Professors or Confessors of Christ?

Letter For June 2009 Tron Times

Dear Friends,

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies” (Amos 5:21)

Something must be said about the recent decision of our General Assembly, which has brought such shame upon us all, but far worse, upon the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

First, lest anyone should be tempted to say ‘why the fuss? this is hardly a matter of the essence of the Christian faith’, (as some even in evangelical leadership have apparently said), let us be crystal clear about the real issues at stake here. This is about far more than just sexuality; it is about the very nature of the Christian faith. The true gospel is not about self-fulfilment and self-expression, but a command to take up our cross in a life of self-denial, regardless of our own personal inclinations, desires or past history. Jesus’ call is one of compassion, but of compassionate truth: ‘I forgive you; go and leave your life of sin’. That is why the world rejected Jesus then, and rejects his Lordship today.

But of course the enemy of truth does not challenge openly, or fight fair; his serpentine ways are surreptitious in their malignancy, as we have been reminded in our studies of Peter’s second letter. ‘There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies’ he says, ‘even denying the master’. ‘And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.’ (2 Peter 2:1-2). Well, that is exactly what we are living through; the way of truth has been blasphemed in the highest court of our Church. And, as I observed the crucial debates on the floor of the General Assembly, it was clear that such nefarious subtlety extended to its stage-management also. Far from the self-proclaimed epitome of exemplary debate, it was, said one commissioner, ‘the shrewdest, most manipulative behaviour’ he had ever witnessed in his life. Shame!

My Father, throughout his 50 years of ordained ministry service in our Church, saw many Assemblies come and go. I have been reading through some of his pastoral letters to the Holyrood congregation, and I think it would be instructive to share some excerpts with you. Writing in 1972, in the 400th year since John Knox’s death, and speaking of the general vilification of Knox in the modern day, even in the church, he makes the point that such attacks are not really against the man; they are but the disguise for the real target, which is the truth of God he represents.

“CS Lewis has put the matter in a nutshell in his Introduction to J B Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches. Speaking of the attempt made by the nineteenth century liberal theologians to drive a wedge between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Apostle Paul he comments: ‘In the earlier history of every rebellion there is a stage at which you do not yet attack the King in person. You say ‘the King is alright. It is his ministers who are wrong. They misrepresent him and corrupt all his plans which, I’m sure, are good plans if only the ministers would let them take effect’. And the very first victory consists in beheading a few ministers; only at a later stage do you go and behead the King himself. In the same way, the nineteenth century attack on St Paul was really only a stage in the revolt against Christ. Men were not ready in large numbers to attack Christ himself. They made the first normal move—that of attacking one of his principal ministers. Everything they disliked in Christianity was therefore attributed to St Paul. It was unfortunate that their case could not impress anyone who had really read the Gospels and the Epistles with attention; but apparently few people had, and so the first victory was won. St Paul was impeached and banished, and the world went on to the next step—the attack on the King himself.’”

The trends he observed then, nearly four decades ago are all the more apparent today. What we are now facing in our own denomination, and indeed in all the mainline churches of our decadent, post-Christian western world, is the attack on the King himself, his Lordship and his gospel: ‘Even denying the master’.

And that is why we must defend his honour on this matter with unswerving conviction, regardless of the cost. We must not merely profess him, but confess Christ in the midst of this attack on our King and Lord’s authority. Martin Luther put it so clearly:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point that the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages fiercely is where the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

In that same pastoral letter my father goes on to quote words spoken by Her Majesty the Queen (long may she reign!) at the special meeting of our General Assembly on the 400th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland:

‘What meaning are we to give today to the establishment of the Reformed faith in Scotland in 1560?’ She asked.

And her answer: ‘Holy writ was liberated to the people, and, as a result, the Word of God was revealed again as a force to be reckoned with in the affairs of both public and private life. The Gospel, which had long been revered as a record handed down from primitive Christianity, was once more to be seen to be also a living light by which men ought to direct their lives.’

