Alan Dunn
We’re going to look, first of all, at the biblical justification for considering our culture. Is this what the Bible requires of us, as pastors? Are we responsible to analyze the culture roundabout us?
One brother has said, “It’s more important that we know our people than we know our culture,” and there’s some truth to that, but we need to know that our people live in the midst of a culture and how that culture affects them and how it affects us, as well. So, we’re going to look at how culture is constructed, what are some of the foundational issues that are common to cultures, how they are structured in certain ways that are common to all cultures, and how those issues relate, especially to the kingdom of God. We’re going to look at the culture and the issue of the two kingdoms: the kingdom of man, and the kingdom of God. God willing, next time we’ll consider these things further, and looking, specifically, at one recent development in Western culture that poses a particular threat to the Gospel and to the work of the church in our generation. So, with that menu in front of us, let’s come together and ask for the Lord’s help as we would pray as we begin.
Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, as we come, today, we stand before You in union with Christ Jesus. We ask that You would give to us the Holy Spirit, and that we might be enabled, by the Spirit of the Living Christ, to gain a perspective upon the world in which we live, the cultures in which we labor, and that You would give us discernment. That we might live in this world as citizens of Heaven, as members of the kingdom of Christ, as servants of our Lord and King. Help us to be wise and discerning, to be men of biblical principle, that we might be faithful to Christ in our generation, and that we might serve Him in the strength of the Spirit and for the glory of His name. Amen.
Well, consider with me the biblical justification for analyzing culture. When we speak of culture in the Bible, you encounter the language of powers and principalities, worldviews, false religions, powers and principalities. You look, for example, at 2 Corinthians chapter 10, reading at verse 3 to verse 5. “For, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” So, here we see thought systems, we see speculations, we see lofty things raised up against knowledge, and the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. Paul tells us that we’ve been given weapons—weapons that are divinely powerful, powerful with the very power of God Himself—that we might be able to tear down fortresses, walled castles that men have built by their reasons and their thought systems that they hide behind in order to keep themselves at a distance from God. “Speculations” just means rationalized arguments. Lofty things raised up against God points to the inherent pride that undergirds these ways of thinking: lofty, elevated, man-centered, rebellious, and blasphemous ways of thinking that are in opposition to the revelation of God in His Word.
Let me turn to Ephesians chapter 6. We enter into the passage of warfare, and Paul, again, clearly tells us of the enemies with which we contend. In Ephesians 6, we read in verse 12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.” Here are adversaries in this conflict that transpires in culture: rulers, powers, world forces of darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. You’ll find Paul using other vocabulary—thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities—that you find in Colossians 1:16. Well, all of this vocabulary is how Paul is describing the way angelic beings—fallen, angelic beings, demons—involve themselves in human society, in human events. In Paul’s day, the demonic was flagrantly evident in the state-authorized religion of the Roman empire. That religion saw Caesar as a god. The confession would be “Caesar is lord,” and for the Christian in that day to say “Jesus is Lord” was a statement of civil disobedience, as well as a statement of religious conviction. He was recognizing that in the state, in the authority structures of the Roman empire, demonic deceptions were at work. Forces, powers, and workings of principalities were propagating the doctrines of demons, deceitful doctrines of demons that Paul speaks of in 1 Timothy 4:1.
The demonic is able to work through particular individuals, but also, through structures of society, and even permeating institutions, and so to form a common concept, the common way of thinking in any given place, at any given time. The German word is zeitgeist; zeit, “the spirit,” geist, “of the time.” It’s a way in which values are shared by a particular people at a particular time, the spirit of the age. Renewed interest in powers and principalities occurred back in the 1950s in American theological studies, because in the 1950s scholars were attempting to answer the question, “What was World War Ⅱ and what was World War Ⅰ? How can we explain, for example, virtually an entire culture having bought in to the idea of the Holocaust and of being deceived by this man Adolf Hitler? How did that happen?” Theologians discovered, afresh, Paul’s language of powers and principalities, and they were able to make some assessment of the Nazi regime, by virtue of this vocabulary and the perspectives that Paul brings upon cultures. In the same way, we have to ask the question: “How can entire societies endorse the idea of Jihad, of flagrant, murderous, wanton slaughter? How can that happen? The Bible would say there are deceptions afoot, there are demonic deceptions afoot.
