The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Female): The modern day evangelical church leans more and more toward the world's philosophy. It questions biblical authority, embraces some of the new sexual morality, and even promotes man's autonomy over God's sovereignty.

Mark Daniels: Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. While it seems like questioning God's standards is solely a curse of these modern times in which we live, it's really nothing new. It was a major issue in the Apostle Paul's time as well.

Stay with us now as Dr. Boice examines the underlying motives that cause a man to think he knows better than God, and the three specific standards most often challenged in both the ancient and modern church.

Dr. James Boice: A very significant book by Francis Schaeffer is called *The Great Evangelical Disaster*. I was very interested in reading that, and in this past week I saw a copy and began to read it. It was equally disturbing because what Francis Schaeffer is saying in that book is something which if we're honest—and we aren't always, but if we're honest and look about us in the evangelical world—we are all too aware of.

Evangelicals in our time, unfortunately and sometimes unconsciously but nonetheless tragically, are compromising some of the great standards of the word of God. The word Francis Schaeffer uses for it in this book is accommodation. It is the theme of the book, found in several places where he repeats the word three times. It's like the scriptures: holy, holy, holy. Only Francis Schaeffer is saying: accommodation, accommodation, accommodation.

In what areas? He talks first of all about biblical authority, something that I've been concerned about for a long time, and the other members of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy are equally concerned about. It is not the fact that the liberals deny that the Bible is the word of God. They've been doing that for a long time. The problem is that this same spirit of putting the mind of man over the mind of God, the intellect and the knowledge of the scholar over the scriptures, is permeating evangelicalism.

So those who a generation or two ago would never have questioned scripture are now in many evangelical, so-called evangelical institutions, beginning to compromise what is found here. They say it is true in a certain sense that this Bible is the word of God, but you have to understand that it is also the word of man. Or if it is the word of God, it at least comes to us in a way which means that it's not always absolutely accurate and we have to sift through it with our own intellect to see what we can believe and follow.

He says, and I believe rightly, that if evangelicalism keeps up on that pattern of accommodation, the foundations of the church and therefore eventually the evangelical church itself will crumble. Then he talks about the right to life issue. That is something also that we're concerned about. It's somewhat different at the present moment because there has been a revival of interest in this and a quickening of the evangelical conscience.

But Francis Schaeffer points out in that book that when he and Dr. C. Everett Koop produced the film series *Whatever Happened to the Human Race?* and scheduled the seminars around the country that were meant to launch that film series and the related publications, they did not get strong support from the evangelical institutions. They were in some cities where the well-known evangelical schools, the colleges in particular, wouldn't advertise it.

When asked why not at least put up the posters, they said their faculty was divided on that matter. Imagine being divided on the right to life and the importance of life. And yet that was sadly the case. Or again, he talks in that book about ecumenism, the desire to get all Christians together under the same umbrella, whether or not they hold to the cardinal doctrines of Christianity.

Strikingly, there were so-called evangelicals present at the World Council who wrote favorably about it and published articles, one in *Christianity Today*, saying this really isn't so bad. They claimed these men are really godly and really want to do the right thing, calling upon all the evangelicals to get together in that godless assembly. Toward the end of the book, he talks about the theme which is in our passage in 1 Corinthians 6, and also in the following chapter.

This is the matter of sexual morality, or which unfortunately is increasingly the case, sexual immorality. Francis Schaeffer bemoans the breakdown of standards in that area within the evangelical church. You don't have to know a lot about World Council of Churches ecumenism or the details concerning biblical inspiration to know that at least in this area, the churches have a problem.

That which for centuries within the believing church in the western world would have been considered a disgrace without any question, an obvious breaking of the moral law of God, a tragedy of epic proportions, is in an increasing number of evangelical churches accepted. They say we're all human and we must be loving, therefore it must be all right. That's disturbing enough, but if there is anything even more disturbing than the situation that Francis Schaeffer describes, it is the reaction in the evangelical churches to the description of the situation.

I was at a meeting not long ago of some key evangelical leaders, men whose names you would know. The name of Francis Schaeffer came up because he's written this book. The people who were there at the meeting said Francis Schaeffer is getting old and getting kind of narrow, kind of brittle, kind of legalistic in his old age. When Frankie Schaeffer gave the condensed version of that book in a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters, the reaction I heard was that Frankie certainly is an angry young man.

