It’s Not The Pagans, It’s The Christians

To the Corinthians the apostle Paul wrote,

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Cor 5:9–13)

Paul knows and affirms to the church at Corinth that the pagan world surrounding them was comprised of the sexually immoral, swindlers, the greedy, revilers, drunkards, and idolaters, but they (and the culture they created) were not his concern. What concerned Paul was not what was happening out there but what was happening in here, in the Corinthian congregation. It was not the gross sexual immorality of the pagans in Corinth that kept him up at night. It was that member of the church who was impenitently involved in gross sexual immorality who needed to be placed under church discipline (1 Cor 5:1–5). It was not the pagans who visited prostitutes who grieved him as much it was the thought that some who bore the name of Christ united themselves and thus Christ to prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15). Paul knew that the pagans wantonly took each other to court, but what broke his heart was that Christians were taking their business disputes to secular courts rather than to the church for resolution (1 Cor 6:1–8).

His intent could not have been clearer: “What do I have to do with judging outsiders [τοὺς ἔξω]? (1 Cor 5:12, emphasis added). Paul expected pagans to act like pagans. What they needed was to hear the gospel, that message of good news ordained by God as the instrument through which the Holy Spirit would work to bring out of the pagan world the elect to new life and true faith: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17).

So You Want To Change The Culture?

This is not to suggest, in any way, that Christians should not be engaging the culture. They should! I have outlined a scheme for doing that very thing.¹ It is, however, to suggest that our priorities should be more aligned with those of Scripture. We need to accept that there is not a simple straight line from where we are as a culture to where we Christians would like the culture to be. The path is indirect, and it does not go through Mount Sinai. It goes through another hill, Golgotha.

There are something like 330 million Americans, 60 to 70 million of which are self-identified evangelical Christians, including about 600,000 confessionally Reformed Christians. Evangelical Christians profess to believe and to know the Bible. The old evangelical faith, as it was known during the Reformation, confessed justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It confessed God’s moral law to be the abiding norm of the Christian life.

As many others have observed, if sixty million evangelical American Christians actually believed the old evangelical faith and lived according to God’s moral law, the culture would be affected in remarkable, almost unthinkable ways. Imagine if all of us kept our families intact; if we stopped aborting our children; if we kept the Christian Sabbath (by gathering for public worship, resting, and doing works of mercy); if we gave up idolatry, gossip, lying, theft, covetousness, sexual immorality, abuse of the Lord’s name; if we invested in the mission of the visible church; if we were so obviously distinct from the culture that we stood out not by what we said but simply by the way we lived? Imagine if we sought first the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33) out of gratitude for the magnificent grace we have received in Christ?

Facing the prospect not only of a coming bloody persecution of Christians (1 Pet 4:12–16) but also his own martyrdom (John 21:18–19), the apostle Peter railed not at the world but turned his attention inward, toward the Christ-confessing covenant community:

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. (1 Pet 4:17–19)²

Judgment begins with God’s house, his holy temple—the visible church. Christ said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). We who are united to the risen Christ by the Holy Spirit, by grace, are his living temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:14–16; Eph 2:21; 1 Pet 4:12–19). Judgment of the world and the reprobates is coming. Both Jude and 2 Peter are clear that there will always be reprobates, but their day is coming. Now is the day of salvation. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). He is calling his elect to new life and true faith. He will soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom 16:20). The day of the Lord is coming like a thief, like a flood of fire, “and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Pet 3:10).

The path to renewal of the culture does not begin with the culture. If it is to happen, it begins with us who believe. It begins with the ministry of the gospel, through which God the Spirit brings his elect to new life. It begins with the work of the Spirit in the hearts of his people. It begins with the reformation of the church, her worship, and her life by the Holy Spirit, and it will not happen until our knees touch the floor because “it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us; and because God will give his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who earnestly and without ceasing beg them of him, and render thanks unto him for them.”³

Notes

1. See R. Scott Clark, “Popll: An Alternative to Christian Nationalism (and Theonomy, Christian Reconstruction, Theocracy, and Christendom),” The Heidelblog.
2. In verse 18 Peter quotes Prov 11:31.
3. Heidelberg Catechism 116.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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