TCW Short Take #5 - Week of Dec 3

Younger evangelicals seem to focus less on orthodoxy doctrines and so forth than orthopraxy living your faith out. Younger evangelicals are focused on more social issues, helping the poor, the oppressed, minorities, racial reconciliation, immigration, these kinds of things. Did the older generation of believers lack something in that regard? Wasn't there enough attention or focus on those kinds of things, or is this younger generation going down a road that's going to take them away from a sound faith, away from the proclamation of the gospel, into more of a social theology?

You know, a couple of things. One is, you go back a century, and we're back into the 1920s, and you've got Jay Grestin Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism, and he starts that book off with, is Christianity a doctrine or a lifestyle? And he ends up saying, it's both. The liberals want to say Christianity is a lifestyle only. It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters how you live. It's not, you know, the doctrines of Christ, it's the beatitudes. Are you living out the beatitudes?

What Machen does, and it's brilliant, he says, it's both. It's a doctrine and a lifestyle. But then he says this, it's a doctrine first. The lifestyle is always the fruit of the gospel, and never confuse the fruit of the gospel for the substance of the gospel. Now, we can't just have the doctrine and not care about how we live.

We are commanded to love our neighbor. But that is the fruit of the gospel. And it's very easy to distinguish the fruit of the gospel with the gospel itself, or it's very easy to sever the fruit of the gospel from the gospel itself.

And so whether the older generation was better at it or not good at it, you know, that that may be debatable. But what we are seeing in this current, especially the millennials of evangelicals, is we're hearing them say the same thing the liberals were saying in the 1920s. We can have Christianity without the doctrine.

But that's just not true. Now, let's applaud the desire to live out the gospel and the desire to see the fruit of the gospel displayed in our churches and in our lives. But let's never sever the fruit of the gospel from the truth of the gospel and the doctrines of the gospel.

So I know it's an old book, it's an old book, classic book, but I'd say, let's just go back and read Machen again, Christian liberalism in chapter one. And let's just try to get that right, because that's so crucial, that relationship of doctrine and lifestyle, the gospel and the fruit of the gospel. We hope you gained from this short take of the Christian worldview radio program. To hear the full program and further connect with this ministry, visit thechristianworldview.org. I'm David Wheaton.