It was interesting that at the end of that tape, Frankie Schaeffer finished by saying something I don't think was in the script. He said, "Don't say now when I'm done that you don't like Frankie Schaeffer, or you don't like the appearance of his father. That's not the issue. The issue is: am I speaking the truth? And if I am speaking the truth, what are you going to do about it?" The Apostle Paul would have understood that, except that it was not as bad in his day.

It was bad because it was there in the world, this accommodating spirit. But it wasn't as bad because it wasn't in the church. The world doesn't have any objective standard. The world doesn't know that there is a God who has given a moral law which is embodied in the scriptures, so it's no wonder if the world drifts. But what is a tragedy is when the professing church of Jesus Christ, who knows there is a God who has revealed himself in the scriptures, drifts.

To understand what has happened, we have to understand that in the western world, there has been an enormous change that has come in with what we sometimes call modernism or a modernistic spirit, or secular humanism. In more technical terms, we call it Hegelianism. There has been a remarkable change in recent memory and recent history. One thing that has happened in the thinking of the modern world is that the intellectual community has moved from belief in an open system where God is acknowledged to exist, to a closed system in which all we see is all there is.

The only thing that exists is the matter in the universe of which we are a part. There is no spiritual dimension. In the past, there was the idea of God. From God came nature because nature was made by God. The laws of nature were there because they reflect the nature of God, and therefore man fit within that pattern. There wasn't an infinite amount of flexibility. There was room for growth, but there was an established order in the universe because it went back to a God who had established the universe.

Then as God began to be removed, people fell back on the idea of the laws of nature. But because there was no absolute anymore, if God was denied, even the laws of nature became questionable. Instead of talking about natural law, people began simply to reflect upon nature. What before had been an attempt to examine things to find out what the eternal and abiding principles were became now merely a reflection upon things as they are. Whatever things happen became the norm.

We've had that enormous change. And then we've had a change in man's look at himself. Before this, even in countries where not everyone was a Christian, there was at least something of a Christian ethos. Within the sphere of the Christian ethos, man was seen as the creation of God made in God's image. He was seen as being made by God and therefore responsible to God, unable to function properly without some relationship to the one who had made him.

But when God got pushed out of the picture, man became self-sufficient. He became a law unto himself, able to establish his own righteousness and do his own deeds and defend them without reference to anybody else. The idea that came into the moral world through the concept of evolution entered, and the theory was that man in such a system was therefore infinitely perfectible. Quite contrary to the scriptures, human beings were no longer seen as those who have fallen, but rather as those who are on their way to become all that they were meant to be.

Then there's a third change in the area of autonomy. This has to do with man as well. Before this, when there was a God in the universe, the character and the law of this God was the law of man as well. We may not like it, we may fight against it, but that law stands and we are not autonomous when there's a moral law in the universe. But you push God out and you not only have a different view of man, you have a different view of man in relationship to law.

The standard for law comes not from God or from nature, but from man himself. Whatever I want to do becomes the standard. We talk today about the me-generation, which is just a way of saying in popular language what has happened philosophically. Man is the center of all things, and perhaps even to go further than that, man is all things. I am all things, and I am responsible to nobody else.

We have a great expression of that in the self-development movements and the human potential movements of our time. That is the exact expression of that secular spirit. I say that is the background to this. I want to talk about these issues of morality and marriage because chapter seven goes on to talk about marriage. We can't understand properly what's happening in the church unless we understand that the church is simply at this point reflecting the culture around us.

Jesus said of the church: you are to be salt and light in the world. But at the very time he said it, he acknowledged the possibility that the salt can lose its saltiness or the light can be hidden. That is what has happened as the church has reflected the world's values. Let me say that the reflection of the world's values is not Christianity. This passage explicitly, as well as other passages in the word of God, stands over against any spirit of accommodation.

Paul begins to talk about sexual immorality in verse 12: "Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial." He is saying that if we break the law of God, we do so at our peril. Breaking the law of God hurts. It's harmful. That is the direct antithesis of the idea that I'm autonomous, that I'm a law unto myself and can do what I want. Paul says that is not true. It is most certainly not true if we live in an open universe in which there is a God.

In a universe like this, where God for his own reasons permits sin and evil, you can break God's law. In this area of sexuality, there is no angel standing there with a flaming sword to keep you from doing it. You can do it. But God says it is harmful to you. You find out as time goes on that it is harmful to society, which is only to say it's harmful for other people too. In the same verse, he makes another point. He repeats himself. "Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything."

