Ren Merry
The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can engage the attention of the child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. - JI Packer.
The year 2020/21 will be remembered for many generations to come. Such times of uncertainties and being confined to the home provide an opportunity to rethink and renew our sense of focus. This article will address issues regarding matters of our faith and living (A disclaimer: I am not a theologian in the academic sense nor am I well versed to tackle deep philosophical questions, but every believer in Christ has been given the Word of God to study whereby we are equipped to discern truth and error).
Paul in his letter to Timothy, after drawing out a list of lawless, rebellious and ungodly behavior speaks of the “glorious gospel of the blessed God.” So what is this glorious gospel that Paul is talking about? First and foremost, the glorious gospel points us to the all-powerful majesty and glory of God.
Paul states in Romans 11:33-36: O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him, and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Secondly, the gospel in its purest form, unadjusted and unmodified is the power of Christ to save the vilest of all sinners and transforms the heart and mind. When Christ redeems an individual, a powerful transformation takes place...a 180 degree turn from self to Christ, from sin to righteousness and from darkness to glorious light (2nd Corinthians 5:17). The Welsh preacher Martin Loyd Jones stated that the powerful working of the gospel is the redemption of the complete man: His mind, his heart, and his will. He states, “What a gospel! What a glorious message! It can satisfy man’s mind completely, it can move his heart entirely, and it can lead to wholehearted obedience in the realm of his will.”
The hymn by Haldor Lillenas says it profoundly:
Wonderful grace of Jesus,
Reaching the most defiled
By its transforming power,
Making him God's dear child...
O magnify the precious Name of Jesus, praise His Name.
Thirdly, it is the abundant grace of God towards sinners to know Him, love Him, proclaim Him and to take utmost delight in Him so that we can say with the Psalmist declaring, “O Lord our Lord, how majestic is Thy Name in all the earth.” The Westminster Catechism says it so clearly: “Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and to fully enjoy Him forever.”
Finally, this glorious gospel leads us to fear God and to depart from evil. John Calvin, one of the reformers stated, "Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves." That is what we are witnessing today in our beloved land. What then, is our task to rise from our current plight to a society where the fear of God and recognition of His holiness governs our thinking and doing? Having said that, I often wonder how effectively we have embraced this gospel in Nagaland. Are we embracing an adjusted, powerless gospel? There seems to be a serious disconnect between our claim to be a Christian state and the current state of affairs...corruption and lawlessness. Within the struggle of every human being there lies a deep-seated spiritual problem when your view of God is skewed so also will everything else be. Martin Lloyd-Jones remarked that most of our problems are either because we are not thinking or because we are thinking incorrectly. JI Packer in his book Knowing God states that '...ignorance both of His ways and of the practice of communion with Him lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today.' We have been handed down the glorious gospel that has the power to transform the darkened human heart but we have dangerously diverted to a gospel that has either been adjusted, diluted or misunderstood. Our theology imported from the West in recent years, compounded by our own syncretized forms has created a gospel that is ineffective. We have forgotten the core content of the gospel message…redemption of the individual through faith and repentance in Christ alone, to know God and to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
The coming of the American missionaries in the 1800’s was the perfect working out of God’s plan for the Nagas to bring us to His marvelous light amidst tremendous oppositions and hardships. We had a victorious beginning, and there was a powerful shift in how we lived out each day. The church grew steadily. There was a sense of goodwill and changes were taking place in Nagaland…good changes. But gradually, with the leaving of the missionaries, the onset of modernization and outside influences, we saw church membership grow but we were becoming more spiritually bankrupt. Our church buildings became larger, but at its very core we saw the erosion and the decline in spiritual understanding. That has continued to plague us even to this day. All Nagas have heard the gospel, but I wonder how many truly have been transformed by its power. I am afraid a number of our pastors do not have knowledge of the gospel and are unregenerate. One Naga missionary recently stated that we Nagas need to rehear the gospel message. Much truth in that statement. What then is the gospel? It is this: God is holy but man has sinned against a righteous God and we deserve His wrath and judgment.
In His mercy, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to die as a penalty for our sin. Through faith and repentance, we can be made right with God. In the same way that the Lord addressed the Israelites during the time of Solomon, we Nagas will see healing in our land if we will turn from our wicked ways in repentance and seek the Lord (II Chronicles 7). We must make the conscious effort to come to him for restoration as individuals first and as a church. This glorifies God.
If we look at the contemporary evangelical church in America, any discerning mind will notice the transition from faithfulness to God's transforming truths to succumbing to the thinking patterns of the surrounding culture (Naga churches have followed similar patterns of how we do church). The plight of modern evangelicalism is this: We have been influenced more by popular psychology rather than by the inspired Word of God. Our pastors have become motivational speakers rather than preachers of the life-transforming gospel. We have become hazy in who we are, hazy in what we believe, and hazy in how we present Christ. Basically, we have succumbed to a man-centered form of Christianity. It sounds pleasing but is powerless and does nothing to transform the darkened human heart. It dangerously makes false disciples standing on shaky ground. Basically the gospel without addressing sin and calling people to repentance is not the complete gospel (We are spiritually dead and lifeless unless the Lord in His grace and mercy quickens us, opens our eyes to see the depravity of self, bringing us to repentance). The social gospel attempts to address man’s earthly needs but does not save the lost sinner. The prosperity and wealth gospel promises earthly blessings but does not address sin and repentance. The current moralistic, therapeutic deistic gospel is all about making one feel good about themselves but does not address the deepest of all human needs.
May we return to the purity and power of the unadulterated gospel able to save souls, capture the mind, the heart, and the will of man. This is indeed the glorious gospel. May the Lord teach us to think biblically by being faithful students of His Word (2nd Timothy 2:15). Let us have the mindset of the Bereans in Acts 17 where they “...received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men.” May our worship be in reverence and in recognition of His holiness and righteousness. Musically speaking, we need a return to vibrant congregational singing of the doctrinally rich, Christ-honoring hymns of the past as well as some new ones (most of what we are singing today is either theologically lacking or is musically insipid).To all Naga believers: May we be faithful witnesses in our homes, our educational institutions and our workplaces. It is for such times as these that the Lord has saved us and called us.
