Imperishable Inheritance

One of the topics that one is exposed to in mis­si­o­log­i­cal stud­ies is that of con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. At first, some­thing doesn’t seem quite right, and I even wrote on this blog my thoughts when I first worked through it. It seems as though some are trying to “water-down” the Gospel to make it more pal­pa­ble to carnal men. And to be honest with you, there are preach­ers and evan­ge­lists that are taking the idea too far. In fact, they take it to the point where it is no longer the Gospel but instead a hollow, unful­fill­ing, and un-​remarkable truth.

In some of the cir­cles I run in (i.e. Reformed yet intensely mis­si­o­log­i­cal) we stand hard-​fast by a more bib­li­cal def­i­n­i­tion of con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. We believe strongly that the Gospel is rel­e­vant with­out need­ing to alter it in any way yet we rec­og­nize the pat­tern of the Lord’s wit­nesses to his truth and holi­ness expressed most com­pletely in Christ. From Paul on Mars Hill preach­ing to the Stoics and Epi­cure­ans with their pagan­ism (Acts 17) to Jesus’ method to share the same truth in one chap­ter to Nicode­mus (John 3)—a Jewish Pharisee—and the next chap­ter with a Samar­i­tan woman (John 4). Paul’s dec­la­ra­tion that he has “become all things to all men” in 1 Corinthi­ans 9 doesn’t mean that he shared a dif­fer­ent Gospel but that he rec­og­nized dif­fer­ing pre­sup­po­si­tion and start­ing points in shar­ing the same Gospel to dif­fer­ent individuals.

John MacArthur’s Stance Made Clear

One indi­vid­ual, John MacArthur, has taken some strong stances against what he defines as con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. Often he is mis-​quoted on this, so I thought it would be help­ful to look at some of what he’s said on the topic.

I hear a lot today about the neces­sity to con­tex­tu­al­ize the mes­sage. If I had any sense, I would be wear­ing a black t-shirt with a skull and cross­bones on it and I would have holes in my jeans and there would be no pulpit here. And I would be wan­der­ing from pillar to post up here, we would turn the lights down and change this envi­ron­ment because people need con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion if they’re going to respond. I haven’t found that nec­es­sary, nor am I at all con­vinced that con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion means any­thing or has any value in the church. (Source)

The apos­tles went out with an absolute dis­dain for con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. The modern drive for cul­tural con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion is a curse, because people are wast­ing their time trying to figure out clever ways to draw in the elect. Con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion is “zip-​code min­istry.” The mes­sage of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is tran­scen­dent. It goes beyond its imme­di­ate cul­ture or sub-​culture. It crosses the world, and ignores the nuances of cul­ture. It never descends to cloth­ing or musi­cal style, as if that had any­thing to do with the mes­sage of the Gospel. (Source – a transcription)

It would seem as though John has a grave mis­un­der­stand­ing on what care­ful, thought­ful mis­sion­ar­ies are doing in their min­istries. It puz­zles me that as John reads and preaches from an Eng­lish bible—which is the very nature of contextualization—he out­right dis­dains con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. But to be fair he com­ments on 1 Corinthi­ans 9 in a way rem­i­nis­cent of what we would hope for.

How do people think reli­giously, how do they per­ceive truth?—those are the start­ing points that Paul was estab­lish­ing. That’s a far cry from saying that to reach this gen­er­a­tion we must do their music, we must dress the way they dress, we must live the way they live, we must be famil­iar with the baser com­po­nents of their cul­ture. That’s a mil­lion miles from what the Apos­tle Paul had in mind. He was talk­ing about those things that con­trolled their thought process and their world­view. (Source)

John does cor­rectly rec­og­nize that pre­sup­po­si­tions is the main con­cern in con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, and for this I want to rejoice. How­ever, John appar­ently mar­ries the idea of con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion with becom­ing like the cul­ture around us. That is the very nature of a mis­un­der­stand­ing that some have indeed applied to shar­ing the Gospel, but it is not what we should strive for in our ministries.

The Test of Biblical Contextualization

This stance of John’s was brought up in this year’s Together for the Gospel. John men­tioned it by name, and Mark Dever spoke next. It was inter­est­ing to see them bal­ance one another through­out the con­fer­ence. Mark spoke on “Improving the Gospel: Exer­cises in Unbib­li­cal Theology”. It was a fab­u­lous look at the fun­da­men­tal nature of the Gospel, and he speaks of those who un-​biblically exer­cise what they per­ceive as “contextualization” to the Gospel. He then out­lines very clearly what true, bib­li­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion looks like (in his point #3 around 40 min­utes in).

Con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion should never make the Gospel more palat­able to the sinner–more accept­able. In fact, one test you can use very prac­ti­cal my preacher friend of whether not a par­tic­u­lar attempt at con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion has been suc­cess­ful is to ask if it has made the offense of the Gospel clearer. There’s a test for appro­pri­ately reach­ing your audi­ence. The Gospel is rel­e­vant to every sinner on earth.

Up until that point I had not heard such a God-​honoring, bib­li­cal, and full def­i­n­i­tion of con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. Mark’s point is the very litmus by which we must gauge not just our con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion efforts but our evan­ge­lis­tic efforts on the whole.

The Need for Balance

We must rec­og­nize that fallen humans can take such as an idea as con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion and per­vert it to the point where we must then look and act like the world in order to be “relevant.” How­ever, a care­ful study of the Scrip­tures reveals the tool exer­cised by the bib­li­cal char­ac­ters to bring glory to God through the tire­less, and accu­rate preach­ing of the Gospel of God through Christ Jesus.