How can there be a culture that actually tolerates, even legislates, promotes, and celebrates sexual perversion? Something so fundamentally out of alignment with what we know to be natural! How can that happen? The Bible would say there are doctrines of demons that are being believed. People are being deceived, and there’s a generation of values that are being accepted. How can an entire culture tolerate the idea of murdering babies inside the wombs of their mothers? How can there be labor camps in which people, for political opinions, are rounded up, gathered and put into institutionalized prison environments, simply because of the ideas that they have? How can cultures function like this? Well, powers and principalities are afoot, the workings of the Evil One. Behind and beneath, thought systems, value systems of any culture, is (are) the operations of demonic, fallen, angels, and we engage the culture at that level. Not at the level of flesh and blood, but at the level of truth, at the level of integrity, at the level of the Gospel, in order that we might seek to bring light into darkness.
Notice the language of the Apostle in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, reading in verse 3 and verse 4. “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Paul says that no small part of our challenge is contending with the god of this world, the god of this age, who we know to be none other than Satan himself, and it is that that conditions our dealings with culture. We are contending with spiritual forces, forces of darkness, doctrines of demons.
This brings us into the Bible’s teaching about the world, that’s a vocabulary used particularly by John. Now, the world is God’s good creation, but the world, in John’s use of that term, also represents this idea of a thought system, of a philosophical approach to life that answers basic questions of who we are and what life means. There’s an old, Celtic prayer—I’m Irish, and so the Celtic is my heritage, it tells you something of my culture right there—but it’s a prayer that says, “From anities and ologies and edities and isms, good Lord, deliver us.” There are many isms, Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, Judaism; the anities, Christianity;; the ologies, psychology, philosophy. These are the things that Paul speaks of when he talks about powers, principalities, value systems, worldviews that permeate and then come to characterize the way the people think in a certain cultural setting at any given time in their history.
In 1 John chapter 2, John pretty well sums up anything and everything that any culture or any ism or ology is going to offer to us, and, again, he speaks about the world. He says, in 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” Whatever your political philosophy, whatever your economic philosophy, whatever your cultural and ethnic background, this world will offer you three things: the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. That’s it. You succeed in a Socialistic System, that’s what you’ll get; you succeed in a Capitalistic System, that’s what you’ll get; you succeed in a Communistic System, that’s what you’ll get. That’s all the world has to give you in whatever construction of its philosophical isms and ologies: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, and it’s all passing away. So, that teaches us that we’re to look at the world from the vantage point of Eschatology, from the vantage point of the last things. Because, as we’ll see when we turn our attention to the issues of the two kingdoms, we live in an Eschatological kingdom, we live in a kingdom of the age to come that is conditioned by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Secondly, let’s consider the components of culture. Culture consists of a shared communal pattern of meaning and values and practices, which can be expressed in symbols and ceremonies which communicate a shared history, a common knowledge, an approach to life. Culture is communal, it’s a society, it’s communal, and it’s a pattern of shared meaning and values and practices that can be symbolically represented and, often, celebrated through ceremonies and rituals, holidays, things like that. It speaks of a common history, it speaks of a common way of knowing, of viewing the world, and it speaks of a shared approach to living.
You’ve heard of the concept of a world-life view, the German word again: weltanschauung. It asks and answers four basic questions. Christians, Muslims, Secularists, Pagans, everybody has a worldview that endeavors to answer four basic questions, and the first is: where did we come from? How do we get here? What is the origin of who we are? What is our common ancestry? What is our common history? And how does that history shape our identity today? Now, this is not only a question that goes back to the issues of Creation and Evolution, but it culturally goes back to a point of saying “What are our cultural roots?” If you’re going to understand American culture, you need to understand the American revolution. Pastor Vater referenced it earlier when he said, “No wonder the British—I didn’t know they came here and tried to fight Americans with pillows. No wonder they lost that war, if they were just beating each other with pillows!” But, you see, our culture is rooted in the Boston Tea Party mentality, in a rebellious mentality, and it answers some questions about the American mindset. It’s far different than the Chinese mindset, which has always been a very deferential context, a very deferential mindset.
