Church, Do not Be Conformed
by Grant E. Van Brimmer
The Church is perennially presented with a choice: follow God or follow man. A problem going back to the Garden of Eden has been to either follow God’s word, come what may, or fall away from fellowship with God and adopt the word of man. In the Garden, Eve was confronted with the lie of humanism that man has it in himself to know all things, just like God. Eve was deceived into believing that God’s word and the Serpent’s word were on the same level and that she was a neutral evaluator. By what came after, she couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The Church is constantly presented with the same question. Peter Leithart’s 1st & 2nd Kings Commentary gives some helpful insight into what happens when God’s people, the church, resemble the world rather than their God. Of God’s people Leithart says, “The more it resembles the Gentiles, the less reason it has for continuing to exist. By the time the Babylonians arrive, there is not much left to take. Judah has already stripped itself of nearly every visible sign that it is Yahweh's chosen.” (Page 247)
The Church almost certainly loves the idea of being God’s chosen people, the people whom He showers His blessings upon. But the stark reality is that as it adopts the ways of the world in its ethics, liturgy, programs, and its voice, the less it looks like a people chosen by God. Rather, they look like a people chosen by the world.
It goes something like this.
“Better to adjust our worship and our language to the dominant cultural power, it is thought, than to keep up the arrogant pretense that we enjoy a special status. In adapting itself to the world, the church is departing from the pattern or model that should govern its worship. Only when the church follows…heavenly worship does water flow from the temple to the world.”
Leithart continues to point out that when God’s people adopt the patterns of worship according to the world “then the nations are on their own, and no water will flow to renew the parched land. Soon such a church will cease to have any purpose for being; ultimately, it will no longer be.” (Page 248)
It is suicide for a church to adjust and adapt its worship to appease or attract the world. If a church wants vitality, she must worship ignore the serpent and worship her God as heaven intended.
By so doing she brings refreshment to the world and she is used to establish heaven on earth.
This quotes are from Peter J. Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, MI. 2006. Get a copy HERE. (Affiliate link means a portion of the purchase goes to me)