It is a good day to be the church.
It is my argument that it is always a good day to be the church. Earlier this week ChristianAudio announced their free audio book download for the month of March would be “The Normal Christian Life” by Watchman Nee. Where there may be some controversy surrounding his life and especially what became of his teaching when he died in the early 70s, there is no doubt that there is value to the church today. I highly recommend this book to you for consideration.
My intent is not to write about this book, my intent is to speak about this good day for the church and to borrow Nee’s title of this classic book The Normal Christian Life for a moment. I promise to give it back, but it is a good title for consideration.
The normal Christian life is (should be) radically different than the normal American life.
The normal American’s life is expected to be a life of relative ease and marked with a type of common blessedness in comparison to the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world. Over the past couple of centuries, Christians have grown to love this ease of life and have forgotten that the Bible speaks of a normal life that is a marker of true believers.
I fear this is because we have lost the preaching of the Gospel in our land. The Gospel, the biblical Gospel is counter to the secular norm. This secular norm is attractive to the carnal man because it affords him ease of life and the pursuit of pleasure in temporary life and no craving is given to the carnal man for eternal matters.
The carnal man longs for the matters of this world and they are never satisfied until satisfied. He rules his life based on what he is born for. He argues that those who stop him or speak against him are attempting to keep him from being who he was born to be. Demanding, even though he wouldn’t admit that he is like this, that his (created) god would not make him with these cravings unless he meant for him to be satisfied in them.
“for natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised .” (1 Cor 2:14 NASB)
The spiritual man, on the other hand, has been regenerated.
How does a carnal man become a spiritual man? He must be regenerated. He must be born again. In other words, his carnal (old man) must be put to death. Then, he must be given a spiritual nature (new man) that has been made new.
We hear far too often of persons being brought into the kingdom of heaven without being “put to death”. As Charles Spurgeon puts it,
“we hear of persons being healed before they have been wounded, and brought into a certainty of justification without ever having lamented their condemnation, we are very dubious as to the value of such healings and justifyings. This style of things is not according to the truth. God never clothes men until He has first stripped them, nor does He quicken them by the gospel till first they are slain by the law. When you meet with persons in whom there is no trace of conviction of sin, you may be quite sure that they have not been wrought upon by the Holy Spirit.” (the Soul Winner, p.13)
We need gospel preaching, not simply preaching about the gospel.
Too often, the preaching about the gospel leads to emotionalism. Story’s that move even the carnal man, because emotionalism usually touches the temporary. It touches and moves a man, but it doesn’t generate new birth. He’s been part of something that his carnal nature understands and he compartmentalizes the experience as common to all people. But when the doctrines of the gospel is preached or shared, the carnal man is confronted with his offense to God that must be dealt with. Either he must reconcile this offence on his own merit and face the wrath of God without the blood covering of Christ or he must be put to death first, then regenerated by the work of the Holy Spirit and covered by the blood covering of Christ and live.
There will always be true Gospel preaching, may there be an increase of Gospel preaching today. Preacher, look to your bible. Our duty is not to excite the carnal man, our duty is to preach a gospel that first offends, then rescues. We are not called to produce hypocrites. We are called to take this gospel to the nations.
“To make proselytes, is a suitable labor for Pharisees: to beget men unto God, is the honorable aim of ministers of Christ… To introduce unconverted persons to the church, is to weaken and degrade the church; and therefore an apparent gain may be a real loss. (the Soul Winner, p.5)
Arise! preacher, to your post! You and I must continue to aim at men whose hearts are not yet broken of their love for the things of this world and then we must keep on preaching Christ crucified until they are rescued from the sure condemned condition.
“A far greater work must be done before a man is saved.” He must see his condition without Christ. This work is only done with gospel proclamation.
The ‘normal Christian’ sticks to the Gospel. The ‘normal Christian’ is hated by the unregenerate. The normal Christian sticks to the Gospel.
Case in point: Today, the Times News published my column entitled “