You ask the question then, secondly: Why are we here? What’s our purpose? What do we agree is worth doing? Why do we do what we do? What’s our value? Third question is: what’s wrong with us? You don’t have to be here very long, and you don’t have to interact with others very long before you find out things are not what they should be. Something’s wrong with us. Why? How do we fix what’s wrong? How do we address what we know to be our problems? Then, fourthly: what is our future? Where are we going? Do we have a destiny? Do we have a purpose, a goal to which we are moving? What is our future?
So, those four questions, when they are answered in a shared way, form a worldview and gives some meaning and some sense of identity that is shared amongst a society of people. Let me suggest to you that when these questions are answered, the culture that is shaped has three basic components to it, and these components give social cohesion and hold a people, commonly, together.
The first is: a presumed ultimacy. Something that is bigger than us, something that is transcendent; something that is higher than we are; something that stands outside of and over and above just what we are in our common humanity, in our common culture; something transcendent and ultimate. Now, when you identify that, you are identifying that culture’s deity, that culture’s god, and if it is not the God of the Scripture, then it is an idol, it is a false god. You see, man, as image of God, is inherently oriented to worship something, to serve something that he sees to be bigger than him, something higher than him. A native Indian used to talk about the Great Spirit. There’s a recognition of something transcendent, something beyond us, something that exists beyond the limits of life and death as we know it. Now, some cultures have that ultimacy named, and that ultimacy named is their god. And along with that god comes an entirely religious system with its doctrines and with its institutionalized rituals and forms of worship. Islam, for example, is a subtle theocracy, it is a false theocracy. It identifies its god, and it has an entire system of religious, ritual forms of worship that permeate the entire culture. In the West, the god of the West is a little bit more nebulous, not as distinctly named. In the West there’s a pantheon of gods that Westerners serve. Jesus points to one of the more popular gods of the West when He says, “You cannot worship God and mammon.” Service of wealth, devotion to wealth. I believe, increasingly so, that if you want to show someone the god of the West you just give them a mirror and let them look at the mirror, because, what they see in the mirror is the god that they ultimately serve: themselves. Self-idolatry, and self-service and self-satisfaction and self-esteem and self-gratification—all of these things are all part and parcel of the Western concept of what is ultimate, what is transcendent, what is the thing that is worth living for, and what would we live for. Remember that the name of the True God is Yahweh, I Am that I Am, I Am the God who exists, I Am the God who is Living, the God who is present with My people, I Am the God who is the explanation of everything that is. When you find out what a culture defines as the nature of what is—what is life? What is the nature of our being? When you’re talking about verbs like “is,” “being,” those sort of terms that the philosophers call “anthology,” “study of being,” you’re trafficking in theology, you’re trafficking in understanding the ultimacy that a culture is committed to, and that ultimacy functions as the deity and the god of that culture.
Secondly: there is the code of morality. With any god comes a good. With any god there is a set of rules that come along with worshiping and serving this god. There is a prescribed, right way of living, and a wrong way of living. Depending upon the nature of that transcendent point of reference, that ultimacy to which all things are related. So, a culture is going to convey some standards, it’s going to let you know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable; what is approved and what is disapproved. Because man is Creation, created in the image of God, he not only is oriented to worship something, he’s also given a conscience whereby he judges; and he approves or disapproves; and accepts or rejects; and likes or dislikes, anything and everything. I’m not on Facebook, but I understand that the whole thing operates on the basis of likes or dislikes. You can’t go on the webpage without exercising your judgement faculty, without making a moral assessment of something. And culture informs our judgment faculties and tells us what will be commonly accepted and what is commonly rejected. There is a code of conduct and ethic that is accompanying whatever transcendent deity there is.
Now, again, in some cultures, especially those that mix religion with state and civil authority such as in Islam—and, I would submit to you, Communism, as well, is a form of that sort of theocratic mix in that system—the idea of what is to be believed and what rights are to be performed and what duties and structural behavior is to be given is very rigid and very well known and highly cultivated and prescribed and practiced. Again, in the West, in our secular culture, because the deity is so individualized, because (of) the value system, because there is a plural, a plurality, pluralism of religion, there is relativism when it comes to ethics. And so, ethics, in the West, is whatever is good for you, whatever works for you, whatever you think is right. It’s at the end of 2 Kings, “Every man was doing that which was right in his own eyes.” Whatever works for you, and see, that’s a value that people will tolerate. It’s a commonly accepted value that you need to tolerate, whatever my opinion on the matter is, except, if I have an opinion that begins to approximate an absolute. If I begin to talk in terms of ultimate right or wrong, then I am violating an ethical standard of our culture.
