The church needs a Christlikeness which is modeled on Christ himself, and on every aspect of His character and teaching. When the church once again looks like Jesus, then—if history is any indication—more seekers than ever will say, as I once did, that “there must be something in this idea that gives it power.”

In part 1 of this article, I argued that a temperament of “Christian passivity” is a problem in the contemporary church. In part II, I argue that the Bible warns us against sins of passivity and calls us to boldness. I also offer some suggestions for promoting a Christian culture that can cultivate the virtue of boldness. 
A second argument—one less outwardly vapid—urges that “while Christ’s harsh language is always righteous, ours is tainted by sin.” Like the previous argument, the statement is entirely factually correct, but does nothing to justify the implied conclusion.
The problem with this argument it is not that it observes that human anger is usually sinful, which is obviously true. Instead, the problem is that it assumes that human passivity is not sinful—or, at least, that it is less sinful than anger. But this is simply begging the question: the argument commits the very practice it is trying to defend, assuming a standard of passivity and then reading the Bible according to that standard.
What, then, do biblical ethics teach us about passivity? To begin with, if passivity is good, or even preferable by comparison to anger, we would not expect Jesus to single out sins of inaction as particularly egregious. Yet this is precisely what Jesus does, such as in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
The Bible presents passivity as sinful in direct terms. To take the most well-known example first, consider Peter’s denial of Christ. When Jesus asked Peter “Do you love me?” three times in John 21, this seems to have wounded Peter far more than when Jesus called Peter “Satan” in Mark 8. Yet Christ delivered the rebuke, not because Peter was sometimes abrasive—which he was—but because Peter had been a coward. Peter’s denial of Jesus—a sin committed specifically to avoid conflict and its consequences—is presented as a profound betrayal of Jesus, not a minor offense. This fact, by itself, refutes the idea that conflict-avoidant meekness is somehow the standard of goodness.
Likewise, when God warned Ezekiel about what would happen if Ezekiel did not “speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way,” He was not warning Ezekiel away from being overzealous, but from being too passive. This verse—Ezekiel 3:18—has been cited throughout church history by Christians who have taken bold positions, such as Ambrose of Milan when he barred the Emperor Theodosius from communion in 390, or by Gregory VII when he excommunicated Henry IV in 1076.
The reason the Bible condemns passivity is because it leads to hellish suffering and hell. In some of the most grotesque passages in the Old Testament, the authors condemn cowardice using the motif of a man who will not risk his safety to defend his wife or concubine from sexual abuse. This occurs in Judges 19, in Genesis 12, 20, and 26, and in 1 Kings 20. One striking aspect of these stories is that they present pure inversions of the Gospel. Christ loved the church as His bride, and therefore gave Himself up for her sake. In contrast, the man in each of these stories loved his own bride so little that he was willing to give her over to be raped for his own sake. He committed, in other words, an act of pure evil.
Appropriately, then, Revelation 21 lists “the cowardly” first among those who “will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur,” together with “the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars.” The Greek word translated as “cowardly” connotes—among other things—being agreeable in order to avoid conflict. In the Iliad, for example, Achilles uses the same word when he tells Agamemnon “Surely I would be called cowardly and of no account, if I am to yield to you in every matter that you say.”
I note with some hesitation that, while the Bible also condemns sinful anger—in Greek, “Ὀργίζεσθε”—this word does not appear in Revelation 21’s pantheon of evil. I mention this not to make light of sins of anger—which I know firsthand can be ruinous—but because Christians have committed the opposite error. We assume that sins of passivity are less deadly than sins of zeal but, if anything, the inverse is true. When Simeon and Levi defend their sister by massacring the entire male population of Shechem, there may be a suggestion of moral judgment from the author. But this judgment pales in comparison to the nihilistic abyss of Judges 19. By the end of the story, the Levite protagonist seems like Tolkien’s Gollum: a withered creature barely recognizable as a human being. This is cowardice, one of the fathers of all sin, in all its wretchedness.
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The basic guidelines for interpreting Genesis 1–3 derive from Scripture itself. If we follow the guide of Scripture, we will read Genesis 1–3 with understanding. We will not have all our questions answered, because Genesis 1–3 does not say everything that could be said about the details of how God did things. Much remains mysterious.