He's saying if you break the laws of God, not only is it harmful, it's enslaving. You get mastered by it. That's the trouble with sin. We think we want to sin and we say it's not going to hurt. Then we say that even if it hurts a little bit, it's my choice. We think when the pain gets too great, we'll simply quit. Paul says you can't do that. Sin is like an octopus and you get within the tentacle and find there's another tentacle, and pretty soon you're caught and you can't get free.

That is why we need a deliverer. That's why we need Jesus Christ the redeemer to break the fetters of our sin. Any Christian ought to know that. If you've come to Jesus Christ as Savior, you know that you're a sinner and not only do you know you need the forgiveness of sins, you need deliverance from your sin. Then how, Paul says, can one who has known Jesus Christ as the redeemer enter lightly once again into sin's clutches?

That is the opposite of the idea that man is self-sufficient and perfectible. It is not possible in a sinful world apart from the power and the grace of God in Jesus Christ. He says a third thing. He begins to relate this not just in pragmatic terms to other people, or in terms of myself being set free or enslaved, but to God. Paul says at that point: "The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord." At that point he brings God in.

That is the direct antithesis of a closed universe. God is in the universe. It is God's universe and we are responsible to him. I am impressed as I read that with the way in which he brings in the full Trinity. He talks about God, he mentions the Lord Jesus Christ, and toward the end of verse 13 he talks about the Holy Spirit saying: "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?"

The question Paul is asking is the question that the church must ask itself in every generation. The question is this: what spirit are you of? Are you of the spirit of this world, the secular spirit that says there is no God, therefore I am a law unto myself? Or are you of the spirit of Jesus Christ who came to reveal the true God and say you are not a law unto yourself, and that happiness and fulfillment is to be found in obeying what the true God says?

If you're of that latter spirit, you have to do what Paul says as he concludes the chapter. First of all, you have to flee sexual immorality, as verse 18 says. You don't have a choice. If you're of the world, well then, be immoral. That's what the world does. But if you're of the spirit of Jesus Christ, you must flee it. Secondly, you must honor God with your body because that body is given to you from God. It's yours, but it is also his, and you must honor him with what you do with it.

Are we worried about our country? Are we worried about the moral slide? I think we are. But before we talk about the moral slide in the secular world, we had better come to terms with the moral slide in so-called Christianity and in our own lives. Let us pray. Our Father, there are passages of the Bible that are very hard for us to read, at least to read with understanding, and this is such a one.

We ask, our Father, that by your grace, because there's no strength in us, we might be enabled to live in a way that honors Jesus Christ. It's not just a matter of our words, but it's a matter of what we do in all areas, but especially in this area of sexual morality, which is such a problem in our time. We ask it in the name of Jesus our Savior, Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. Prior to the Reformation, sex was seen as a necessary evil and sexual passion was viewed as a sin. Priests counseled couples to abstain, and there was to be no sex on certain church holidays. The Reformation restored sexual sanity by celebrating lovemaking within marriage.

Find out more about this often misunderstood topic in our free CD offer entitled *The Seventh Commandment: The Joy of Sex* by author and teacher Philip Ryken. This free CD offer is our gift to you. Simply call 1-800-488-1888. We'll be honored to send you a copy of *The Seventh Commandment: The Joy of Sex*. That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

While the world and the church drift farther from the truths of God's word, Dr. Boice's messages uphold the inerrancy of scripture in a world of compromise. Would you become a partner to The Bible Study Hour and support Dr. Boice's ministry through both prayer and giving? You can make a tax-deductible donation online today at thebiblestudyhour.org.

You can also call us directly at 1-800-488-1888, and our mailing address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. We all love how Dr. Boice's sermons always put life in a biblical perspective. It's often impossible though to include every biblical reference in detail in a 26-minute broadcast. You can purchase complete preached messages at reformedresources.org.

I'm Mark Daniels, glad you listened in. The world tells us that while we are not perfect, we are on our way. And to reach that goal effectively, restraints should be dismissed. This worldview excludes God, excludes spiritual realities, and excludes our ultimate responsibility for our lives and destiny. Join Dr. James Boice as he demonstrates how man's worldview has especially influenced our perspectives on the sacred covenant of marriage. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.