So, if your culture worships wealth, as Western culture does, and you’re at the office, and you’ve been working now non stop, everybody at the office knows that your family is falling apart, they know that you’re having an affair on the side and you’re probably stealing, but you’re bringing in profits for the business, aren’t you? You’re doing what you need to do to advance the company, and, basically, in our culture, you’ll be accepted, because, after all, you’re doing what you need to do in order to get your money. You’ve lost the respect of your children, but that’s ok, because you’re wealthy. You see, our values will conform to the god that we’re worshiping.
The third aspect that brings cultural cohesion is Eschatology. Eschatology. Paul Johnson’s book on a modern world—it’s a history book of Western culture over the 20th century—it’s astonishing how, virtually, every political and social system of the 20th century was driven by Eschatology. It was driven by putting in front of the people some Utopian hope, and that’s what justified Hitler, justified Stalin, justified Mao TseTung, justified Pol Pot—they were able to engage in fullfledged slaughter of people, justifying it because the ends justified the means. “This is where we’re taking you. Now, it may be a bit messy to get to where we need to be, but (it’s) because we have this hope, this Eschatology, this Communist/Marxist Utopia, (it’s) because we’re going to finally arrive at a place where social justice and equity is everywhere. We may have to do some nasty things along the way, but here’s where we’re going. So, trust me, let’s go.” So many movements of the 20th century were moved by Eschatology. That is, the culture has some hope, some aspiration, some assurance by a way of a promise, by some authority, that: “If you live in the service of the god of our culture and you obey the morality and standards of our culture, then you’ll obtain what’s being promised. You’ll obtain your Eschatological hope.”
Man is driven by Eschatology. You cannot live without being oriented toward tomorrow, without being oriented toward what’s ahead. You’re driven toward the future, we were made that way as image of God. For Adam, his Eschatology was God, Sabbath, rest. When God completed His work He entered into His Sabbath rest. Adam, as image of God, was designed to be like God and to be with God and would’ve known that, upon completion of His dominion mandate, he, likewise, would enter into God’s Sabbath rest. So, Sabbath always has had in it this element of promise, this future orientation to it, that it speaks of the rest and the hope. So that when the people of God are coming through the wilderness, they’re coming to the Promised Land, which is the place of God’s Sabbath blessings, where God will dwell with His people in His temple, in His land, and give to them the benefit of rest. We have the same thing in our Western culture, don’t we? What’s everybody working for?
What’s man’s Eschatological hope in the United States? A good retirement. “I want to get my work done behind me. I want to retire as early as I can, and I want to go live in Florida.” You see, retirement has replaced the Sabbath in our culture, but it is an aspiration that is commonly held. You’ve seen the commercials: the old, grayhaired guys out there in the beach playing frisbee and going sailing and skiing, and I’m waking up in the morning thinking, “My back is killing me. How am I going to want to go skiing when I’m 75?” Last time I went water skiing was when I was 56. I got a saying for my boys, “One sticks on 56.” Now, you try to beat that! I was up on a slalom ski when I was 56, I think I pulled a rib muscle, I paid for it for about a week. I don’t think I’m going to be doing much slalom skiing when I’m in my retirement. It’s a dream, it’s a fantasy that is often held before people, but it moves them, you see, and it gives them some sense of common value.
So, when you’re looking at culture, when you’re asking, “Why is it so enticing?” Because it presents competition to your theology, it presents a rival God, it presents competition to your ethics, it presents a differents standard of behavior, and it presents a competition to your Eschatology. It offers, to your people, a different hope, a different aspiration, and, more often than not, it all has to do with the things of this age. It all has to do with this passing world. You see, that’s the threat: it’s that it disconnects the people of God from their union with Christ in His resurrection glory, and their inheritance of the new heavens and the new earth. So, that brings us to analyze the two cultures, or what’s called “the two kingdoms.” We’ve looked at the legitimacy of analyzing culture; we’ve looked at some of the components of culture and how it is structured to be a deceptive competitor to the Biblical worldview and Biblical values; and now, we need to consider this concept of two cultures or two kingdoms. You see, the challenge for us if how do we approach our culture as Christians who are citizens of the Kingdom of God?
