Christian maturity is infinitely more than successful self-improvement! “Without me ye can do nothing.” Never were words more explicit, less ambiguous; and their source is unimpeachable!
Jesus could not have spoken more simply yet no words uttered by him are more profound. The Christian needs his Saviour as lungs need breath, the heart blood, the body energy. Without his Saviour the Christian is a cipher. All he needs he finds in Jesus Christ, all God offers is given in Jesus Christ. Without his Saviour the Christian has nothing, with Him he has everything.
Christian Maturity And A Person
This is not oversimplification, it is the deepest truth in Scripture, the distilled essence of all the Scriptures teach. Does the Christian need life? Jesus Christ is his life. Does he seek wisdom? In Jesus Christ are “stored up all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Does he long for righteousness? Christ has been made “our righteousness.” Does his soul hunger? Jesus Christ is the “true bread.” Is his spirit barren, arid? Jesus Christ is unto him a “fountain of living water.” God’s total resources for man’s total need have been made available in the person of Jesus Christ. These are not professional clichés, they are the truth of God. If by reason of thoughtless use they sound smug or pat or stereotyped, let the perfunctory handling be judged, not the words, for they are the very substance of Christian maturity. They are the key to effective Christian education.
Reduced to simplest terms the theme of the Bible is man’s failure to conform to the divine expectation and God’s provision to reclaim that cosmic default. The heart of this reclamation is the fact that God’s provision centers not in precepts, but in a Person. Man’s frightful loss is met and his duty to God realized when he is properly related to that Person. His failure is manifest, not so much by obvious vices but with far greater subtlety, by his aloofness to, if not total rejection of this Person who embodies the provision. He is perennially defeated, not because he disregards ethical precepts, but because he will not submit to the Person. Indeed, he not uncommonly employs conformity to certain precepts as self-justification for evading the Person. The Pharisees epitomized this self-deceiving, self-defeating practice, before his conversion the Apostle Paul himself being the supreme example. They boasted in the law not because they kept it, but because they possessed it. That which was intended to lead them to Christ (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:24) became their reason for rejecting him (Mark 7:6–9). Precepts became their besetting sin; they not only failed to produce spiritual maturity, they were the very basis for hostility to God.
Obviously, therefore, such hostility is aggravated rather than resolved by man’s efforts toward self-improvement and demands reconciliation through a radical adjustment which Jesus called being “born again.” Spiritual regeneration depends upon man’s recognition of his need, its solution in Jesus Christ, and a personal response of faith or acceptance; his spiritual growth depends upon a continuation of this relationship. Christian education must aim at the effectuation of this relationship and its preservation. Education, by whatever name, which perpetuates the illusion that man is able in and of himself to solve this problem not only tails, it is antagonistic to authentic Christian faith.
The conventional “image” of Christianity in our modern world is utterly contrary to New Testament truth. Christianity is conceived as primarily ethical, the Christian being a man doing his best to behave. To be respectable is to be Christian and vice-versa. It is widely accepted without question, both within and without the Church, that the distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian is one of degree, not of kind. In fact, it is commonly assumed that all Americans (all Westerners for that matter) save Jews, are Christian as distinguished from the “heathen” of primitive lands, and even this distinction is rapidly evaporating as civilization, equated with Christianity, spreads its veneer over the fast-changing world.
The assumption therefore is that man is perfectible in himself, that all the resources necessary are endemic in him, waiting only psychological inducements. When Christian education capitulates to this basic error, it defects to the fruitless effort of improving man simply by increasing his knowledge and making him more socially conscious and responsible. Emphasis is on his adjustment to his fellowman rather than on his reconciliation to God which is fundamental to life. Ignoring man’s eternal welfare (“if only in this life we have hope in Christ we are of all men most to be pitied”) it fails in its this-worldly goals as well, because it contributes to self-deification which is the root of the problem. The futility of so-called Christian education which is primarily a matter of ethical maturation is tragically apparent in the fact that in spite of a general increase of religious interest and church attendance, since World War II, there has been an inexorable moral disintegration.
Education As Relationship
Christianity issues in ethics but ethics is one of its effects rather than its goal. Christianity produces ethical man, but it is quite common for a man to be ethical though not Christian. Education which does not result in the ethical, socially responsible man is not true Christian education, but if it produces only the socially adjusted, ethical man, it is infinitely less than Christian. It is self-defeating and contrary to biblical faith for it pits man’s self-sufficiency against God’s grace.
Saul of Tarsus exceeded all his contemporaries in trying to be a man of righteousness; but his zealous, dedicated, single-minded struggle drove him farther and farther from his goal. Christ was his despised enemy, the Church a scourge to be obliterated, and he understood this very passion for righteousness to be Israel’s impasse: “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Rom. 10:2–3, RSV). This is the congenital perversity at the root of the human dilemma, man seeking his own righteousness in violation of God’s order, man alienating himself from God by an imitation godliness which has the form but not the power. Education which espouses this counterfeit righteousness is the antithesis of Christian education.
