The Necessity of a Biblical Worldview
Posted by Michael Bunker
editor@lazarusunbound.com
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom 12:1-2).
August 18, 2003 - In regards to worship it is often supposed that a particular religious service or attitude is in view. This opinion may well have been derived from the modernist view of the “church” as a building or as an incorporated entity rather than the historic Christian view of the “church” as the called-out body of believing saints. The scriptures do not limit the concept of worship to religious service or to a particular time period consisting of spiritual reflection or a prayerful attitude.
This section of scripture in the Book of Romans utilizes the term “reasonable service” which speaks of worship by using the greek word latreia which is also used to connote divine service and worship in several places throughout the New Testament. It is our rational and logical service to our Sovereign to present our bodies (meaning the whole of us, our thoughts, our work, our lives and attitudes) to God as a living sacrifice, separate and agreeable unto God’s revealed Word.
Submitting the entirety of ourselves in conformity to God’s Holy Word is not considered by the Apostle to be a special or grievous thing. Note that he calls this our “reasonable service”. It is our logical and rational form of worship. It is not to be considered extreme or radical in any way to have our thinking (our minds) conformed to the Word of God, while resisting having our minds conformed to this world.
Note that to have any portion of our lives or thinking conformed to “this world” is considered radical and un-Christian by the Apostle who writes to Christian believers who live in the heart of ancient Rome! Rome is the very center of humanist/man-centered thinking. Conformity BEGINS in Rome, and all the world (even today) CONFORMS to Rome. But the Apostle is certain that in order to prove God’s acceptable and perfect will, His servants would not even conceive of conforming any area of their life to the ways of the world.
In a society that rewards conformity and whose law and culture punishes non-comformists, we can only expect and know with certainty that the multitude of God’s promises always remain true, even those that we do not particularly like. Behold the prophecy from this same Apostle written unto Timothy:
“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).
God’s will is manifest in the effectual calling, salvation and sanctification of His elect Saints. His decreed will is done absolutely and without question regarding the disposition of His elect children. But the Bible says to us that we are to “prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”. Such proof is offered in the behavior of those who have fully offered their entire being up to God as a living sacrifice, thereby showing that the Sovereign Creator of the Universe has spoken, and that He is not silent, and that His word is truth, and that it is to be believed as total truth by being absorbed into the very thought processes that shape our behavior and choices in everyday life. The word “PROVE” that is used here, is not merely “to test” or “to make manifest”, but more fully has in view “to examine or place up for examination”. We fully worship God by conforming the entirety of our lives to His revealed will, and by offering that obedience up to Him as evidence to the principalities and powers in the heavenly realms to all of God’s perfections.
As we have shown over the past several weeks, the Holy Spirit of God engages in the regenerative act within the elect of God FIRST. This act must necessarily precede such things as:
a) belief of the Gospel,
b) conversion
c) sanctification, mortification, etc.
But spiritual causes do not nullify effects. Those God effectually calls, are called to become God worshippers. They are called for the specific purpose of glorifying God to all those spiritual principalities and powers in the heavenlies.
God is glorified in the worship and praise of His saints, but if this worship is limited only to religious duty and ritual sacrifice, then God is truly ONLY feared but not worshipped. The Apostle pictures worship as a 24 hour lifestyle, a submission of the creature to the Creator, and as a whole-hearted belief of the words spoken by God. God does not need obedience in order to bring about effects visible to the carnal and spirit world. God is more than able to effect the uncaused. He does not lack in power or in might. Our obedience does not add to God’s stature or His power. Our obedience merely shows that God is able to make dirt from the ground (mere worms of the earth) to believe great mysteries and to apprehend what God has chosen to make known:
“For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col 2:1-8).
Humanism crept into professing Christianity during the time of Thomas Aquinas. The mixture of philosophy with Christianity caused, for the first time, the so-called Christian worldview to be broken apart so that instead of being a complete and beautiful whole, it became a conglomeration of particulars. Worship was confined to the religious arena, while the rest of life could be viewed through humanist philosophies and worldly conventions.