ABSTRACT: The beginning of the book of Genesis is not, as some claim, a mythical or poetic account of creation. It is historical narrative, telling the same story that unfolds in the patriarchs, the exodus, and the establishment of Israel. And, being from God, it speaks truly. Modern readers may not learn everything they would like to know about creation from Genesis 1–3, but they will find everything they most need to know. They also will find an account of creation unlike anything outside the Bible. Compared to the creation myths of Israel’s neighbors, Genesis stands majestically alone.
How do we interpret Genesis 1–3 in a sound way? It is not so easy to find out just by listening to and reading modern interpreters. There are many voices, and they disagree with one another.
I have only one main piece of advice. We learn how to read Genesis 1–3 wisely in the same way that we learn to read the rest of the Bible wisely. And how is that? By taking to heart what the Bible itself says. Several aspects of biblical teaching need to be taken into account.
Let us begin with a foundational issue: the nature of God.
Who God Is

Does God exist? And what kind of God is he? Is he a God who can create the world, in the way that Genesis 1 describes? Is he the kind of God who could fashion the first woman from the rib of Adam, as Genesis 2:21–22 describes? Is he the kind of God who can speak in an audible voice from the top of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:9–20:22; Deuteronomy 5:2–22)? Is he the kind of God who can multiple five loaves and two fish, so that they feed five thousand men (John 6)?
Most of elite culture in the modern Western world does not believe in a God like that. Rather, the culture is deeply influenced by philosophical materialism, which says that matter is the ultimate constituent of the world. If some kind of a god exists, he is not involved in the world in the way that the Bible describes. He is not a God who speaks or who works miracles.
In addition, some people are influenced by New Age mysticism. They believe in various kinds of spiritual influence. But their “god,” if they call it that, is an aspect of nature.
The issue of God is monumentally important. If God is not a God such as the Bible describes, then either the Bible is a lie or it has to be radically reinterpreted. And that is what people do. Much of the academic study of the Bible at major universities of the world takes place under the assumption that the way we read the Bible must harmonize with modern ideas about the world. Hence, this academic study corrupts the Bible. And then this corruption travels out into general culture.
But in fact, God exists — the same God that the Bible describes. Therefore, the elite people in Western culture are walking in the dark about God. It is the culture, not the Bible, that has to be radically reinterpreted. Genesis 1–3 is one text — a crucial text — that shows the massive difference between the Bible’s view of God and common modern Western views.
The first point, then, is that when we read the Bible, we need to reckon with who God is.
The Divine Authorship of the Bible

A second issue concerns the nature of the Bible. It is the word of God. It is what God says.
One principal reason for the diversity of readings of Genesis 1–3 is an underlying diversity of opinion about what kind of text the Bible is. Much of the academic study of Genesis takes place with the assumption that God is not the author of Genesis. In effect, academics deny the divine inspiration of the Bible. This denial follows directly from the prior assumption that God does not speak. According to modern Western thinking, either God does not exist, or he was not involved in the writing of Genesis in a special way. Or, if he was involved somehow, he deferred pretty much to the human author or authors. One way or another, these people discount divine meaning and search only for human meaning.
Clearly, the issue of divine authorship makes a difference in what meanings come out at the end, because a misjudgment about who the author is leads to a misjudgment about what he means. Or, according to some postmodern interpretive approaches, verbal texts and the readers who interact with texts float in a sea of meanings, more or less independent of either God or human authors. But this kind of multiplication of meanings is a mistake, because it discounts the unique authority of God to say what he means and to do so with unique authority.
So it is worthwhile asking whether the Bible teaches divine authorship. It does, in any number of places. Second Peter 1:21 says, “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” This verse affirms a role for human authors: “men spoke . . .” But it emphasizes that the more ultimate and decisive author is God: “men spoke from God”; and “they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Jesus himself affirms the divine authority of the Old Testament in a number of places and a number of ways (Matthew 5:17–20; 19:4–5; 26:54; John 10:35). Interested readers can consult any number of books by evangelical authors, showing how the Bible affirms its own divine authorship and authority (2 Timothy 3:16).
Since God is a God of truth (John 3:33), his word is truth (John 17:17). He can be trusted. The Bible can be trusted, because it is his word. That must be our attitude as we read Genesis 1–3 — and every other passage in the Bible.
So here, in the fact of divine authorship, we have a second central principle in interpreting the Bible. We read and study it with respect and trust, rather than distrust. Just as we must reinterpret modern Western culture in its view of God, so, for the same reason, we must avoid imitating the distrust that the culture has toward the Bible. We avoid also the human temptation to pick and choose the meanings that please our prior preferences, or picking and choosing to believe only those parts of the Bible that line up with our preferences. That picking and choosing makes sense only for people who have already rejected God.
The Genre of Genesis

