Daily Meditation

Understanding Relationships

Ligonier Ministries

In the Bible, the supreme feminine image is ascribed to the church. Before the church is ever seen as mother, though, she is first revealed as a bride. In the Old Testament, the commonwealth of Israel is the bride of Yahweh. In the New Testament, the church is the bride of Christ.

The resulting familial imagery is somewhat strange. God is the Father; Christ is the Son. As the Son of God, Christ is then referred to as our Elder Brother. The church is His bride. In the language of family, this would then mean that the church is our sister-in-law. But no one speaks of holy sister-in-law church.

We, both men and women, are given the title “bride of Christ.” I am male, yet I am part of a body that is described in feminine terms. What is stranger is that the same entity that is called bride, of which I am a part, is regarded as my mother. I cannot be my own mother.

These images are not the result of a jumbled mass of nonsense or confusion. It is not a matter of nonsense to refer to the church as mother. Though we are born of the Spirit, it is chiefly within the cradle of the church where we are birthed into spiritual life. If the church is not our birthplace, it is surely our nursery. It is in her bosom that the means of grace are concentrated. The church nurtures us unto mature faith.

Coram Deo

Reflect on how God has used the church to birth you, nurture you, and mature your faith. Thank God for this divine process that is at work in you.

Passages for Further Study

1 John 3:1-2
John 1:12

Daily Meditation

Finding Your Identity

Ligonier Ministries

Several images are used in the Bible to describe the church: the body of Christ, the elect, the house of God, the saints. One of the most meaningful expressions the Bible uses is “the people of God,” the laos theon.

The church, then, is people. The Roman Catholic Church once declared, “Where the bishop is, there is the church.” The Reformation declared, “Where the people of God are, there is the church—the church under the Lordship of Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.”

The church is neither a building nor the clergy nor an abstract institution—it is the people of God. When Martin Luther articulated his vision of the priesthood of all believers, he did not denigrate the legitimate role of the clergy. He understood that Christ has given pastors and teachers to His church, along with other offices, with specified tasks. What Luther was getting at, however, is that the priestly ministry of Christ is passed on in some measure to every believer. 

Coram Deo

Give thanks that you are part of the body of Christ, the elect, the people of God.

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 4:11–15

Serving the Paymaster

The Swedish Church As Ministry for State Propaganda

The church in Sweden is funded by the State.  It comes as no surprise then, that as the years have passed, the church has morphed into a motley collection of false prophets, dancing dervishes to please Herod.  Never bite the hand that feeds, says the pragmatic realist.  

Sweden has evolved to where it believes multiculturalism is the highest of all humanist values.  It is the secular kingdom of god.  Yes, yes, yes chant the false prophets.  The following report was written by Nima Gholam Ali Pour for the Gatestone Institute:

After a French priest, Jacques Hamel, was murdered by ISIS sympathizers in Rouen, France, on July 26, 2016, an initiative started in Sweden where Swedish Christians took "selfies" with a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians. The initiative, called "Mitt kors"("My cross"), was started by three priests from the Church of Sweden.

The Church of Sweden, however, criticized it. Gunnar Sjöberg, Head of Communications for the Church of Sweden, wrote on his Facebook page:  "I really do not know about that. This thing about Christians suddenly wearing a cross as a sign for or against something. It is actually nothing new, but the call seems seditious and un-Christian in the conflicts that already exist."

So now, according to a senior official in the Church of Sweden, the call to wear a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians is "un-Christian".

Putting Christians to Shame

Muslims Being Counted On Transgender Issues 

Christians Hide

For the church to be salt and light will require pastors who are prepared to contend with the brutal reality that salt stings wounds, and light blinds those who are committed to darkness.

By Kaeley Triller
The Federalist

By the time I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be fired, I had already cycled through all five stages of grief in rapid succession, the majority of my time being stuck in the bargaining phase: “Please, God. If you let me stay, I promise to conquer my apathy and start that office prayer group I’ve been avoiding” or “But, God, this place needs more Christians, and I’m a single mom. Surely you don’t want me to leave.”

Deep in my gut, my conscience was stirring, wrestling the ultimate bargain that seemed to somehow have become my life’s theme: Could I afford to speak up, knowing I would pay for it, or could I bite my tongue and keep my job? It should have been a relatively easy answer, but emotion and uncertainty plagued me.

I spent more than one night face-down on the bathroom floor, throwing my dramatic self before God and begging him for the direction he had already provided in spades. I just couldn’t still my anxiety long enough to hear it until one night while tucking my kids into bed and singing them to sleep. There, in the darkness, with chubby silhouetted arms stretched out toward heaven, their little voices sang out my marching orders with breathtaking clarity: “Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

The choice was clear. I could live without my job, but not without a clean conscience. I was fired a few days later but quickly found myself employed as communications director for a statewide campaign to repeal the open locker room rule that had led to my termination in the first place. Having just lost my job of 17 years for defending females’ safety and privacy, it seemed fitting I’d win my new job for the very same reason.

