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.