Next, let us ask what kind of a book Genesis is. In accord with the richness of who God is, what God says in the Bible includes a variety of forms or genres of literature. God chooses a variety of ways of communicating, in order that we may absorb what he says and grow in communion with him in a variety of complementary ways. The book of Psalms, for example, is a collection of poetic songs and prayers. In the Gospels, we find sermons of Jesus (such as the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5–7), parables, records of miracles, records of healings, and the record of the crucifixion. The Bible has prophetic books like Isaiah that contain exhortations, recollections of God’s past dealings, and predictions about the future. There are historical books, such as 1–2 Kings, that have a record of past events in the history of Israel.
Each literary section of the Bible was crafted by God, as well as by the human author (2 Peter 1:21). It is exactly what God designed to say, not only in its contents, but also in all its details, including the features of genre. If we respect God, then we should take into account how he chooses to communicate. It would be a mistake, for example, if an interpreter were to treat Jesus’s parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3–7) as if it were a prosaic nonfictional account that is merely about one shepherd and one sheep. It is a fictional story with a spiritual point. The point is indicated at the end: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Jesus also indicates near the beginning of the parable that it is hypothetical, rather than an actual case in real life: “. . . if he [the shepherd] has lost one of them [the sheep], . . .” (Luke 15:4).
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Written by K.V. Paxton |
Monday, October 4, 2021
[Yours] will not be perfect faithfulness, but are you resting in Christ as your hope, and leaning on Him? Are you striving to be what the church is called to be according to Christ? Then that’s all you are called to do. Be encouraged! Ultimately, your hope rests in Christ, not your performance.

What does church success look like during a global pandemic? For at least a generation, success in churches was based largely on numerics, on this, we can agree. Every year in my denomination (the Southern Baptist Convention), for example, churches must fill out the Annual Church Profile (ACP), which asks churches nearly every conceivable question regarding their numbers. It was easy to get sucked into this being a type of self-reflection on whether or not you and your church were “successful” that year. Now, this is not to denigrate ACPs, they serve a purpose, of course, but it has been clear for at least a half-century that numbers purportedly told the story about the health and success of a church.
And what pastor hasn’t attended associational, state, or national convention meetings where they were asked multiple times, “Hey brother, how many you runnin’?”
Numbers are important, but they do not always tell the full story of church health and success. Big churches can be unhealthy, small churches can be healthy. We know this in every season, but this especially comes to the fore in the midst of a global pandemic.
If numbers = success/health, a majority of churches right now are likely not getting a passing grade. Churches everywhere are seeing decreases in attendance: once-a-month attendees have become non-attenders, the vulnerable cannot attend because of health concerns, and some regular attenders have abandoned the fellowship, perhaps for a different church that fits their preferences better. This can be quite disheartening until you remember that Scripture does not define success or health according to numbers. Rather, what we are called to is faithfulness, and God will take care of the results.
This is good news for pastors, churches, and faithful church members. Better still, it applies whether or not we are in a global pandemic. While saying “just be faithful” seems overly simplistic, it really does not have to be as complicated as we might try to make it. Does this resolve all questions we might have right now in terms of having in-person service versus online-only or mask versus no mask or any number of questions the Bible is silent on? Of course not.
What it does do is (1) help us keep our hand to the plow, (2) fend off discouragement, and (3) protect our hearts when criticized.
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God has a moral will for every decision we make, and it is our responsibility to study the Scriptures, deduce principles therein, and actively apply them to everything we do.

Christians are people of the book. Conservative Evangelical Christians, in particular, demand that their beliefs and lives be governed by Scripture.
Yet what, exactly, that means is not always clear, particularly when dealing with matters of Christian living.
On the one hand, some Christians believe that the Bible is an exhaustive list of prescriptions and prohibitions that reveal how God wants his children to live. If the Bible doesn’t address something explicitly, then God doesn’t care about that particular issue, and Christians are free to make their own decisions based on preference. No Christian may speak authoritatively in an area not directly addressed in Scripture.
Other Christians believe that the Bible is sufficient and authoritative for everything in a Christian’s life, not only those issues Scripture explicitly addresses. When faced with a decision not found in a chapter and verse, these Christians will insist that God nevertheless cares about that decision, and it is the Christian’s responsibility to actively apply biblical principles to contemporary situations in order to do the will of the Lord. Furthermore, they insist that such applications are authoritative to the degree that they are reasonable applications.
The debate centers primarily around what the “sufficiency” of Scripture means, perhaps best rooted in 2 Timothy 3:16–17:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
The question is, what does “complete, equipped for every good work” mean? Does it mean that the Bible explicitly addresses every single issue that is important to God, or does it mean that the Bible speaks principally to everything, even those issues not explicitly addressed?

