5a The Christian Life Means Repudiating the Myth of Influence
Stand Firm: Living in a Post-Christian Culture • Sermon • Submitted
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42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.
43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.
44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?
47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
A pragmatic myth has been circulating in the church for the last several decades. This myth— let’s call it “the myth of influence”— has been proven wrong repeatedly, but its popularity continues to grow. This myth is perhaps the primary cause of the current confusion over the purpose and mission of the church, and may be responsible for the drift found in many churches across America today. In its destructive wake, this myth has left many congregations corrupted and scarred by weak teaching, poor theology, and stifled sanctification.
The myth of influence is that the gospel advances on the backs of public favor and popularity. It’s the idea that believers can somehow persuade sinners into the kingdom of God by developing a more attractive message. If we can just fix the message of the gospel for God, and make it more consumer friendly we can save the world. The myth of influence says that we can attract the lost to the church if we create alliances with the right people, occupy positions of worldly influence, and stylize our churches to reflect consumer trends and thus eliminate consumer resistance. It’s the notion that the key to growing the church and winning the lost is a better public relations strategy, a more emotionally engaging worship experience, a stronger social media presence, a more relaxed church environment, an edgier spokesman, a more inclusive worldview, or the enthusiastic embrace of “progressive” social movements. In the verses we read earlier, our Lord clearly revealed that the sinner’s resistance to God’s Word is the natural response of all fallen humanity. It is universal, profound, and it cannot be altered or mitigated by human strategy.
Make no mistake— any effort to overcome this condition by human means is a deeply flawed scheme, and a myriad of compromises are made in the process. The pursuit of cultural influence inevitably leads to the development of a nonthreatening message of inclusive salvation that seeks to eliminate all offenses. It attempts to make the church look, sound, and feel like a big Starbucks; it emphasizes comfort and pop culture appeal with the hope that we might subtly lure people into the kingdom.
Those strategies are impotent and futile. Scripture reveals that there is only one way into the kingdom, and it is through the gate of the pure gospel alone. The cruel irony is that even when churches pursue all kinds of clever marketing tactics, people will only enter the kingdom when they understand and believe the true gospel— the word of the cross, as revealed in Scripture. The gospel does not advance on the back of public favor; it advances only by the Holy Spirit’s work through the Word of God, in the face of and in spite of public hostility.
In its most superficial form, the myth of influence reasons, “If they think we’re cool, they’ll think Jesus is cool too.” Serious worship disappears along with the public ordinances. Theological exposition of Scripture vanishes. Transcendence and deep understanding are exchanged for mimicking shallow, worldly, adolescent styles. Church discipline disappears, holiness is minimized, and sin is normalized. Despite all those exchanges, the myth maintains that these methods will usher people into the kingdom.
To be clear, I want to help lead people into the kingdom. I understand what was in the heart of John Knox when he pleaded with the Lord, “Give me Scotland, or I die.” I want to see the lost redeemed and the slaves of sin set free. I want to see society changed and righteousness prevail. But the only way it can be changed is through the power of the Spirit and the truth of the gospel. There is no other hope for the spiritually dead, no other means by which the Holy Spirit makes dead sinners alive in Christ. We have to center our evangelistic efforts on the pure, unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, or those evangelistic efforts are in vain. And despite the efforts of some to accessorize with fashion and culture and sugarcoat the gospel, it cannot be made attractive to the eyes of the unbeliever. In the eyes of the unsaved, the gospel will always be offensive, shameful, scandalous, and hard to believe. That is how the Lord intended it, as He clearly stated in Luke 14: 26– 27:
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
The Shameful Gospel
The Shameful Gospel
8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,
The gospel produces hostility. It is popular to attempt to alter it, not only to make it easier for people to believe but to take some of the heat off themselves for presenting it. In fact, the word of the cross is so shameful and antagonizing that even faithful Christians struggle to proclaim the true gospel, afraid of the rejection, ridicule, and embarrassment it will bring. That’s why it is hard for even some Christian leaders, when they get on television in secular settings, to speak the gospel with honesty and clarity. Sometimes they can’t even seem to get the name “Jesus” out of their mouths.
In the verse we just read, Paul warned Timothy against such fearful timidity, urging his apprentice in the faith. He included a similar exhortation against spiritual cowardice in
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
At first, these seem like bizarre statements. Why would a preacher— or an Apostle, for that matter— be ashamed of the gospel?
A scientist or a doctor wouldn’t need to overcome his shame to announce he had found the cure for cancer.
