Blazing

When you are living through your life, you don't recognize that you are part of making history.  Or, at least, most of us don't.  Only later do you "wake up" to discover your life and your choices were part of a documented "movement".

The 1960s, which I only remember through the eyes of a child, were nationally a very turbulent time.  The birth control pill had emerged on the scene and changed the social fabric of our society completely.  The generation just ahead of mine began to throw off the "chains" that kept them bound to sexual purity, before marriage and after.  As the Bible predicts, calamity followed.  In reaction to this, the Christian church took one of two positions: either to remain entrenched in traditions or to reach out and win the damaged souls of those who had fallen victim to the sins of the age.  It was an earth-shattering, ground-breaking era, one in which even the "experts" were unsure how to respond.

Today's passage is Ephesians 4:17-24 (The Message) - - -

^17-19 And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.

^20-24 But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.

It was in the 1970s that I became a teenager and realized the gravity of the situation.  Although I had accepted Jesus Christ as Lord at age 9, I saw as a teen the spiritual poverty surrounding me and understood that I was living on a battlefield.  I could either retreat and withdraw, leaving the culture to rot on its own; or, I could engage it with more relevant methods.

In the scripture passage, the Gentiles were the pagan people groups who were not of Jewish descent.  However, as more non-Jewish people (such as the Ephesians) came to know Jesus Christ, "the Gentiles" began to mean any people who reject Jesus Christ and His ways, regardless of ethnic background.  The same is true today.

At first, I chose to adopt a separatist position, in an attempt to preserve the purity of the theology, fearing that in those perilous times, truth would become lost.  Holiness "preserved" by separatism.  Was that the correct response?  I was not "going along with the crowd", for sure.

When Paul was writing, as it is today, sexual obsession and perversion - - the consequences of lives lived in opposition to God and His way of life - - - were (and are) rampant.  Then, as today, Christians are surrounded by people from all walks of life who think that we who adhere to the truths of scripture are wingnuts and whack-jobs.  It is only "natural" to want to withdraw and refuse to engage a rotting culture.

However, that is not what Paul is advocating here.  I'm so glad that, as a teenager, the Jesus Movement1 began as a reaction to the ever-increasing disintegration of Judeo-Christian values in American culture.  I am a product of that movement, which advocated
---standing firm on the Word of God,
---having a personal encounter with Jesus Christ (that is, making a personal decision to follow Him),
---reaching out to serve and evangelize damaged, lost souls
---while maintaining a pure and faithful Christian walk.

We need, desperately need, some "Jesus freaks" today.  By and large, the traditional church, with its "walled off" protectionism has failed to reach the lost.  Church attendance is down, as church members are more concerned with protecting their modes of worship and evangelism than they are with reaching those sin has destroyed.  Watering down the truth message has been another tactic of "the politically-correct church".  Likewise, this has failed miserably.  While this approach does attract more "followers", they merely put on Christianity like a new garment.  Then, as soon as they come to see the emptiness of the message, a gospel that has been eunuched, and the perfidy of those who "claim the name" of Jesus Christ, these new converts throw off the trappings of Christian faith to live lives indistinguishable from the rest of the world.

The pressure on the church of Jesus Christ is nearly intolerable.  The world screams,  "Conform!  Conform!  Conform!"  It's why so many of us, and so many of our churches, ... have.  Yet, I ask - - - "Has this worked?  Have the Gentiles been converted?  Do we see our churches growing?"  No, we see just the opposite, in fact.  The average size of a Southern Baptist church today is about 35 people.  That is the case in my childhood church which, in my small community, ran between 100 and 200 on a weekly basis in the 1970s.

What, then, IS the answer?  Paul expounds on the first part of the answer and then alludes to the second, in this passage.

The first component is what I call "blazing holiness", a way of life that is in sharp contrast to the way the Gentiles live.  This way of living is produced from the regenerated, reborn, entirely new human heart, the heart of one who has become a new creation in Christ Jesus.  It can't be produced any other way.  It absolutely must begin with a "Jesus encounter", a personal decision to adopt Jesus Christ as Lord and master, as King of Kings, to turn from that former way of living and invite Him to reproduce His character in the individual heart/life.

"Blazing holiness" is courageous, with biblical truth as its core and foundation.  It does not cave to worldly philosophies, does not conform to the culture's decadent fashions.  It draws life-sustaining oxygen from Heaven, where Christ Jesus reigns as Mediator between God and mankind.  It is not dependent on the fetid air that surrounds it here for its fuel.

The second equally necessary component is "blazing love" for others.  Holiness divorced from God's amazing love is legalism, which does nothing to win the world for Christ.  Unbelievers see it for the fraud it is.  No, "blazing love" is a fearless love which is stronger than the strongest material found on Earth.  It is a love which can withstand the sharpest examinations and produce the most brilliant sacrifices.  The world cannot comprehend such love, because it is not merely "counterintuitive"; it is incomprehensible.

Paul is not calling us to be a flicker of candlelight in the darkness.  God's Word insists upon this: We are called to blaze!

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for those fearless, loving, blazing Jesus people of a generation ago.  Most of us are so seduced and lulled into conformity through pressure from the godless world around us.  Please set us on fire, Lord, and give us through Your Holy Spirit the courage to blaze!  In Jesus' name, amen.

Source:

http://shilohworshipmusic.com/ShilohWorshipMusic/The_Jesus_Movement_of_the_70s.html