Though we may deceive ourselves and those around us, God will not be mocked. We may have avoided a few traps, but we have jumped right into the most damning trap of them all, and there is only one way of escape.
If the Greeks had delivered their gift to the people of Troy and said, “This is a huge wooden horse filled with soldiers ready to kill you.” the people of Troy would have known what they were getting. Instead, a real Trojan horse involves deception; it involves treachery you would not see coming.
Here is the problem with deception. As much as we try to see the snares laid out for us, there is often someone more clever than us trying to trap us. What might look like a snare may be a cleverly laid decoy to move us right into another, more dangerous trap.
Take, for example, the temptation to cheat on your taxes. Suppose something came across your path that showed you a way to fudge the numbers and not only avoid paying the government but receive a windfall from them instead. It is foolproof, and after all, we have all heard people say taxation is theft. This act would be a way to take back what is rightfully yours.
After careful consideration, you wisely avoid the temptation. Even if you could get away with it, you realize that it would put your family at risk, destroy your peace, and, more importantly, be an affront to God. You file your taxes as you should, you give Caesar what is Caesar’s, and you breathe a sigh of satisfaction as you do it.
You have successfully sidestepped temptation, and you thank God for it. “Lord, thank you that you have made me righteous enough to avoid these temptations.” As you live out your life, there are many moments like this. Snare after snare, trap after trap, you are a bird that always seems to escape the fowler. You protect your nest, and your family lives a long and joy-filled life because of your decisions and guidance.
Others are not so wise. As you go along life’s journey, you hear story after story of shipwrecked lives on the sea of temptation. As you watch some of them pick up the pieces, you see them beat their breast before God and say, “Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Then they claim to have found it. They claim to be a friend of God. You do not exactly know what to do with those claims, but if it gives them peace, so be it. You are only glad God gave you enough wisdom to avoid their fate.
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The local church is where we commune with Christ in means of grace, but it’s also the primary context where the fellowship of the communion of saints takes place. It’s not enough to sit on the sidelines or watch a livestream; we need the community of believers that stirs us up “to love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24) and offers encouragement as we await the day of judgement (Heb. 10:25).

Several years ago, I went hiking in the Smokies with a group of friends. This wasn’t a trail I was familiar with, and I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time. I soon began to lag behind the group. They would always return for me to try and encourage me and walk with me. My pride would always reject their help because, “I know what I’m doing. I don’t need your help. I can go at it alone.” Soon they got so far away I could no longer hear them, nor did I know exactly where I was headed. I had no idea of the impending dangers that were awaiting me.
It wasn’t long until I came upon a long stretch of brush and weeds that were waist high. As I hacked my way through as best I could—stubborn and defiant as ever—I was greeted by an unmistakable sound: a rattle. I look up to see a large rattlesnake laying across the trail. Thankfully, my friends were standing-by; they had stayed back in order to guide me past the pain I would have otherwise suffered.
Unfortunately, there are many who are ignorant of the danger that they’ve placed themselves in by trying to make their heavenly pilgrimage apart from the local church. We face a far greater threat than a rattlesnake; we stand against the smooth-talking serpent of Genesis 3, one who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).[1] Surely Satan lies in wait for those Christians who think they can go through this life on their own resolve. As George Swinnock once said, “Satan watches for those vessels that sail without a convoy.”
There’s a reason that the writer to the Hebrews sounds the alarm to warn those who are struggling not to forsake “assembling together, as is the habit of some…” (Heb. 10:25).  Why? Because neglect of the gathering is a step down the slippery slope to apostasy. A Christian who is purposefully isolated from the context of a local church is foreign concept to the New Testament.
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Since Christ feared the Lord perfectly on our behalf, and took the wrath of God upon Him, our enemies will not be exulted over us, and our past sins need no longer haunt us. Christ reconciled us to God so that we might have friendship with the Lord, not the world. And Christ redeemed us, so that we can experience true freedom.