Remember that Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it was, My disciples would be picking up weapons, they would be using a military strategy in order to come and rescue Me; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this world.” The disciples are never told, in the Scriptures, that we are going to advance the Kingdom of God as Muslims: through military or political agendas. Our strategy is not using the weapons of this world! We do not war with flesh and with blood. Now, the relationship of how the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Christ interfaces and interacts with culture, that relationship has been debated from the dawn of church history. Back in the 5th century, Augustine wrote a book called The City of Man and the City of God, and he was propounding what is called “a two-kingdom view.” There are others who advocate a more singular kingdom view: theonomous. God’s Law, theonomy, theonomous, and they say, “Look, Jesus is the supreme King of kings and Lord of lords, and Jesus regulates God’s Law. There is no other competing Law. If we’re going to advance the Kingdom of God, we need to bring the Law of God into the civil, political, and social structures of our culture, and advance the Kingdom by instituting God’s Law.” They’re advocating something that would be very similar to a theocracy. A lot of the Secularists, when they hear Christians, they hear us talk like theocrats, and it scares them. I submit to you that we should embrace what has been called “the two kingdom approach” to culture, that there is the Kingdom of Man and there is the Kingdom of God.
Now, the failure to differentiate these two kingdoms has proven to be catastrophic in Western history. Since Pope Urban Ⅱlaunched the Crusades in 1095, he did so by casting the European nations, as the Israelites who were going back to the Holy Land to obtain the Holy Land. Ever since then, the West has been susceptible to merging the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Man. Now, many Christians in the United States think that America is a Christian nation, and the Muslims, certainly, think that. When the Muslims see American military forces, they see that as the workings of the Great Satan, they see that as an expression of American Christianity. They think in theocratic terms; they don’t have any separation of church and state that we had in our culture. Theirs is a theocratic system where religion and civil authority are blended.
Oftentimes, Americans and American Christians have fallen prey to think of themselves—in our culture, in our Americanism—to think of ourselves in terms of Biblical metaphors. The Exodus metaphor has been very dominant in our history. Columbus, when he came to discover the New World, likened himself to Moses. The Pilgrims, in 1620, they saw King James as the pharaoh, and they were entering into the Promised Land. Many of them were postmillennialists, and were expecting that through their political and cultural and legal ways, they would, in fact, usher in the Kingdom of God. Two-thirds of the eulogies that were given for our first president, George Washington, two-thirds of the eulogies at his funeral compared him with Moses. The Civil War of the United States: the North’s victory in the Civil War was likened to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Have you ever looked at the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic? “My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” that was a celebration hymn for the North victory over the South. It was seen in explicit religious terminology.
The Old Testament Exodus motif has come to shape many events in the United States. The emancipation of slavery, in the United States, was understood in terms of the Exodus motif. The imposition of apartheid, in South Africa, is understood in terms of the Exodus motif; genocide, in Servia; and, of course, the establishment of present day national Israel. All of these cultural, political events, have been given significance and meanings by taking Scriptural metaphor, the Exodus metaphor, in particular, and applying it to a particular culture. In history, we’ve often seen a particular people assumed to themselves the rights, the privileges, the benefits of being “the blessed people of God,” and that would give to us a justification for imperialism, a justification for colonialism, as well as a justification for rebellion. Liberation theology of the 1970s and 80s: Latin liberation theology, as well as Black liberation theology, is a Christianized Marxism. It is a Marxist philosophy that employs Biblical metaphor and Biblical language, but there’s nothing Biblical about it at all! It’s of the kingdom of man, and as much as the kingdom of man wants to take the vocabulary of the kingdom of God, it’s still the kingdom of man.
Now, in the two-kingdom view, we’re to recognize that Jesus is the Supreme Lord of lords and King of kings. There is no other authority that rivals Him. He has been given ALL authority in Heaven and on earth. So, He is, certainly, sovereign over the kingdom of man, but His Kingdom is a redemptive Kingdom, it is an Eschatological Kingdom. It is the only Kingdom that is authorized to forgive sinners of their sins. It is the only Kingdom that is authorized to bestow upon sinners the privileges of adoption and sonship. It is the only Kingdom that is authorized to admit forgiven sinners into the very presence of God. The Republican party can’t do that for us, and the Democratic party can’t do that for us, and the Independence can’t do that for us. There’s only one Kingdom that is authorized to have our sins forgiven, to give to us the blessings of justification and adoption, and to give to us the privileges of sonship. That Kingdom is the kingdom of God, and in that Kingdom we are formed to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s possession.
