLOGICAL ERROR that the American Church has been jamming down the throats of naïve and inattentive Pastors for the past two generations or more? It is Twofold.

IT DEFIES CHRIST. Who, through Paul the Apostle, clearly and rather severely warned that we ‘Not judge those outside!’Further, that whoever claimed to be a Christian who participated in worldly activities (such as idolatry, covetousness or “a reviler,” i.e., one who treats others with contemptuous language) is to literally be “Put away.” In the Greek (‘exairó’ [ἐξαίρω]), is literally translated: “To remove; to lift up and take away out of a place or completely part company with.”

IT REPLACES CHRIST. As the Church has increasingly looked to raw political power as a solution to the crisis in both Church and State, we see what one writer has recently termed, “‘Nation Worship’ as the virtual Deification of America.’ OS GUINESS has written of this over a decade ago, arguing that such blending of the Sacred with the Secular has produced an unorthodox “Civil Religion” that has very little to do anymore with the Christian Gospel (After All, “On Nationalism and Worshiping Ourselves,” Jan. 1, 2008). Thus again, raw political power becomes our New Messiah in the form of the seditious Christian Nationalism Movement of Donald J. Trump.

IN ITS AFTERMATH. We see a Church today devoid of Christian character, courageous resistance of these New Ideas that are at root the doctrines of men and devils described by Paul again in his First Letter to Timothy (4:1). The ultimate tragedy is an ‘Emasculated Church’ full of natural schemes and strategies, fully stripped of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the Church Lukewarm on its best days, and Moribund at its worst.

III. THE TEACHING

KEY TERM: “BLAMELESS.” ‘Amemptos’ [ἄμεμπτος]: “Irreproachable, faultless, unblameable; unspotted, unblemished; i.e., one who cannot be caught [in a serious transgression or compromise of Christ] and accused; without guile, guiltless; esp. ‘without foreign mixture;’ sincere, harmless, without duplicity or distortion; free from fault or defect; deserving of no censure or rebuke.; innocent.”

COMMENTARY. “‘We must be diligent in the use of all the means which lead to our salvation, persevering therein to the end.’ With great care, lest, with all our advantages, we should come short. Work out your salvation, for it is God who worketh in you. This encourages us to do our utmost, because our labour shall not be in vain: We must still depend on the grace of God. The working of God’s grace in us, is to quicken and engage our endeavours. God’s good-will to us, is the cause of His good work in us. Do your duty without murmurings. Do it, and do not find fault with it. Mind your work, and do not quarrel with it. By peaceableness; give no just occasion of offence.

‘The children of God should differ from the sons of men.’ The more perverse others are, the more careful we should be to keep ourselves blameless and harmless. The Doctrine and example of consistent believers will enlighten others, and direct their way to Christ and holiness, even as the light-house warns mariners to avoid rocks, and directs their course into the harbour. ‘Let us try thus to shine.’ The Gospel is the Word of Life, it makes known to us eternal life through Jesus Christ. Running, denotes earnestness and vigour, continual pressing forward; labouring, denotes constancy, and close application. It is the Will of God that believers should be much in rejoicing; and those who are so happy as to have good ministers, have great reason to rejoice with them.” – MATTHEW HENRY, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 6 vols., 1708-1710; edited

DK. What I see in this Aftermath, again, of the Christian Nationalist Juggernaut is unprecedented Division in God’s House (at least since the Civil War Era). Families have been shattered by those believers siding with Donald Trump, suggesting in the extreme that ‘a vote against Trump is a vote against Jesus Christ!’ More broadly, massive fissures have developed in the American community as a result of this Dark Tide of racial politics and the demonization of the immigrant class viz. the Great Debate over sealing our borders.

Recall that both Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln warned that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Speaking on June 16, 1858, to the 1,000 delegates to the Republican State Convention in Springfield Illinois on the matter of Slavery, Senate candidate Lincoln boldly declared:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do believe it will cease to be divided. ‘It will become all one thing or all the other.’”

Now before you rush to conclude that Slavery is no longer an issue, consider the words of SARAH BARTLETT CHURCHWELL, professor of American Literature at the University of London. She argues persuasively that the rise of Trump’s “Ultra-Nationalism” is nothing less than a return to the political divides of the Civil War. She boldly calls it Neo-Fascism dressed out in a twisted Patriotism that is nothing like its true historical definition by Webster (1828) and others who rightly understood it as one’s willingness to defend the country against criminal forces as good citizens of a unified country in service to the nation (“All-American Fascism,” Gale Academic, Sep. 4, 2020).

HOUSE OF CARDS. I see the American House teetering, edging its way more and more to violent confrontation of those opposed to the insidious forces of Trump’s Nationalism. You already know that this writer and several friends and colleagues have been served with numerous death threats from the Trump Camp. But each time I tell a White Christian Nationalist this, there is both subtle and outright rejection of the very idea of it being true!

My friends, this is precisely the ideological and spiritual darkness of Hitler’s Germany, though my suggestion of that parallel has almost always been opposed as preposterous. Yet I hear no discussion of these existential matters from our Pulpits. Nothing! Thus, I can only surmise that our Pastors don’t want to have their boat rocked by such “troubling information.”