Would that we had had her Majesty to address such words to our Assembly this year. Instead, alas, we witnessed, from churchmen themselves, a determination that Scripture should no more be seen as the living light by which people ought to direct their lives, the true gospel once more to be relegated as a mere artefact of primitive Christianity, its teaching at best ignored, and worse, mocked and laughed at – even from the moderatorial chair – as one commissioner regaled the Assembly with tales of his fornication to loud applause. Shame – deep shame! And fear. That should surely be the response from all with even a vestigial sense that the Word of God is a force to be reckoned with in the affairs of life. (Peter’s words in 2 Peter 2:20-22, and Luke’s in Acts 12:23 should be required reading for all commissioners.)

But it is not just the sinister error so clearly aired at the Assembly; the otherwise sheer tedious irrelevance of the whole affair is quite breathtakingly palpable. Without a controversy over sexuality to so delight the gutter press (most of it, these days), the world around us is utterly disinterested, if faintly amused, at this annual display of pompous ceremonial farce at the top of the Mound (which outstrips even that at the bottom end of the Royal Mile). Posturing ecclesiastics spouting pathetic drivel lap up their few days of pre-eminence, as though being displayed on the Assembly Hall’s gigantic screens were the pinnacle of achievement. But no-one outside is even remotely interested, and why should they be? And why should God himself be?

Writing in 1974 of this my father commented:

“What if God should have become impatient with the spiritual obtuseness, not to say barrenness, of His Church, bogged down as it is with ecclesiastical mumbo-jumbo, its ecumenical flirtations, its political motivations and all, and is longing for a willing people in the day of His power – and calling young people to himself for the real interests of His kingdom, and to be that people?

At all events, if God is not impatient, our young generation are. They have become disenchanted with the materialistic, ‘never-had-it-so- good’ spirit that has so corrupted the western world and that certainly has not left the church unscathed; they do not see themselves becoming part and parcel of a comfortable, bloodless and lifeless religiosity – indeed this is what they see so many of their generation turning away from in sheer boredom, as something irrelevant to the realities of life as they know it.

What surprises them is not so much that many people should be falling away from the habit of church attendance, but rather that so many should still go to church, when it has had so little that is living and vital and biblical to offer them, and has lowered its standards so substantially that membership has come to mean as much – or as little – as people choose to make it. Who could blame them for their disillusionment? What they wanted – and what they still want – was something to challenge them, something to make demands on them, something that called for vision and sacrifice, a cause worth living for and worth dying for.

This is what the best kind of biblical ministry can do – and is doing – for young people today. For it is confronting them with the inexorable claims of Christ, and with His relentless summons to the obedience of faith; with a gospel that makes absolutely no concessions in terms of the call to discipleship, and is prepared to let them turn away sorrowfully, like the rich young ruler, rather than lower the price ...

…I pray that those of vision, seeing this, will give themselves wholeheartedly and with resolution of purpose to its furtherance in days of such opportunity.”

Confronting men with the inexorable claims of Christ, and with his relentless summons to the obedience of faith. That is what real, living gospel ministry was about then, and that is what it is still about today. That is what Confessing Christ means as true gospel churches of our Lord Jesus in the midst of a faithless and twisted generation. Alas too few in our near bankrupt denomination are willing to see it. But see it, and live it, we must.

We are in the valley of decision; at stake is not whether we decide for him, but whether he, when it truly matters, can decide for us. ‘For’, says our Lord, ‘whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8:38). That Bar of judgment, not the Bar of the General Assembly, is what matters; that is where our eyes must be fixed.

So, here I stand; I can do no other, if I am to be your pastor in this church.

Are you with me?

he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart…
But we in it shall be remembered
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.
(Henry 5 Act 4 Scene 3)

Yours, with deep shame, yet unswerving hope in the service of Jesus Christ, the only King and Lord of this Church,

William J U Philip