Summer Recollections

Many thanks to those who taught in our Summer Sunday School program. Thanks also to those who encouraged them by attending. We trust you are still feeling the benefits of what you learned, and the fellowship enjoyed. The Board of Christian Education would be glad to learn of any progress we made this year in our Summer program, or of any ideas you may have for further progress next year. We include here a flavor of the two open adult classes that were held.

Legalism and License

Legalism, put in its simplest terms, is not biblical. It is a seeking to please God out of a sense of duty rather than of love. Typically speaking, legalism, is a form of law-keeping that results in attempts to justify oneself in the eyes of God and of others. The problem is not with the laws (e.g. the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount) ~ although extra-biblical customs and traditions can be problematic if given too much authority ~ but with an attitude towards them that does not speak first and foremost of love for God.

To counter the human tendency (at one extreme) towards legalism, our ministers often stress the need to focus on Christ. While He was the only person who could ever have earned salvation by law-keeping, the reality is that He kept the law for our sakes. The righteousness He accrued by doing so is imputed (reckoned) to the account of His people. For this reason we need never again seek justification in the eyes of God or of anyone else. Christ has earned our justification for us!

Does this mean, then, that we have no standards as Christians to abide by? No it doesn't (Rom. 6:1). Recall how the Ten Commandments were given to Israel after they were redeemed from Egypt (Exodus 20). Similarly, the underlying assumption of the New Testament reveals that while the law no longer condemns God's people ~ for Christ has been punished for every instance we've broken it ~ the law has an ongoing role in structuring our freedom in Christ. We obey it, then, not to save ourselves, but as a means of saying to our heavenly Father how grateful we are that we're saved!

While the law has lost its relevance for our justification, it remains of significance for our sanctification. In seeking to do God's will, we set our eyes not on the law as such, but on Christ in whom we have a perfect expression of what loving obedience to the Father looks like.

In light of all this, we ask God to keep our church life from a bare sense of duty on the one hand and a careless self-interest on the other. We wish neither to be legalistic nor to be licentious (i.e. abusive of the liberty we have in Christ [Gal. 5:13]). The freedom the Scriptures speak of is not anarchy or everyone doing what is right in their own eyes, but an appropriately structured response to grace that constitutes a voluntary and cheerful self-discipline befitting those who love the Lord (1 John 5:3). This discipline is positive or formative (e.g. prayer, Bible reading, attendance at worship [Heb. 10:25]) and replicates in the spiritual realm the sorts of standards the best athletes or soldiers live by. Only where there is a willful and unchecked breakdown of personal discipline does the church step in, and only after due biblical process has been followed methodically (Matt. 18:15-20). Indeed, so important is discipline in the maintenance of individual and communal freedom from sin ~ and it is freedom from sin that is characteristic of Christian freedom ~ that the reformers regarded as false the undisciplined church. We ought therefore to guard against a licentious church as much as we resist the danger of legalism.

Exclusivism and Inclusivism

As a church of Christ we constitute a house of God for sinners, not a museum for saints. We worship each Lord's Day knowing that only the grace of God can remedy the fact we "all have sinned and fall[en] short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). The greater our awareness of this, the more we are stirred to reach out to those who have not yet known the mercy of God. Our attitude and our evangelism is, therefore, to be inclusivist. We extend our love and the general call of the gospel to Schwenkfelders/non-Schwenkfelders, non-caucasian/caucasian, American/non-American, poor/rich, young/old, intelligent/mentally challenged, homosexual/heterosexual etc. Indeed, the evidence of our love is our readiness to create an environment where folk of all walks of life will feel welcome, and where they can hear the gospel in a way that meets them where they're at.

This welcoming spirit is one of Central's strengths, and one we are seeking to build on. 'First Sundays''s series Christianity 101 is a present example of this. Yet our inclusivism must be gospel-centered. While it welcomes anyone and everyone to Central, it is God's will that only those professing visibly their receipt of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior become members of His church. For the gospel may meet us where we're at, but it also takes us to where in Christ we ought to be. Rather than affirm us in sin, the gospel delivers us from it!

Membership of Christ's church is to reflect the fact, then, that while we come from different backgrounds, we share the reality of being rescued by Christ and of testifying to this great mercy.