Speaking of the church militant is fitting because it summarizes a significant theme that is woven throughout the Scriptures. The church on this side of heaven is engaged in spiritual conflict whether we like it or not. This has been our reality since the fall, when God said to Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring” (Gen. 3:15). “Enmity” is a strong word. It relates to deep hostility and hatred. We are sworn enemies of sin and Satan. We do not live in a time when we can let our guard down and rest. If the church is not militant, it will be conquered.
It is when we surrender to sin that evils such as literal violence break out. God warned Cain that he should be at war with sin, and his calling was to rule over it (Gen. 4:7). Cain’s subsequent sin of murder grew out of his failure to obey God’s call to be properly militant. This failure to fight sin multiplied into a world filled with lust, violence, and vengeance before the flood (Gen. 4:24; 6:11–12). Humans were losing the battle with Satan, for he had turned them against God and against one another. God cleansed the earth with the flood as a gigantic picture of our need for deliverance in this battle.
We could work through the Old Testament and find many other examples of failures in spiritual warfare that led to hard consequences. Failure to resist temptation led to sin, which led to slavery, war, and exile. Think of the personal defeats that Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David suffered when they let their guard down or wavered. Satan won many Israelites over to idolatry, and dark times of national enslavement to empires such as Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Rome followed. Throughout Bible history, there were also victorious times of reformation. The Psalms, Proverbs, and the Prophets expose and wrestle with Satan’s tactics, giving the church the outline of a battle plan. Men such as Hezekiah, Daniel, and Nehemiah stood boldly against evil. The Old Testament, however, contains quite a few grim tales of defeat. Sometimes only a tiny remnant of the church held its ground. The Old Testament ends with a church that is enslaved, confused, and scattered. The church militant appeared to be the church conquered.
All this history was preparing the battlefield for the coming of Jesus. When ancient Jews heard the Greek name Jesus, they would think of its original Hebrew form Joshua, which means “Yahweh saves.” In the Old Testament, God called Joshua to lead the invasion of Canaan. That invasion was a unique example of a call to literal militancy. Idolatrous, decadent, and depraved nations were driven out of the promised land. Joshua provided a place of rest and righteousness for the people of God (Josh. 24:31). Joshua was the greatest of military conquerors in Bible history, but it was Jesus Christ who would become the greatest of all militants.
The life and ministry of Jesus are the ultimate example of resistance against and victory over Satan. Though Satan tempted Him in the wilderness with a series of shortcuts, Jesus chose the narrow way of suffering as the path to ultimate victory (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10). His gospel campaign took Him throughout the entire land, confronting every semblance of sin, evil, sickness, and curse. He taught righteousness and confronted false teachers. He brought the message of the law in all its power (chs. 5–7). He called for repentance and faith. His ministry of reconciliation ushered in a new era of victory for the church.

God did not build his church upon suave, charming, likeable men. He built it upon a man of sorrows who was rejected by men and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), and upon irascible fishermen who lopped off someone’s ear (Jn. 18:10), and upon other men who were not wise or attractive by worldly standards (Acts 4:13; comp. 1 Cor. 1:27).

There is a common idea in the contemporary Presbyterian Church in America that our people should be winsome, particularly in their polemics and intra-denominational disagreements. Thus we find, for example, two Covenant College professors lauding a controversial figure in the denomination as winsome in the course of a recent review of one of his books at The Gospel Coalition. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines winsome as meaning “sweetly or innocently charming; winning; engaging.” Perhaps that is the first thing we should note: if the author in view were truly ‘winning’ or ‘innocently charming’ he would not be, as the reviewers themselves admit, a source of much controversy.
But more importantly, this notion that it is desirable to be winsome is contradicted by the testimony of Scripture and by that of church history. If you are inclined to doubt that try this little test: ask whether the figures of faith were winsome in the great events of redemptive history. Was Moses winsome when he appeared before Pharaoh demanding Israel’s release and was ignored time and again (Ex. 10:11, 28; comp. 7:3-4)? Was he winsome when he ruled the people of Israel in the wilderness and they grumbled against him (Ex. 15:24; 16:2-3; 17:2-7), or when he told the Levites to slay their wayward kin and neighbors without hesitation (32:25-28)? Were the Judges winsome in their difficult dealings with foreigners and fellow Jews alike (Judges 7:28-30; 12:1-4; 15:11-13)?
Was David winsome? Why then did he have so many enemies, his own father in law trying to murder him (1 Sam. 8:11) and his own wife despising him (2 Sam. 6:16), his own sons rising against him (ch. 15) and his subjects cursing him (16:5-8), his own counselors abandoning him (vv. 20-23) and many others troubling him? Why then did the people celebrate him for his ‘tens of thousands’ of slain enemies (1 Sam. 18:7) and why are so many of his psalms cries of anguish amidst the persecutions of men?
Was Solomon winsome? At first glance it would seem so, for how else could he have attracted the Queen of Sheba from afar and been associated with something such as the Song of Solomon? Yet what was the end of it? The wail of Ecclesiastes that all is vanity (1:2) and that the days of darkness would be many (11:8), and the revolt of the people against his son because of their displeasure with the heavy yoke of Solomon’s reign (1 Kgs. 12:4). His was not a reign of winsome persuasion, but of whips (12:11), forced labor (5:13-14), slavery (9:20-21; Ecc. 2:7), bureaucracy (1 Kgs. 9:22-23), opulence (Ecc. 2:4-10), oppression (4:1), and corruption (4:8), and he himself seems to have often loathed it (2:17-18).
