It is interesting how each generation of the church wants to re-define what the church is. This is particularly true of the American church since the 1960’s. This comes from the very western notion of individualism as well as from the 60’s ideas of freedom and self expression. While these things taken by themselves are not all bad, the problem comes when the church fails to properly remain true to its heritage, particularly the Scriptures, but also the heritage of the church. Or the other extreme of remaining true to the heritage of the church while failing to engage the culture.
Now, we certainly do not want to hold on needlessly to church traditions that are of purely human origin. Those traditions that have no basis in Scripture need to be examined carefully in light of Scripture to see if they are worth continuing.
But, what is needed is a proper contextualization of the truths of Scripture. What does that mean? It does not mean a compromise of Biblical truth. It is sharing the truths of Scripture in ways that connect with the people in the context that the church finds herself. This isn’t easy! We don’t want to isolate ourselves by becoming too much of a sub-culture. Though, the church will be somewhat isolated simply by the nature of being Christians in a non-Christian world, we are called to engage the culture as salt and light.
We are to love our neighbors, not look down in disdain at them. We ought to know that we are just as undeserving of God’s love as they. The only difference is the love of Christ and the grace of God in our lives. We have done nothing to earn the love that God has lavished on us. This is true not only of our past, before we became Christians, but it is also true of our lives now. Even the righteousness that we think we have attained since becoming Christians is tainted with impure motives and impure actions. Our only righteousness before God is what Christ acheived on our behalf in His life. His perfect righteousness is credited to us by grace alone through faith alone.
It is with this attitude of humilty, knowing that we are Christ’s only by grace, that we can engage the culture in love. This is the kind of contextualization that we need in order to reach the lost while not compromising Biblical truth.
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