Culture Driven Christianity is Irrelevant to itself and the Culture

By and large, many in the modern Church are irrelevant in their faith. What I mean is this: well-intended people spend so much time trying to engage the culture that they blend in with it, affirm it, and even throw out Biblical truths to play nice with the society around them. Here is the fact, though: culture-driven Christianity is highly irrelevant. It does not proclaim the Gospel boldly, it cows from persecution of any sort, it seeks to play nice, and it gives no one any real victory in Christ, who gives us victory from Sin and Death.

Cultural Christianity seeks to be a chameleon that, at best, hopes to win people to Jesus by osmosis, or, at worst, seeks to have something to do with God, and hopes that in the middle of all their compromises, God might overlook their compromise. What drives this form of “worship” is fear and self-interest. I proclaim to you, in comparison to the Scriptures, that this form of “faith” drives people toward hell and risks eternal judgement!

Yes, I sound like a hell-fire and brimstone preacher, but what we must understand is that Jesus, the Apostles, and Christians in Spirit and Truth since have proclaimed “Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand,” and “save yourselves from this crooked generation.” If your Christianity doesn’t confront sin, it does not confront the heart of the matter: that our sin is rebellion against our Creator, and it condemns us to death, physically and to eternal punishment apart from God forever. Christ confronted sin, and so Christians must do so as well, beginning with themselves, and working outward. In ourselves, we confront it with extreme prejudice, by the Word and the Spirit, putting it to death. In others, we proclaim how Christ rescued us from our sin and made us new. We do not have to be culturally relevant: we are not of this world! We have to rescue whosoever will with the good news of the Gospel! Go, stand out. Proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

John 15:18-27

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

John 17:6-19

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.