You see, the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man is not one of political strategy. This is what’s so sad about our present, political landscape today, because you ask the average American what is an Evangelical Christian, and at some point he’s going to say the word “Republican.” At some point he’s going to identify Evangelical Christians by their political philosophy. The difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man is not one of political strategy. Brethren, it’s a difference between life or death! It’s the difference of whether you are alive in Christ Jesus, or whether you’re dead in your sin. The difference is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, because the Kingdom is the Kingdom of the resurrected people of God. It is the dynamic of the spirit, who brings new life, regenerating grace, and raises the dead. That is the power of the Kingdom of God. We are citizens of Heaven, and, here, the Exodus metaphor rightly applies to us, because the writer of Hebrews tells us we are now presently in a worldliness journey, as sojourners and aliens in the present age; and that we are in root to the Promised Land of our Sabbath rest in the New Heavens and the New Earth; that we have been liberated from the bondage of our sin. We have been freed from the tyranny of Satan and the dominion of his lies, and we have been rescued from the sentence of death.
All of those things are true, Biblically, only of the citizens of the kingdom of God who are joined with living faith to Jesus Christ. He is our resurrected King, He is our exalted King. The kingdom of God is a monarchy. It is the realm of King Jesus, and the foundation of that Kingdom is justice and righteousness that has been established in the perfect, sinless obedience of Jesus Christ and the justice that was executed on our behalf on Christ in the cross. The vindication of that justice was His resurrection. So that by His resurrection we’re justified, and the foundation of the kingdom of God has been laid in the perfect, sinless obedience of Christ, the life that He lived, the death that He died. He has brought the kingdom of God near, and His Kingdom is not of this age. It is a Kingdom that is characterized by resurrection life, and the citizens of this Kingdom are regenerated, they’re born again. They are resurrected spiritually. They are new creations in Christ Jesus, so that they are no longer defined in terms of their ethnicity, in terms of their economics, in terms of their intelligence, in terms of their race. “There’s neither Jew nor Gentile, Scythian nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we are one in Christ.” One new humanity in Christ, and the defining point of our identity is Christ: Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ exalted, and Christ reigning.
We are to present ourselves (Romans 6:13) to God, as those alive from the dead! You see, that’s the main difference between the kingdom of this age and the Kingdom of the Age to Come. It’s Eschatology! The kingdom of this world is all contained within this age—the lusts of the flesh, lusts of the eyes, boastful pride of life—it’s all passing away. It’s all conditioned by death, but he who does the will of God, he abides forever. For the doing of the will of God is only possible in union with the Risen Christ, and is only possible by virtue of that grace of the Spirit that has come to give us new life in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are to be renewed and transformed. “Not conformed to this age,” Paul says in Romans 12: 12, but “transformed by the renewing of the mind.”
Because, as we’re learning in our studies on pastoral counseling, when we’re dealing with Believers, we’re dealing with a people who have been born again. Their minds have been given light, they have supernatural life, they have abilities that have been given to them by the Spirit. It’s not conditioned on who their parents were, it’s not conditioned upon that childhood, traumatic experience, it’s not conditioned about what side of the tracks they were raised on. None of those things define us now. “If any man be in Christ he’s a new creation; old things have passed away; and behold all things have become new.” When you meet up with that word “new” in the Bible—New Testament, new man, New Covenant, you’re given a new name—when you see that word “new” take out a syringe and fill that syringe up with resurrection life and vitality. Put that syringe into the word “new,” and inject that word “new” with resurrection life, because that’s what it means. “We’re new men in Christ,” what does that mean? We are of the age to come, we are already living now in this age a life and a vitality that is characteristic of the age to come. We are an Eschatological people. The outer man in decaying day by day, but the inner man is being, what? Renewed, invigorated, alive, and that’s the difference between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. It has to do with the matters of life or death.
