The United States in the 50s and 60s might have seemed to be more or less Christian, but it was anything but. And one radical Christian who knew all about this much earlier on than most other Christians was Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). He knew everything was not right in America and the West, and he sought to give a warning when most believers were asleep at the wheel. In one of the first books that he wrote, The God Who Is There (IVP, 1968), he was sounding the alarm on such matters. Many believers back then would have been left scratching their heads upon reading those words. ‘Antagonism? Being a warrior? What is he going on about?’ They had no idea that underneath the veneer of religion and acceptability, the US and the West were quickly becoming rotting corpses that were in desperate need of renewal and rebirth.

When we are repeatedly told about something, or warned about something, especially from those in the know and with authority, then we had better stand up and take notice. When the Bible tells us that we can expect stiff resistance and enmity as we seek to represent Christ to a lost and needy world, we need to take those warnings seriously.
Jesus of course spoke of this often. In John 16:33 for example we find these words of his: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Or as he said in John 15:19–20: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they keep my word, they will also keep yours.”
Peter too spoke about this. In 1 Peter 4:12–14 we read: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”
Obviously Paul also warned about this. As we find in 2 Timothy 3:12, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Or as he mentioned in 1 Corinthians 16:9, “For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.”
Pastor Jack Hibbs said this about that last passage: “Naive is the Christian who discounts their adversaries while they are working to further His kingdom. We should expect adversaries and the trouble they cause whenever a door for ministry opens. According to this passage, those laboring for the gospel are not exempt from assaults of the ungodly.”
Indeed, given these and so many other passages telling us the same thing, it should never come as a surprise to believers if they find themselves hated, opposed, rejected and ostracised as they seek to do the work of the Kingdom. Yet incredibly, some believers today – at least in the West – still do not get it.
The truth is, they have lived so comfortably in the world, and have done so little to impact it for Christ and the Kingdom, that they are quite mystified by this talk about opposition and hatred and adversaries. They have no enemies because they have never said or done anything to produce some enemies.
The world loves its own, and when believers live just like those in the world, then there will be no enmity, division or conflict. Everyone will just happily get along. But as soon as you start to live a radical and sold-out life for Christ, you will quickly discover opponents and resistance. It goes with the territory of being a believer.
But the trouble is, when we do not have lots of hardcore persecution of and defiance to the faith, we can be lulled into a false sense of security.
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When stacked against his holiness, Isaiah 64:6 says even our very best deeds are like filthy rags. They are not good enough to do anything to overcome the weigh of our sin. If there were a divine set of scales, on one side would be an infinitely heavy block of sin and on the other the weightless power of our good deeds. The grounds for entering Heaven is not more good than bad, but sinless perfection. That means all of us, by nature, stand to face judgement. Romans 3:10 is clear: there is none righteous, not even one.

I watched the Netflix documentary on Jimmy Savile the other week. The first episode – which dragged a bit for Brits familiar with Savile – was clearly setup for a wider international audience. For most outside of Britain, it would be hard to comprehend how this absolute weirdo managed to get on television in the first place. Not only get onto, but remain on television. And then to get himself into such positions of trust that allowed him to carry out hundreds of acts of sexual abuse. I can see why it was a necessary context setting exercise for most people around the world.
One of the interesting insights into the documentary came from Mark Lawson, the journalist and broadcaster. Lawson – like Savile – had also been raised in Leeds to a Roman Catholic family. He recalls even seeing Savile at mass growing up. But the key insight from him about Savile was this: you cannot understand him without first understanding the Catholicism that drove him.
The fact is, not every one of Savile’s charitable acts were designed to increase his abuse. Clearly many were. But there were some that did not give him that sort of access. Yet his answer in response to why he did so much charitable work remained resolutely the same, and I am inclined to believe it. He insisted that it is not easy for anyone to get in Heaven. He admitted openly that he had done many things wrong (though did not go so far as to acknowledge what we all now know that included). But he claimed that when he gets to Heaven, he’d be alright, because against all the wrongdoing would be his charitable activities which would far outweigh whatever he had done. That was his hope. That his good deeds – to which he was deeply committed – would suffice to overcome the bad.
Outside of a Catholic worldview, of course, that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Most people in the post-Christian UK work more on an honour-shame basis these days. There are certain crimes for which there can be no grace and forgiveness. Though that list may be increasing in length and incorporating considerably less significant things, paedophilia has long been seen as so serious there is no coming back from it. For most post-Christian Brits, the scandal is that Savile might consider there could possibly be any hope of forgiveness for him. There are some crimes so serious, many believe, that nobody may escape righteous retribution.
On a Protestant, particularly an Evangelical, view things are a little different. The possibility of forgiveness – even for the most heinous of sin – exists. Indeed, Evangelicals would argue that though not all sins are equal in their seriousness, we have such a warped understanding of how infinitely offensive our sin is to a holy God that we fail to realise the extreme seriousness of what we would view as the vanilla end of sin. For the Evangelical, if we rightly understand our sin as God sees it, we would have no problem recognising the possibility of forgiveness for the likes of Savile because we would realise the distance between his sin and our own is much less than the distance between our lesser sin and God’s complete holiness.
That, of course, does not mean Evangelicals believe Savile was a forgiven sinner (for the record, I do not believe he was). For forgiveness only comes with repentance and there is no evidence whatsoever that Savile was ever repentant. Not only did he never make any effort to put right what he had done wrong (which, in the case of his crimes, would have minimally involved confessing to the police and bearing the just consequences), he continued to repeatedly indulge his sin over and over. His mocking tombstone – subsequently removed in the dead of night for fear of uproar and vandalism – insisted, ‘it was good while it lasted’. Such an unrepentant attitude, on a Protestant worldview, puts one beyond the bounds of forgiveness.
This is the real scandal of the Catholic worldview into which Savile bought. It is the scandal of the Catholic doctrine he was taught. If all that is required is enough good works stacked up against your bad, if you are committed enough, you may do what you want with impunity. The cleric that insisted, because of these things, that God would “fix it” for Savile to enter Heaven, not only blasphemed against Almighty God in misrepresenting his holiness and forgiveness this way, but left the door open for other heinous crimes to be committed the same way, so long as the perpetrator is committed to stacking up their good deeds to counterbalance them.
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Nichols, one of Sproul’s successors, does a fantastic job at bringing the reader into the story of God’s grace through His servant R.C. Sproul. As you work through each page, it is as if you are listening to Sproul himself, sitting at the fire next to him and hearing his own story. 

Down through the centuries, God has been pleased to raise up a long line of godly men who were ‘pillars of truth’ in their day. These men were identified as the “reformers” of their day in succeeding generations, calling men and women back to the Bible. Like the people in Nehemiah 8:1, they long to let the Bible loose and roar! As one scans the landscape of Church history, we find very quickly that most of these men were gripped by the truths of sovereign grace and emboldened to further the cause of Christ on the earth. Bishop J. C. Ryle identifies these men in the following manner:
“God stirred up and brought out [men] to do his work, without previous concert, scheme, or plan. They did his work in the old apostolic way by becoming the evangelists of their day. They taught one set of truths. They taught them in the same way, with fire, reality, earnestness, as men fully convinced of what they taught. They taught them in the same spirit, always loving, compassionate, and, like Paul, even weeping, but always bold, unflinching, and not fearing the face of man. And they taught them on the same plan, always acting on the aggressive; not waiting for sinners to come to them, but going after, and seeking sinners; not sitting idle till sinners offered to repent, but assaulting the high places of ungodliness like men storming a breach, and giving sinners to rest so long as they stuck to their sins.”[1]
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