Note specifically that in these verses from Colossians we see that FIRST the elect man receives Christ Jesus the Lord, which is the eternal decrement of God concerning him. The man has worked no work here. He has been totally passive in the transaction being the net receiver of a sovereign work of Grace. He has received Christ Jesus. But now the scene passes from the passive reception of Christ Jesus according to God’s sovereign decree, to the active COMMAND of God regarding the responsibility of the creature: “so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving”. To “walk in Christ” is to truly worship Him, and to show that we have believed Him by our obedience to all of His word:
“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4)
Walking in the newness of life can regard only that which is spiritual. God is spirit (John 4:24). Only that which is spiritual can please God. God desires those who would worship Him spiritually (John 4:23).
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom 8:9).
To obey God is to manifest that God has spoken and that His word is True. Religious motivations aside, the creature operates wholly on that which he believes to be true. If God has spoken (and He has), and if the creature remains enslaved to the carnal mind even in part, then the creature owns that God has not been believed. But the Bible says, as we read earlier, that after we have received the Spirit of God, that we are to walk differently from the world:
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1Co 2:12-14).
It is the common opinion of modernist pseudo-Christians that God’s word is to govern only the religious areas of our lives. The particulars are left to us while the religious things are left to be governed by religious systems and traditions and, only secondarily, by the Bible. In 1981, only a few years before his death, Francis Schaeffer pointed out a fact that is more true now than it was when it was spoken:
"The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals."
Humanism has caused us to look at life in terms of particulars and not in terms of the whole. The professing Christian is then left to go down the list, choosing what parts of his life will be submitted to God’s Holy and unchangeable Word, and what parts must be compromised in order to maintain viability within the system. Universities, once created to bring the whole of man into accord through a unity of Biblical thought (a Biblical worldview), now exist to champion diversity and the celebration of many worldviews (so long as they are not universally Christian). Most professing Christians now raise their children in order to hand them over to the world, for the express purpose of “preparing them” (at the time when they are the most susceptible) to operate in concord with the world’s thought patterns. These so-called “Christians” confess a wholly different idea of God’s word. They say, “be ye conformed to the world” so that no persecution will come upon you and that you will not be reviled and hated by a world that crucified Christ. Remember that the command that we worship God cannot be confined to religious ritual… the Word of God does not allow it. We are constantly condemned by religious worldlings who would impose on us behaviors that are extra-biblical religious innovations, while forbidding things that are not so much as hinted at in scripture (drink not, taste not, touch not). A cursory examination of those who do such things expose that while these religiousites have a show of godliness, the whole of their lives outside of their “church world” is given over to the ways, thoughts and behaviors of the world. Is it more worldly to drink a glass of wine, or to turn ones children over to devils and god-haters to have them educated? How many religious worldlings pass under Satan’s yoke, bowing the knee to Antichrist daily, while pretending to judge righteous judgment? Are we to be reviled because we choose to be ruled by the scriptures alone? I cannot help but laugh at the sight of state-sponsored, institutional “church” leaders who scoff at the thought of a free and unencumbered fellowship of believers serving a Sovereign God, while they religiously replace the communion wine with grape juice in order not to offend their precious “tithing units”.
GOD HAS NOT BEEN SILENT!
The early church experienced Christianity in a much different way. Their lives were wholly given over to Jesus Christ as living sacrifices to Him. They believed that God had spoken to them in an unmistakable way, and, as the Old Testament attests, the voice of God, when believed and heeded, results in a Christian life acceptable unto God. Woe unto any people who hear not God’s voice. Any people who do not hear God’s voice inevitably turn to their own devices, doing what is right in their own eyes. During the days of Jeroboam, Israel worshipped calves and creeping things and every manner of creature. The prophet Azariah, the son of Oded noted:
“Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law” (2 Chron. 15:3).
The people were forsaken of God “for a long season”. Their lives were marked by idolatry, witchcraft, paganism and disobedience. The Bible says of these people:
“And in those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in, but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries. And nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity” (2 Chron. 15:5-6).