Gratuitous Prejudice

Established Religion

We have a kind of faith in the nature of people that we do not have in the botanical processes of nature itself--and I use the word "faith" in its full religious force.  We really do believe that all human beings have a natural telos toward becoming flowers, not weeds or poison ivy, and that aggregates of human beings have a natural predisposition to arrange themselves into gardens, not jungles or garbage heaps.

This sublime and noble faith we may call the religion of liberal humanism.  It is the dominant spiritual and intellectual orthodoxy in America today.  Indeed, despite all our chatter about the separation of church and state, one can even say it is the official religion of American society today, as against which all other religions can be criticized as divisive and parochial. 

Irving Kristol, "Thoughts on Reading About a Number of Summer-Camp Cabins Covered with Garbage," The New York Tims Magazine, Nov. 17, 1974, p.38.

Separation of Church and State

Princeton's Robert P. George on Religion in the Public Square

Church and State--Whither Now?

Constantine Versus the Apostle of the Secular Public Square

The issue of church establishment is one which Christians need to start thinking seriously about again and commence reading, writing and debating the teachings of Scripture and of the historical church.  In the West our debates and discussions and research will of necessity be largely academic and theoretical (although not completely so) because of the small (and shrinking) proportion of the population that is Christian and because of the dominant strength of secularism. 

The same cannot be said of other regions and countries, where Christian growth is explosive.  It is also true that in countries where Christians live under authoritarian governments and the church continues by means of state permission, the issue of church and state is alive and very pressing. 

But we in the West have one great contribution to make to this discussion: we have proven that a secular public square, neutral to religion, is a chimerical myth.  It is an oxymoron.

The Constantinian Solution

 Did Constantine Establish the Church?

The accomplishment that Constantine the Great is known for more than any other is his official recognition of Christianity and the Christian church.  For some this was momentous for all the wrong reasons: it signalled the beginning of the end.  As soon as the state acknowledges the Christian faith, the church becomes worldly, looking more to the favour of government than to God. 

But it begs an inevitable question: what is the proper and biblically legitimate face of the state towards Christ and the Christian church?  As long as the Church remains a small minority amidst a sea of paganism this question may be avoided, since it is speculative and irrelevant to actual circumstances.  But when the Christian population grows to double figure percentages the issue can no longer be avoided. 

A legitimate question then is where ought we to stand with respect to the Constantinian solution?

The Rights and Wrongs of Church Establishment

Thieves Seeking Another Way

It is received wisdom that the conversion of the Roman Emperor, Constantine was a disaster for the Christian Church in the West. The evidence is pretty strong, and the argument based thereon, therefore, compelling. But the lessons drawn, more often than not, are shonky.

Rodney Stark summarises the argument:

In many ways, the conversion of Constantine was a catastrophe for Christianity. It would have been enough had he merely given Christianity the legal right to exist without persecution. But when he made Christianity "the most favoured recipient of the near-limitless resources of imperial favour", he undercut the authentic commitment of the clergy. Suddenly, a faith that had been meeting in homes and humble structures was hosued in magnificent public buildings; the new church of Saint Peter build by Constantine in Rome was modeled on the basilican form used for imperial throne halls. A clergy recruited from the people and modestly sustained by member contributions suddenly gained immense power, status, and wealth as part of the imperial civil service. Bishops "now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators." Consequently, in the words of Richard Fletcher, the "privileges and exemptions granted the Christian clergy precipitated a stampede into the priesthood."

As Christian offices became another form of imperial preferment, they were soon filled by the sons of the aristocracy. There no longer was an obligation that one be morally qualified, let alone that one be "called". Gaining a church position was mainly a matter of influence, of commerce, and eventually of heredity. Simony became rife: an extensive and very expensive traffic in religious offices developed, involving the sale not only of high offices such as bishoprics, but even of lowly parish placements. There soon arose great clerical families, whose sons followed their fathers, uncles and grandfathers into holy office, including the papacy. As a result, many dissolute, corrupt, lax, and insincere people gained high positions: Pope Benedict IX (1012-1055), the nephew of two previous popes, too office without even having been ordained as a priest and caused so ,many scandals by "whoring his way around Rome" that he was bribed to leave office.  (Rodney Stark, God's Battalions, p. 101f.)

The problem then lay not in the establishment of the Christian religion in the previously officially pagan Roman Empire, but in the ungodly form the establishment took. In effect, the state overtook the government and discipline of the Church, such that the Church became subordinate to the Imperium; ecclesiastical government and discipline withered. Once the Church lost its own spiritual discipline over its members and officers, coupled with the bestowal of imperial favour upon the Church, it rapidly fell under the control of the worldly and corrupt.

