creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (II Cor. 5:17). How many church members give any evidence of being “ new creatures” ? With most of them, old things have not passed away nor have all things become new. They love the things they always loved. They go to the places they always frequented. They live the same kind of lives as before. They are just what they have always been and a man who is what he has always been is not a Christian for a Christian is a “ new creature.” We have tried to make the Gospel acceptable to modern man AS HE IS. We are so anxious to get church members that we lower the bars and denature doctrine and mark down prices until the church becomes merely an Old Adam Improvement Society. Let me illustrate: here is a prospective church member in a Sunday morning congregation. He is a man of the world, takes an occasional drink, swears a little and if tempted might be a little shaky morally. He wants to join churchv It helps his business, helps him socially and looks good on an obituary. He has his church let ter. People are going to hell these days on church let ters. Do we ask him whether he has ever been born again? He might be offended, even insulted. If we challenged him to deny self, take up his cross and follow Jesus, he would probably take off to some other church where he can be a member and live as he pleases. Such a church would not be hard to find. Our Lord had a far finer prospect in the rich young ruler who came with his manners, his morals and his money. Yet the Saviour demanded a complete sell-out from the very start. What kind of psychological ap proach is this? If He had followed the modern pitch Jesus would have said, “ Come along just as you are. Up to now my disciples have been fisherman and rather ordinary men. You will be a valuable addition and enhance the outfit. We will talk over the money problem later for that can wait.” Under no circumstances would we risk offending such a prospect with strict terms of discipleship. Not so our Lord. He must have thinned one multitude with His three “ cannots” (Luke 14:25- 83). In fact, if we may condense what He said, it amounts to this: “ If any man come to me and come not after me, he cannot be my disciple.” He preached another crowd away in the Sixth Chapter of John. He never played up to old Adam. Today we recruit unregenerated and uncommitted people who have never died to sin nor risen to walk in newness of life. Then we wonder why «we make so little impact on the world. There is not enough differ ence! We do not oppose sin; we appease it. The devil is not fighting churches these days; he is joining them. He is not persecuting Christianity in America; he is professing it. The new imitation brand may fill churches with members and put up buildings and raise money and be popular with this age, but it is a greater enemy of the true cause of Christ than all other foes combined. Well did the late Dr. A. W. Tozer write: “We who preach the Gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make. Christ acceptable to Big Busi nessmen, or the Press, or the World of Sports, or Modern Education. We are not diplomats but prophets and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.” We are not here to make God acceptable to men. We are here to help men get right with God. We are ashamed of the reproach of the cross and the foolish ness of the Gospel. A new gospel for old Adam may gather a church full of cheap disciples but it is with out the power of God unto salvation.
from protoplasm to perfection has ended in pande monium. Albert Schweitzer said: “ This is the most dangerous period of history. Man has learned to control the elemental forces before he has learned to control himself.” The worst of it is that God has been dethroned in our thinking and man deified. Communism and Hu manism teach and believe that man can take care of himself and get to heaven on his own power. He is building his Babel by education and legislation. He has never been so proud of himself and never had less reason to be. He has made himself the center of his universe. There was a time when he contemplated the sky at night and said with the Psalmist: “When I con sider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, WHAT IS MAN ?” Today he surveys himself in haughty pride and says, “When I consider man, what are the moon and the stars!” Today religion has geared itself into this mood and has devised a new gospel for Old Adam. It gives man what he wants instead of what he needs. There was a time when we heard sermons on “ Prepare to meet thy God” as men preached on the holiness of God, the awful ness of sin and the certainty of judgment. But now God is the Big Buddy Upstairs winking at the wickedness of man. Although humanity is wallowing in a cesspool of filth and corruption, man is no longer regarded as a poor lost sinner. Basically he is thought to be sound and working his way up to a knowledge of God although the Bible says he started with that knowledge but has been going the other way ever since. And who believes in the judgment or hell ? Most parents today do not think of their children as being lost. “ Johnny is a good boy,” we hear. So was the rich young ruler. Johnny is a lost boy until he is found and a sinner until he is saved. If he believes not, he is condemned already. It would be a shock to know how many of our church peo ple are really Universalists at heart, believing that everybody will be saved somehow. The Gospel has been revised and streamlined to please modern man instead of calling on him to be reconciled to God. This new imitation brand of Chris tianity is more dangerous than outright infidelity. The true Gospel has never been popular and never will be. The natural man does not receive the things of God for they are foolishness to him. One might as well talk nuclear physics to a monument in a city park as to talk the deep things of God to an unregenerate man. Old Adam is under sentence of death. He must die and a new man must be born through faith in Jesus Christ. The supreme race issue today is: Do-1 belong only to the old race of Adam or am I a member of the new race, the sons of God? Old Adam must see himself a lost sinner and repent of his sins and turn to the Saviour saying what we used to sing: “ I am coming to the cross; What man needs is a miracle. I heard of a con verted drunkard and gambler who was asked whether he believed that Jesus actually turned water into wine. “ Yes,” he replied, “ and I can tell you more. I have seen beer turned into furniture and gambling tickets turned into food and an unhappy poor wife trans formed into a radiant woman, all by that same Jesus. It is easy to believe that He turned water into wine.” We need more miracles like that. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new I am poor and weak and blind. I am counting all but dross; Free salvation I shall find.”
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JULY, 1964
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