Now, I don’t think we’re ever—at least in my present understanding—I don’t know that we completely rid ourselves of our cultural and ethnic identities. I think God is glorified by the spectrum of the very kinds of humanity. What do we see gathered around the throne of Christ in Revelation 5? In Revelation 7? What do we see? We see men and women from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It seems to me that—even in the glorified state, even in the consummated state, I’m not sure how, but in someway, shape, or form—there’s going to be an ethnic diversity that we will celebrate. Imagine that? Irish people in Heaven! Who would’ve ever thought?! It will be celebrated from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. You see, that’s not our defining reality, our defining reality is who we are in Christ. See, I’m an Irish Christian, you’re a Dominican Christian, you’re a Chinese Christian; it’s who we are in Christ that is our defining reality.
Now, if you’re going to come to an understanding of these things concerning the two kingdoms and living in culture, you need to come to understand what is called redemptive history, and you need to trace out God’s redeeming grace through the course of redemptive history. Now, redemptive history has four main components to it: Creation, the Fall, redemption, and consummation. Creation establishes the kingdom of God ruled or administered through the rule of Adam. Adam was God’s royal son, who reigned and implemented the rule of God to earth. A theocracy mediated through the princely son of God. The presence of God was to be advanced through man’s labor as he transformed the Garden of Eden into a temple. There is where God would meet with man and commune with man, I believe, and join weekly Sabbaths that pointed him to the ultimate Sabbath Hope that he would enter upon, once he completed his task of filling this entire world of the image of God, of transforming the entire world into a large, global Eden, which is a temple of God. So that, upon completion of his work, God would dwell with man on earth, and that would be the entrance into God’s Sabbath blessings. But that did not happen.
The Fall—man failed the test, he rejected the Word of God and believed the devil’s lies, disobeyed the commandment of God concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and admitted Satan to usurp his dominion over the world. So, now man lives vulnerable to lies and deception, and has become the enemy of God, establishing now a rival kingdom against the kingdom of God. A kingdom in which he is able to usurp the doctrine that he has come to believe. “You shall not surely die,” and in the kingdom of man there are many who believe God is not good. “You mean you can’t eat of every tree? No, God’s not that good, and God is not righteous or just. You will not surely die. You can sin and not be punished for it.” Such is the kingdom of man.
But then redemption. In Genesis chapter 3, when God comes, He doesn’t come to execute final judgement. That’s amazing! He comes to initiate redeeming grace, and He comes to give grace. Now the world in which we live are conditioned by these realities. A common curse. We often talk of common grace, and that’s true, but don’t forget the common curse! This is a world conditioned by death. We are separate from one another in death; we’re separate from God in death. We tend to die, we tend to separate from the things that God has joined together, and we tend to hear and receive deceptive lies that separate us from God. Our bodies return to the dust that separates spirit from body, but there’s also common grace.
God comes and reestablishes the original role of husband and wife and keeps marriage intact. He keeps man in the place of the laborer to work the ground. The ground is now cursed, but he’s still going to work it; he’s still going to be a man, in this world, accountable for his stewardship of the earth. The woman is still going to be a wife to the husband and is still going to be procreating, although she will do that under the visitation of pain. The same pain she feels in childbearing, he’s going to feel in his labor. It’s the frustration that comes because of the common curse, but because God salvages this world, it is still the good Creation that He intended it to be.
Evil is restrained, and the work of the Law—not the Law, but the work of the Law—is written into man’s heart, so that he has some sense of what is good and what is bad, and he’s not as bad as what he could be. Even in the most degenerate cultures there’s still some measure of virtue. There’s some code among thieves, there’s some virtue, even amongst cultures that are notoriously wicked! You go to an Islamic culture—you don’t know who’s telling you the truth and who’s lying! You don’t know where a murderous design might come against you, but if someone gives you hospitality, you can take their life on the fact that they’re going to give you hospitality and protect you. They will be virtuous in ways that are astonishing, and yet, vicious in ways that are astonishing. Every culture is like that. Every culture will manifest this common curse and common grace. A common curse and common grace. The epitome, the highest expression of common grace, are the words that God spoke to Satan in the hearing of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15, where He promised that there would come from the woman a seed who would crush the head of the serpent, although the serpent would bruise His heel.