We could imagine what would happen to the now vigorous and burgeoning Church in China in similar circumstances. If the government of China were to "establish" the Church in China, it would become one more organ of state--just like thousands of companies, commercial enterprises, organisations, and bodies already are. Securing the favour of the government in such a system is the key to getting ahead. Therefore, if the Church were to be thus established by the state, according to the normal civil, economic, and cultural practice in China, the aspiring and ambitious would rapidly circle around the Church to gain position and station in it, seeing it as an opportunity for personal and familial advancement. The state would approve the appointment to office of those who had its favour.  Simony would emerge rapidly--as is the case elsewhere in China.  Within a generation the Church would have lost control over its own discipline, offices, members, and ministries.

This is pretty much what happened in the Roman Empire when the Church was "established" by Constantine. We believe Stark is right. The Church would have fared far better had Constantine simply recognised the Church as lawful, enjoying the protections of the law. If that had been the case, any greater social and civil recognition of the Church would then have required the growing Christianisation of the population at large. The Church would have become more recognised, revered, respected, and heeded only when and due to the fact that larger and larger proportions of society were its members, as genuine faithful believers.

There has been a long strain of thought in the Church, based on the Constantine experience, that whenever the Church becomes socially recognised and respected, corruption and worldliness are fast followers. Whilst there are temptations due to riches, wealth and prosperity, the two do not necessarily follow. If the Church maintains its own discipline and biblical government, distinctly separate from the state, and will not tolerate interference by the state in its God-ordained affairs, then wider public influence and recognition and respect can only come about if growing numbers of the community are found within its doors.

To seek wider public influence for the Church is not at all inappropriate. It is the way that it is sought that makes all the difference. The biblical way--laid out by our Lord under the aegis of His New Covenant--is through the proclamation of the Gospel and the thorough inculcation of the teaching of our Lord into the lives, manners, and praxis of believers and their children under the terms of what we call the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Any other way, any shortcuts, amount to nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or thieves trying to get into the sheepfold by "another way".

Separation of Church and State

Anti-Establishmentarianism and the Klan

We in the British constitutional tradition are used to having an established church. The head of State in the United Kingdom is also the head of the Church of England. However, with the decline in power of the British monarch and the assertion of Parliamentary sovereignty, it has meant little. The headship may be dual, but the head has shrunken inexorably. Moreover, the fortunes of state established churches are not good. Historically, when government establishes a church it is usually a kiss of death. So, the Church of England has withered on the vine.

But in the United Kingdom it is very clear that what exists is the establishment of a particular national church--just one ecclesiastical denomination amongst many. In the United States, the issue has been subject to a breathtaking historical revisionist by the secularists. The secularists claim that the US Constitution forbids any religious establishment in the public sphere: not just of a particular church, but of religion in general. Thus, under secular revisionism, the State must either bestow equal favours upon all religions or none at all. Hence the attacks upon the public celebration of Christian festivals such as Christmas.

A more intelligent and less ideological reading the US Constitution establishes in rapid order that the US Constitution forbids any establishment of a church (not a religion) by the Federal Government. At the time of the signing of the US Constitution most states actually had some form of religious establishment--proving that the Constitution's prescriptions had to do with limiting the Federal Government's power to establish a national church, thereby preventing its overriding the authority of States in the matter.

The American colonies-turned-states viewed religious freedom differently. They offered different answers to questions of establishment of religion, non-preferential support of religions, punishment of blasphemy, Sabbath observance, and other religious matters. . . . Both traditionalists and voluntarists agreed that a religious foundation was critical to the health of the social order.
Hunter Baker, The End of Secularism, p. 82

Aaron Worthing recently republished some additional historical clarifications on the matter of the so-called separation of "church and state".

6. The phrase “Separation of Church and State,” as Philip Hamburger establishes in his classic book on the subject, is not in the language of the first amendment, was not favored by any influential framer at the time of the first amendment, and was not its purpose.

7. The first mainstream figures to favor separation after the first amendment was adopted were Jefferson supporters in the 1800 election, who were trying to silence Northern clergy critical of the immoral Jeffersonian slaveholders in the South.

8. After the Civil War, liberal Republicans proposed a constitutional amendment to add separation of church and state to the US Constitution by amendment, since it was not already there. After that effort failed, influential people began arguing that it was (magically) in the first amendment.

9. In the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, nativists (including the KKK) popularized separation as an American constitutional principle, eventually leading to a near consensus supporting some form of separation.

10. Separation was a crucial part of the KKK’s jurisprudential agenda. It was included in the Klansman’s Creed (or was it the Klansman’s Kreed?). Before he joined the Court, Justice Black was head of new members for the largest Klan cell in the South. New members of the KKK had to pledge their allegiance to the “eternal separation of Church and State.” In 1947, Black was the author of Everson, the first Supreme Court case to hold that the first amendment’s establishment clause requires separation of church & state. The suit in Everson was brought by an organization that at various times had ties to the KKK.

11. Until this term, the justices were moving away from the separation metaphor, often failing to mention it except in the titles of cited law review articles, but in the last term of the Court they fell back to using it again

So as Lindgren says more recently, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, “the KKK got its way.”

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]