Were the Apostle Paul opening a school for Christian growth it is not difficult to locate in his Epistles those principles which would comprise his philosophy of education. His prayers, for example, delineate the goals he would undoubtedly incorporate in the charter: “… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead …” (Eph. 1:17–20, RSV). “… that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:16–19, RSV).
Paul’s curriculum would certainly reflect the revolutionary experience to which he testifies in Philippians 3:4–16. Where can be found a better statement of the purpose of Christian education than these words of the great apostle: “… I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death … one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8–14, RSV).
In biblical perspective Christian education and the secular spirit are 180 degrees apart. Secularism believes that man’s best is adequate; Christian education begins with the fact that man’s best is less than the least God intended but that God in Christ has done for man what he is incapable of doing for himself. Secularism strives for self-realization, Christian education teaches self-denial unto Christ-realization. Secularism is self-improvement, Christian education is life transformation by the power of God. Secularism is man’s endeavoring to do his best, Christian education puts no confidence in human assets but schools the Christian to appropriate the inexhaustible reserve of grace in the Saviour.
This does not mean that Christian education is pessimistic about man. On the contrary it is optimistic in the ultimate; its norm is the perfect man, Jesus Christ. Effort at self-improvement leads alternately to the pride of success or the despair of failure, if it does not leave one on the plateau of mediocrity and indifference; whereas true Christian education cuts the tap root of pride and exploits failure as a means of leading one to more complete dependence upon the grace of God in Christ. Failure, frustration and defeat are never final, they are part of the tempering process, helping the Christian to be increasingly realistic about himself and about the resources of God. They do not lead the growing Christian into morbid introspection and preoccupation with self, they lead him to deeper insights into human nature in general, his own in particular, and increased dependence upon the indwelling Christ.
To be spiritually mature is to be Christ-confident, rather than self-confident. The mature Christian is a realist having been disillusioned in self enough to know that self-confidence is illusory whereas dependence upon Christ is fulfilling. As independence characterizes the adolescent, so the egocentric attitude is the hall mark of immaturity in adults; misnamed self-confidence, it is actually pride which is self-deification. Education not oriented in the Scriptures can produce the self-reliant, self-confident, self-contained man for whom self-disillusionment when it comes is often traumatic. Refusing to be mastered by Christ, he becomes a slave of the tyrant self and inevitably a victim of the realities of life. Genuine Christian education leads to the self-surrendered, Christ-managed man. He is invincible because the life he lives is not his own, it is literally the life of the Son of God dwelling in him. He is crucified with Christ yet he lives and the life he lives is Christ’s!
The authentic impact of Christianity in the world is infinitely more than the influence of man at his best, it is the power of God operative in the lives of those who know they need their Saviour, who have surrendered to his Lordship, and in whom and through whom he does the will of the Father on earth as it is in heaven. For this evidence of legitimate Christianity our modern world languishes.
“Jesus Christ is the true God of men, that is to say, of beings miserable and sinful. He is the center of everything and the object of everything; and he who does not know Him knows nothing of the order of the world, and nothing of himself. For not only do we not know God, otherwise than by Jesus Christ; we do not know ourselves otherwise than by Jesus Christ. In Him is all our virtue and all our felicity; apart from Him there is nothing but vice, misery, errors, clouds, despair, and we see only obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in our own.”
Pascal, Pensées sur la Religion
“Allied to Thee our vital Head
We act, and grow, and thrive.
From Thee divided each is dead
When most he seems alive.”
Doddridge, Hymns Founded on
Texts in the Holy Scriptures.
Awards For Best Sermons On Human Destiny
Universalism with its profoundly unbiblical thesis that all men are already saved is sweeping Protestantism. To arouse active concern over this distorted “gospel” which cuts the nerve both of evangelism and missions, CHRISTIANITY TODAY announces a stimulating venture. More than $1,000 will be awarded for relevant sermons (abridged to 2,500 words in written form) that (1) expose the fallacies of this contemporary movement and (2) faithfully expound the biblical revelation of man’s final destiny and the ground and conditions of his redemption. Selection of winners will be by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S editorial readers, whose decisions will be final. First, second and third place awards of $500, $250, and $125, respectively, will be paid upon publication of the sermons. The editors reserve the right to publish two additional manuscripts selected for fourth and fifth place awards of $75 each. All rights to winning manuscripts become magazine property.
All entries must be original sermons actually preached to a congregation sometime during 1962. Two typewritten, double-spaced copies of each submitted sermon should be postmarked to the Washington office of CHRISTIANITY TODAY no later than December 31, 1962. No manuscript will be returned unless a self-addressed, stamped envelope accompanies the entry. Attached to each sermon (both copies) should be a cover page giving the contributor’s name, address, and present station of service.
