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If the Church is ailing, and few would argue the case otherwise, then what diagnosis is correct, and how might she get well? David Wells and P. T. Forsythe offer some powerful insight. And not surprisingly, it is connected to God's holiness.
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The Greatest Peril Facing the Church
October 5, 2008
The Lord spoke to me with His strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people. He said: Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the One you are to fear, He is the One you are to dread, and He will be a sanctuary.....Isaiah 8:11-14
What happens when we slight the holiness of God, and it drops off our spiritual radar? Listen to Listen to P. T. Forsythe:
“Holiness is not simply a private attitude, holiness is what touches life. And without this holiness, the temperature of religion falls, the horizon of the soul contracts, piety becomes boring and flat and uninteresting, goodness domestic, and mercy but kind.
We have churches of the nicest, kindest people, but they have nothing apolostic or missionary. They know nothing of the soul’s despair or its breathless gratitude.
God today is not dramatic in the great sense of the word. He is not adequate to history for so many of these people. He is not on the same scale as the race. He is the center of the religious scene, instead of being the protagonist in the moral drama of man and time.
We tend, then, to a Christianity without force, passion or effect; a surburan piety, homely and kindly, but unfit to cope with the actual moral case of the world, its giant souls and hearty sinners, and we cannot deal to any purpose with the great sins or the great fearless transgressors, exceeding sinfulness and the deep damnation of the race. P.T. Forsythe
David Wells picks up where Forsythe leaves off:
Divorced from the holiness of God, sin is merely self-defeating behavior or a breach in etiquitte......
Divorced from the holiness of God, grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our public morality is reduced to little more than an accumulation of trade-offs between competing private interests.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our worship becomes mere entertainment....
Ouch. Double ouch.
Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first! Revelation 2:5
What happens when we slight the holiness of God, and it drops off our spiritual radar? Listen to Listen to P. T. Forsythe:
“Holiness is not simply a private attitude, holiness is what touches life. And without this holiness, the temperature of religion falls, the horizon of the soul contracts, piety becomes boring and flat and uninteresting, goodness domestic, and mercy but kind.
We have churches of the nicest, kindest people, but they have nothing apolostic or missionary. They know nothing of the soul’s despair or its breathless gratitude.
God today is not dramatic in the great sense of the word. He is not adequate to history for so many of these people. He is not on the same scale as the race. He is the center of the religious scene, instead of being the protagonist in the moral drama of man and time.
We tend, then, to a Christianity without force, passion or effect; a surburan piety, homely and kindly, but unfit to cope with the actual moral case of the world, its giant souls and hearty sinners, and we cannot deal to any purpose with the great sins or the great fearless transgressors, exceeding sinfulness and the deep damnation of the race. P.T. Forsythe
David Wells picks up where Forsythe leaves off:
Divorced from the holiness of God, sin is merely self-defeating behavior or a breach in etiquitte......
Divorced from the holiness of God, grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our public morality is reduced to little more than an accumulation of trade-offs between competing private interests.....
Divorced from the holiness of God, our worship becomes mere entertainment....
Ouch. Double ouch.
Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first! Revelation 2:5