Why is it, then, that even popular preachers struggle to speak boldly when proclaiming the Lord Jesus as the only cure for sin and its dread consequences?
What is the source of this shame that silences God’s people and compels them to dull the sharp edges of the gospel?
Why the search for an inoffensive abridgment of God’s plan to save sinners?
Put simply, to believe the gospel goes against everything that is natural in man. In Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, we read:
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
All the religious alliances, the positions of power and influence, the posturing to leverage the trends and interests of the world— none of it can make the gospel any more attractive or acceptable to children of Satan. By God’s design, the cross of Christ is offensive. And rather than trying to apologize for it or soften its shameful nature, we need to be faithful to simply proclaim it. We need to love sinners enough to offend them with the truth.
The Horror of the Cross
The Horror of the Cross
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
Picking up where we left off, Paul highlights several of the facets of the gospel that make its message offensive and shameful to the world.
What is Paul Pointing to in these verses?
Paul he points to the shameful stigma of the cross. He writes, “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.” “Folly” is moria in the Greek— it’s the word from which we get the term moron. The word of the cross is moronic to those who are unregenerate. It is idiotic. Specifically, the idea of God dying on a cross was ridiculous, both to the Jews and the gentiles.
According to verse 22, the Jews sought a sign— some kind of heavenly supernatural evidence that indicated that the true Messiah had come. Instead, God gave them a stumbling block. To Israel, a crucified Messiah was bizarre, offensive, and blasphemous. The Greeks, on the other hand, sought wisdom. They wanted some transcendental, elevated, esoteric knowledge. They saw the idea that the eternal Creator of the universe would hang on a cross as utter stupidity.
A little background is helpful to our understanding why the Jews and gentiles viewed the cross with such loathing.
What do we know about the practice of crucifixion by the Romans?
Crucifixion was a systematized series of events including flogging, carrying the cross beam, wearing a condemning sign over one’s neck, and then being tied or nailed to the crossbar, hoisted to an upright post, and left there suspended, stark naked before the view of everyone. Death could be hurried by shattering the legs, but this slight mercy was usually not afforded, so that victims could suffer for days. The final indignity was leaving the naked corpse exposed in the sun to become carrion for birds. Crucifixion was considered such a severe indignity and an extreme punishment that Rome did not inflict it on its own citizens, except in the case of treason. For the most part, it was reserved for conquered enemies, notorious criminals, and rebellious slaves. The Roman Empire’s policies on crucifixion led Romans to view the crucified with contempt and disgust. It was the kind of death that those in polite society didn’t discuss. And although it was an obscene and shameful way to die, it was relatively common, making Christ’s murder horrifying but also somewhat unremarkable. In the eyes of the unbelieving world, this was certainly not a death befitting a divine king.
The Jewish antipathy toward crucifixion was all of that and more. They detested the Roman practice, holding it in higher contempt than the pagans did. But they went beyond that. They saw a crucified person as one who bore the curse of God, as
23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Dying a common death, the kind reserved for the most wretched criminals, and bearing the curse of God was not what the Jews would have ever expected from the Messiah. The claim was scandalous. The Jews did not crucify people, but history tells us they did hang up dead bodies— particularly blasphemers and idolaters. After they were stoned, some were put up on a cross to fulfill Deuteronomy 21: 23, a visible reminder that they were cursed by God.
These pervasive attitudes toward crucifixion posed a massive obstacle to the gospel in the first century. When we think of a cross, we think of something pretty and ornate that hangs in our churches or around our necks. But to the Jews and gentiles of the day, it was scurrilous and scandalous, a stumbling block of foolishness, and idiocy. There was no way to make that message acceptable in the first-century world. To Jew or gentile, it would have been hard to believe that the Son of God incarnate, the Messiah, suffered and died like the lowest of criminals. Yet the gospel actually called the Jews to believe in as Savior and surrender to the very One they considered a blasphemer, “smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53: 4). Humanly speaking, God could not have put a more formidable barrier to repentance and faith in their way.
The good news of the cross appeared to be an absurdity and an obscenity, and it remains so to this day. Looking at the cross— even from the safe distance of two thousand years— we are still rightly repulsed by the horror of Christ’s death. And to the mind that has not been illuminated by the Spirit, there is an apparent disconnect between who Jesus said He was and how He died. The humility and shame of the Lord’s death is too much for the unrepentant mind to comprehend. The reality of that death being a substitutionary sacrifice for guilty sinners, who must repent and believe or be condemned to hell forever, was, and remains, the least seeker-friendly message imaginable.