Not many books have been written so successfully as to reach a 50th anniversary edition. The late Richard Niebuhr’s book, “Christ and Culture,” is one of them. It shows that the questions about Christ and culture are of high importance and value to the church. It helps us understand the issues of Christian ethics in the society we live. Our positions on Christ and culture will determine how we think about politics and social issues. It will determine what we believe are the right and wrong responses to the ethical dilemmas of our day. There are some people who would stand strongly on a side that says we are to make every effort to fight the culture to bring about change that would result in a culture more aligned with biblical morality and values. Others have a much more separatist view that disengages with culture entirely as they restrict all cultural influence possible.
It is easy to see that there can be extremes in the answers to the Christ and culture question. Christians need to be careful to keep a biblical balance when considering our engagement with the culture. We should be careful to see two strong principles at play. 1. Jesus has called us to engage with the culture and glorify him in our lives. 2. Christians have been saved into a heavenly kingdom.
1. Jesus has called us to engage with the culture and glorify him in our lives.
As we look at Jesus’ ministry, we sometimes see things that make us feel a little uncomfortable. In fact, I would put it to you that the whole matter of the incarnation is uncomfortable. The perfect God of the universe came INTO this world to be with sinners. His very name, “Immanuel,” means “God with us.” In his ministry we often find Jesus being criticized by the Pharisees for dining with sinners and tax collectors. While the religious elite wanted to point their fingers in accusation toward sinners, Jesus saw people who were in great need as a result of their sin and reached out to them in compassion (Matthew 9:9-13). In doing so, Jesus never once sinned. He lived out his holiness, spoke in holiness, and reached out compassionately by engaging with the lost. While there were many opportunities to do so, not once did Jesus attempt to return Jewish rule or ethics, and certainly not by political means. Instead, Jesus said things like, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 21:21). When the crowd wanted to take Jesus and make him king (John 6:15), Jesus withdrew to pray. Jesus is the one among us all who could indeed take advantage of an opportunity to replace Caesar and restore Jewish ethics and rule. Instead, he withdrew. Many times, Jesus left the Jewish perimeter to venture into Gentile territory to reveal his good news. He sat with a promiscuous Samaritan woman and offered her himself as living water.
As we read through the New Testament, it is hard to get any strong argument that the Christian is called to engage with the culture for the purpose of bettering or winning against culture. If there is any such benefit from Christianity, it would seem to be secondary to the purpose. Often as the gospel has spread through different places in different times, conversions of greater magnitude have resulted in the betterment of laws and social morality and even compassionate services as Christians have lived out their faith engaging with their culture. The true purpose of engagement with culture given to God’s people is the great commission. Matthew 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
2. Christians have been saved into a heavenly kingdom.
In answering the Governor, Pilot, Jesus stated that his purpose was not to set up a worldly kingdom but to save people into his heavenly kingdom (John 18:36). If Jesus was attempting to bring new and better rule to this world, he could have inspired a political coup, but he didn’t. He came into this world to introduce us to his heavenly kingdom and save us from destruction.
This is also the essence of what Paul talks about when he explains the gospel to the Galatians. In Galatians 1:3-5 the gospel is explained as Jesus saving us out of this present evil age/world. At the end of Galatians as Paul summarizes his letter he talks about the work of the cross as crucifying us unto this world and the world unto us (Gal 6:14). In a sense, we Christians should see ourselves as exiles engaging in a foreign land. We are saved from the worldliness of this world and everything we might desire to put our confidence in outside of the cross of Christ. In the cross, we have been crucified to the world and Paul says that our only boast (or glory) is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. In one sense you could say that this shows us that Jesus never came to make the culture glorious, but to save people out of the culture through the glory of his cross. Paul makes it clear that God shows his glory in the cross. The glory of the cross is eternal, change in a culture still awaits destruction. Glory is found in the heavenly kingdom.
Conclusion
If we keep these balancing truths in place, we start to live and engage in this world with gospel priority. We will know that our purpose is to see people saved to the glory of Christ as we live and speak the glory of Christ. We will say that our only glory is in the cross of Christ and our engagement with culture will be with the purpose of reaching the lost that they may know the glory we have.
We don’t make this culture glorious. We seek to save people out of this culture to glory found in Jesus alone.