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

So what should “Becoming Blameless” look like to the American Church as we approach the epochal year of 2024, when in November we shall send Almighty God a crystal clear message of who we are. The following Biblical Requirements are to be regarded and followed as nearly to the letter as is humanly possible.

THE CHURCH MUST BECOME THE CHURCH! I realize I have used an outworn phrase that has become a cliché, but I am about to give it new life and considerable muscle in this final section – with God’s imprimatur, I pray. So, let’s dive in.

Following a review of half a dozen or so articles, I came across one that is both succinct and biblically sound. It is by CONRAD MBEWE (Ph.D., University of Pretoria) who serves as pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and founding chancellor of the African Christian University. Conrad has authored over nine books and contributed to many others. His essay is titled, “3 Distinguishing Characteristics of the True Church” (Crossway, Oct. 9, 2020; edited).

The Preaching of the Word of God. “That this is an essential characteristic of a True Church is evident from what Jesus said in Matthew 28:19: ‘[A]nd teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.’ The preaching of the Word of God must be central to the very definition of the Church. This is why one of the very first achievements of pioneer missionaries who came to Africa was to translate the Bible into the language of the people. They knew how important the preaching of the Bible was to the health of Christians and of churches. Sadly, in too many of our churches in Africa, preaching does not occupy a central position anymore. Rather, we have many choirs that take turns on the same day—children’s choir, men’s choir, women’s choir, the main choir, and so on. By the time all these choirs have finished singing, everyone is ready to go home. Drama has also begun to feature quite prominently in some churches. This must change. With regard to preaching, LOUIS BERKHOF says, ‘This is the most important mark of the Church … It does not mean that the preaching must be perfect and absolutely pure, but that it must be True to the Fundamentals of the Christian Religion and must have a controlling influence on faith and practice.”

The Provision of the Ordinances. “This refers to the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (see Acts 2:41–42, referred to earlier). The latter is sometimes called Communion. Whereas churches may differ on the right recipients and mode of baptism, this religious rite should be part of the activities of local churches as a means by which individuals enter into the Church. While inside the Church, they should participate in the Lord’s Supper, which typifies the Death of the Lord Jesus for His people. Again, there will be differences in the frequency and the precise way in which this meal is celebrated, but it must be part of the Church’s life.”

The Practice of Discipline. “The Church is meant to be a place where Godliness and Truth are upheld. Where either of these is missing in the life of a person, they should be warned and urged to repent so that they are restored to a healthy spiritual life. However, where they stubbornly continue living a life of sin or holding on to and teaching heresy, ‘they should be disciplined in terms of public rebuke or excommunication’ (Matt. 18:15–20; 1 Cor. 5:1–13). In the Book of Revelation, Jesus warned those churches where stubborn sinners are not disciplined that he was going to do it Himself (e.g., Rev. 2:16). Where that happens, often entire churches end up being closed down. We must all take this matter seriously. Discipline is part of the very definition of the Church.”

THE APPLICATION. I shall be brief. (1) I have argued vehemently and documented a catastrophic Departure of the American Church from what the writer (likely Luke the Apostle) described as “The whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Instead, most larger churches at least have chosen the Path of Least Resistance to the pernicious penetration of several false gospels into the very heart of our sanctuaries. Not the least of which is the Maga Christian Nationalism Movement of DONALD TRUMP, so very similar in content and form as ADOLF HITLER’S National Socialism Movement a century ago.

(2) I believe the American Church does just fine on passing out the Communion elements at least once a month, and in most churches today a movement toward each Sunday morning. This apart from running the risk of being sloppy on just who should be taking Communion (1 Corinthians 11:1-34), which includes true believers, the sincerely repentant, and those who recognize the body and blood of Jesus Christ as sacred (see CLARENCE L. HAYNES, JR., “Who Can Take Communion?” Bible Study Tools, Sep. 10, 2021). Since churches have become so large, this becomes an impossible monitoring task, another problem with Mega-churches.

(3) Finally, and most egregiously, the American Church is utterly absent of any evidence of serious Church Discipline; it is simply not there! It has largely become: ‘What I say I am, is my truth! The Canonical requirement of spiritual fruit has been eliminated from our largely Postmodern Christian communities (Matt. 7:15-20). This of course the dark progeny of the Hyper-Faith doctrines so popular these days in our overwhelmingly Seeker Friendly assemblies, driven more and more by the despicable ‘Church Growth’ models of driving up our numbers by, unavoidably, watering down the sermons.

DR. MBEWE’S CONCLUSION. “The only people who should remain in the Church are those who show genuine faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Head of the Church. This is seen when individuals are ‘Doing’ everything possible to flee from sin and pursue a righteous life. This is also seen in their ‘Love’ for [true] fellow believers and for the God whom Christians worship. Where you have individuals like this filling up the membership of a local church, you can safely say that you have a True Church on earth.”

Indeed, the Church of our King, a ‘Beacon in the Storms to Come,’ shining His Light into our Great Darkness. We have a long way to go, and very little time in which to achieve it. Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/iQSq_pEy-us