CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE

                                                                Christian Influence

Christianity influences nations primarily from the pulpit, i.e., from preaching to the church congregation. The Bible is expounded from cover to cover, which is to say that the Gospel is proclaimed while the Law is explained (and the congregation members take what they are taught and gradually disseminate it in their respective communities). The Gospel brings liberty to the nation, by setting the individuals in it free from bondage to sin, self and Satan, and the Law, properly understood and properly applied, enables the Christianised (i.e., the Gospelised) nation to retain that liberty. Healthy pulpit: Healthy nation.

Where the Gospel is stifled, God’s Law is flouted. By Gospel, we mean the Good News that Jesus Christ died for sinners, i.e., for breakers of God’s Law. By Law, we mean the Ten Commandments that show that all of us are sinners, and therefore that we need the Saviour of sinners, Jesus Christ. Not only does the preaching of God’s Law expose us as sinners in need of salvation in Christ, but, as well as showing Christians how to live their lives in demonstration of their gratitude to God for saving them, it also shows us how to restrain evil in our nation. Christianity helps us to see the nation as God sees it and helps to free that nation from many a blunder!

Many pulpits in the West preach another gospel, which is not the Gospel. They preach what is known as the Social Gospel. This message of the Social Gospel has more to do with Marxism than the salvation of the individual by grace through faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Others preach a gospel that is devoid of God’s Law. Indeed they preach against the Law as if the Ten Commandments were something evil, something to be rejected! Either way, the Gospel is robbed of its power. In this limp condition, it cannot transform the individual and certainly not the nation!

Christians ought to pray that God will raise up gifted preachers; preachers able to proclaim and explain the Gospel with the Law, so that the lives of its hearers will be transformed by its power so that they will transform the nations in which they live so that their culture will be a Christian culture. Yes, God redeems individuals, but by an individual at a time, He eventually redeems whole nations! May your culture be Christian! Bottom line: Healthy pulpit: Healthy nation!

Excerpted from: ON THE CHURCH : McKinlay, Neil Cullan: Amazon.com.au: Books