These are the children of Israel who are spoken of here. It is not that they were irreligious, or that they eschewed all “spirituality” - but they had been turned over to the devices of their own minds, to be ruled by, and conformed to, the ways of the world.
When God speaks, His people listen.
These same religious worldlings are seen reacting differently once they have truly heard the words of God as spoken through His prophet:
“So they gathered themselves together at Jerusalem in the third month, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa. And they offered unto the LORD the same time, of the spoil which they had brought, seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep. And they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; That whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. And they sware unto the LORD with a loud voice, and with shouting, and with trumpets, and with cornets. And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them: and the LORD gave them rest round about” (2Ch 15:10-15).
Hearing the voice of the One True God causes passion in His elect. Note that these who covenanted with God put to death all those who would not seek the Lord. This is not the will of God concerning us today as revealed to us in the New Testament, but where the practice has changed, the passion has not. God’s early church passionately put down their idols and their worldly ways. They rejected Caesar’s banking system and governing system, choosing instead to be ruled by the Word of God. After all, God was not silent! He had spoken to them the words of Life. We do not condemn those who have not received the light that we have received, but neither do we consent to be ruled by them. God has spoken to us in these days through His Word. He has not been silent, but has revealed Truth to us:
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by [his] Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Heb 1:1-2).
In the section we read in 2nd Chronicles, the children showed their obedience to God through ritual sacrifice, which conformed to the commands of God expounded through God’s servants in those days, but we know that those rituals waxed old and passed away with the destruction of the Temple (Heb. 8:13). God has spoken to us more particularly and more personally. He has given us a “more sure word of prophecy”:
“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Peter 1:19-20)
A reading of verse 20 of this text shows to us that the “prophecy” spoken of by Peter in these verses consists of the edification and the education provided to us in SCRIPTURE. God’s Word is our rule of life. It is not to be piecemealed or parceled out according to the designs of the human mind. We are not to take a penknife to God’s word in order to comfortably place it around our worldly conventions. It is not to be obeyed in parts and neglected in parts based on the opinions of the world. If God has spoken (and He has), and if God changes not, and if God has sealed his revelation by His own word that it is not to be added to nor is ought to be taken from it, then we can confirm that God’s children are bound to the Word as their rule and law of life. The enemy knows this as surely as any of God’s angels do, and that foul one has endeavored at all cost to both pervert God’s word (through late and perverted “translations”) and to minimize its authority over the lives of those who profess to be God’s children.
GOD’S WORD
God’s Word has not been regarded too much; rather it is regarded too little. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am talking about the heathen world. I am speaking about the so-called “Christianized” world. Religious apostates would always have us conform to the world. They will throw around accusations of “Extremism” and “Separatism” in order to defend their own luke-warm worldliness.
We cannot hold out hope that this apostasy will be overthrown by force of reason. God will have to effectuate a change if it is His will. God has hardened many hearts. The ears of the religious worldlings remain uncircumcised (Acts 7:51). They cannot hear what God has spoken (John 8:43). Whenever I preach on separation and holiness, inevitably I am swarmed with communications about how “hard” it would be to stop conforming to the world. I cannot help but agree. Rome rules the carnal world. Humanism rules the professing “Christian” world. The Kingdom of this world has made conforming easy and “non-conforming” nearly impossible… but so did Caesar in regards to the early church. Rome did not kill the disciples because they worshipped Jesus. Rome was pantheistic and allowed the worship of many gods. God’s children were killed because they refused to conform.
The modern religious Pharisees are very adept at cleaning the outside of the cup, while saying in no uncertain terms, “We have no King but Caesar!” We have been accused of narrowing the road to God’s Kingdom. We would not narrow that road beyond the express teaching of scripture and the statements of Jesus Christ, even if we could. Neither are we permitted to broaden the way beyond the plain teaching of God’s revealed Word.
We desire that we all be transformed by the renewing of our minds, for the express purpose of proving (for God’s glory) “what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
May the Lord make these words true in us!
God has spoken, may our ears be inclined to Him.
I am your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
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