Several years ago I missed a turn for one of my speaking events. It didn’t take me long to realize I was on the wrong road, but I didn’t know how to find my way without help. So I pulled into a gas station and asked the locals for directions. Thankfully, they were kind and helpful, and before long I was on my way again on the right road.
Missing a wrong turn for a speaking engagement isn’t nearly as bad as missing the wrong road in life. Scripture tells us that there is a right road, the way of the righteous, and a wrong road, the way of the rebellious (see Ps. 1:1-6). Only by God’s grace can we walk on the road of righteousness.
The road of righteousness is not a popular road, but it is a rewarding road. God’s glorious presence is with us each step of the way. But once we are on the right road, Scripture teaches us that we are confronted with three enemies that tempt us to doubt the way we have chosen is good.
The enemy within (the flesh) is ready to engage in sin and remind us of past sins. The Enemy without (the devil) seeks to seduce us and persecute us. And the world tempts us to walk in its ways of idolatry and immorality. Thankfully, Psalm 25 reminds us of four important truths as we fight against our enemies.
Fear of the Lord
First, we must fear the Lord (Ps. 25:1-7). In response to the Lord’s salvation, we are to walk in His ways, love Him, serve Him wholeheartedly, obey Him, and hold fast to Him (Deut. 10:12-13, 20). When our enemies threaten to undo us, we must trust in the Lord and wait for Him to deliver us. During times of waiting we must worship Him, accept His plans and purposes, incline our hearts to wisdom, and trust Him as our Leader and Teacher.
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Those who acknowledge their sinfulness, and who desire to be washed and made clean ought to be encouraged to come to the Table. “The focus of this self-examination is participation,” Keddie says. “It is not designed to keep Christians away, but to impel them to fly to Jesus in the repentant, confiding spirit of a lively faith.”[9] It is those who recognize that they are unworthy in themselves who need the exhortation to participate in the Supper and in it to find grace that supplies all their wants.

One Sabbath day, late in his ministry, John Duncan was preparing to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. In Duncan’s experience, joy and sorrow were often mingled in his participation in the meal – sorrow for his sins, yet joy in the assurance of his forgiveness. As he prepared himself, he heard behind him a woman sobbing. This woman was a communicant member. She had every outward indication of a life of repentance and faith. Yet as the elements were passed to her, she wept, and her hands trembled, too timid to take the elements, too timid to appropriate to herself the gospel promises signified in the sacrament.[1]
This woman’s experience at the Table is not unique. Volumes of practical theology have been written dealing with apprehension at the Lord’s Supper. Although the meal is a means of grace instituted for the good of Christ’s people, many fear and abstain, or fearfully participate, losing the joy of the meal in their anxiety.
While the reasons for fear and anxiety at the Table are legion, I hope to explore briefly two common reasons for fear and suggest biblically faithful responses to these fears.
Reason for Fear at the Lord’s Supper #1: Lack of Assurance.
A lack of assurance may contribute to a fearful experience at the Lord’s Table. As the consequences of coming unworthily are so severe (1 Cor. 11:27-30), it should be little wonder that those who lack assurance of salvation find the sacrament not an occasion for joy and comfort, but an occasion for anxiety, doubt, and fear. Believers in this state often see assurance as an essential aspect of faith, and therefore as an essential aspect of their worthy partaking of the Supper.
Responding to a Lack of Assurance:
These believers mistake a benefit of salvation with salvation itself. The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Canons of Dort confirm the confusion of people in this state: “Assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith”[2] and “The Scripture moreover testifies that believers….do not always feel this assurance of faith and certainty of persevering.”[3] The consistent witness of the Reformed tradition has been that those who doubt their interest in Christ can and should still come to the Table. Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 172 confirms this:
Question: May one who doubteth of this being in Christ…come to the Lord’s Supper?
Answer: One who doubteth of his being in Christ…may have true interest in Christ, though he be not yet assured thereof; and in God’s account hath it, if he be duly affected with the apprehension of the want of it, and unfeignedly desires to be found in Christ, and to depart from iniquity: in which case (because promises are made, and this Sacrament is appointed, for the relief even of weak and doubting Christians) he is to bewail his unbelief, and labor to have his doubts resolved; and, so doing, he may and ought to come to the Lord’s Supper, that he may be further strengthened.
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