That’s the Gospel, and the epitome, the highest expression of God’s common grace, is the free offer of the Gospel that goes to all men indiscriminately. Those that believe that Gospel, they enter into the workings of redemptive grace, they enter into the workings of the kingdom of God. Adam believed that Gospel, he changed Isha’s name into Eve, the Mother of the Living. He receives the covering for his sin, taking the fig leaf off and receiving the provision of sacrificial atonement: bloodshed for his sin. He’s given the promise of the seed; he’s given the sacrifice for atonement of the sin; he’s given the continued admission into the presence of God on the Sabbath; and he’s sent forth from the land. He’s estranged from the land; he’s sent out of the Garden as a sojourner. Now his hope is somehow to get back into that Garden, but there’s a sword of justice that stands between him and entrance into that Garden, and he knows that in order to get back to that Garden somebody’s going to have to die. He wants to get back to the Garden, and that’s where the Bible takes us, isn’t it? When you read at the end of Revelation 21 and 22, where are you? You’re back in the Garden again, and the promises of God are fulfilled in the new Adam: Christ Jesus, who has been brought to us through redemptive grace.
Brethren, as you follow the history of redemption you’re sensitive. You’re sensitive to the Covenantal structure of God’s history: the Abrahamic covenant, the Old Covenant of Israel, the Davidic Covenant. You were brought into the New Covenant, and you’re brought into the hope of the Resurrection. That brings us to the consummated state of God’s kingdom and is already here. There are promises of the Old Testament that have already been fulfilled by Jesus Christ in His Resurrection. The Resurrection has already begun! The first fruits of the harvest have already been taken, and the gift of the Holy Spirit has already been given. The legal privileges of the kingdom have already been bestowed. You will never be more justified in glory than you already are right now. Already justified, already forgiven, already granted and imputed with the righteousness of Christ’s perfection legally, forensically, forever justified, adopted already.
Those were things the Old Testament prophets looked at and said, “That’s not going to happen until the kingdom of God comes,” and Jesus says, “It’s already here, but it’s not yet fully consummated.” Although Satan is legally defeated, he is no longer admitted into the presence of God, like in the days of Job, to make accusations against God’s servants. We have an advocate before the Father: Christ righteous, and he has no legal claim upon us anymore. He’s cast down into the earth raging, because he knows he only has a short period of time. The next step in his destruction is the consummated state of his ultimate defeat: being cast into the Lake of Fire, along with the two beasts and the harlot. That has not happened yet, that’s the not yet. We are not yet resurrected in glory; we have not yet obtained our inheritance of the New Heavens and the New Earth.
So we live in a world of tension, brethren, and that’s the issue of the two kingdoms. How do we live in this good world that has fallen, as citizens of the kingdom that is already here, but not yet here? It’s all tension. It’s all tension, which means the challenge is to gain your balance. Life in the two kingdoms is a life in which we bring the life and the dynamics of the Gospel into this present age. We bring the Gospel to bear upon our marriages. Our marriages are not redemptive institutions, pagans and unbelievers can get married. Marriage is a Creation ordinance, but we bring the Gospel to our marriages and we bring redemptive, gracious love into our marriages. We bring the Gospel into our workplaces. We bring the Gospel into our social activities, into our political engagements, into our vocations, into our involvements with other people in our culture. We act here as aliens, as sojourners, as light and as salt. We act under the rule of King Jesus, which means that our most definitive identity is found when we’re gathered together on the Lord’s Day, as a church, worshiping Him. That is where the kingdom of God is most specifically associated in the New Testament Age. It’s with the church of Jesus Christ.
As pastors, that’s what we teach our people: be good churchmen, first and foremost. Worship in spirit and truth; know Christ, and then take that love and life of Christ into your families. Take that love and life of Christ into the workplace. Take that love and life of Christ into your social dealings with others in your neighborhood, and live as a citizen of Heaven in this present age, as a citizen of two kingdoms. All under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that some of those basic perspectives help us to get a view, help us to get a vantage point, on the challenge of living in modern culture. Let’s pray.
Father, we pray that Your Spirit would instruct us, that these things rooted from the Word of God would help us and direct us and give us wisdom and discernment. That we might live a balanced, Christ glorifying life in this present age, as citizens of Heaven, and yet sojourners in this present world. Grant us grace, we pray, O Lord, in Christ. Amen.