What then of the prophets? Were they winsome? When Micaiah ministered during the reign of Ahab how did that sovereign describe him? “I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil” (1 Kgs. 22:8; comp. v. 27). Jeremiah was not winsome, and so hated was he that his own people sought to censor and destroy him (11:21; 12:6). So also did Amos fail to win his audience, for he irritated the priesthood and was falsely accused of conspiring against the monarchy (Amos 7:10-17). Elijah provoked Jezebel to wrath and fled the kingdom (1 Kgs. 19), such was his winsomeness. Time would fail to tell of Elisha and the irreverent youths (2 Kgs. 2:23-24) or of the other prophets. Let us rather remember the words of our Lord, who bewailed Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matt. 23:37), and of Stephen, who asked the Jews “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52).
Proceeding from the monarchy to Israel’s later history, was Nehemiah winsome when he drove men from the gates of Jerusalem (Neh. 13:21), or when he beat and cursed the faithless and pulled the hair of their beards (v. 25)? Was John the Baptist winsome when he ministered in the wilderness in rough garments of camel’s hair and ate locusts (Matt. 3:1, 4), or when he called the scribes vipers and spoke plainly of the wrath to come (v. 7)? Was he so when he provoked Herod by condemning his incestuous marriage and was imprisoned and murdered as a result (Matt. 14:3-5)? Was our Lord winsome when he pronounced his woes upon the Pharisees and lawyers (Lk. 11:39-44; comp. vv. 45 -52, especially v. 45), or when he made a whip of cords and drove men from the temple (Jn. 2:15)?
Were the apostles winsome when they publicly confronted each other (Gal. 2:14-16), or when they wished their opponents would castrate themselves (5:12), or when they were embroiled in controversies with false teachers, or when they called men dogs (Phil. 3:2) and blemishes (2 Pet. 2:13) and told them their money could perish with them (Acts 8:20)? Was it not rather the astonishment of their opponents that they were uneducated commoners (Acts 4:13), and was it not the most educated of them of whom his opponents could say “his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Cor. 10:10)? Winsome men are not martyred, yet all of the apostles except John met that fate, and he was so charming that men put him in exile on a tiny Mediterranean island. Or what of Stephen? We are told that he was full of the Spirit and grace (Acts 6:5), yet he said the Jews were stiff-necked and wicked (v. 51) and so provoked them that they “cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him” (v. 57) and “cast him out of the city and stoned him” (v. 58).
If we move from the testimony of Scripture to that of later church history we find the same things. So effulgently winsome were many of the early believers that Nero is said to have illumined his gardens with their flaming corpses. So winsome was Polycarp that a stadium full of pagans screamed at him the slanderous charge ‘away with the atheists’ as they called for his immolation. So winsome was Athanasius that he was exiled five times and left us his legacy as Athanasius contra mundum. The ‘winsomeness’ of Luther needs no comment, and as for Calvin, such was his winsomeness that he was thrown out of Geneva after his first tenure there and that his critics slandered him as the ‘Pope of Geneva.’ So winsome were the Puritans that a royal edict expelled all of them from their pulpits in the Church of England in 1662 and all manner of laws were passed to suppress them.
In light of these things who can doubt that the notion that we are to be winsome is a contemporary falsehood, one of those lies told by conventional worldly wisdom by which men so often live their lives? No, we are not to be winsome. We are to strive to live at peace with all men in so far as it depends upon us (Rom. 12:18); we are to be peaceable, gentle, loving, fair, and kind (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 4:2; Col. 3:12; Tit. 3:2; 2 Tim. 2:24-25; Jas. 3:17); we are to give no needless offense (1 Cor. 10:32).
Yet these things are different from winsomeness. Honesty, charity, peaceableness, and the like are timeless principles of conduct. What qualifies as winsome varies between people and groups. What is winsome to a northerner might offend a southerner, and what is winsome to an urban stockbroker might find little favor with a Midwestern farmer. Then too, the contemporary American notion of winsomeness seems to entail being clean, respectable, nice, aesthetically attractive in one’s demeanor and appearance, and generally inoffensive in one’s opinions. It is a notion of personality and deportment that comes rather from the corporate world of sales and marketing than from God’s word or the history of the church.
God did not build his church upon suave, charming, likeable men. He built it upon a man of sorrows who was rejected by men and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), and upon irascible fishermen who lopped off someone’s ear (Jn. 18:10), and upon other men who were not wise or attractive by worldly standards (Acts 4:13; comp. 1 Cor. 1:27).
Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7). Who strives after a changing and disputable trait like winsomeness shall have no reward for preferring it to true virtues. Reader, if you have been in the habit of speaking of being winsome as a desirable or necessary trait for our ministers and people, lay your hand upon your mouth and repent your sin forthwith. Urge men to tell the truth (Ex. 20:16; Eph. 4:25), to be impartial (Lev. 19:17; Prov. 24:23), and to be fair and virtuous (Jn. 7:24; 2 Pet. 1:5-8). Bear true testimony yourself, regardless of whether it means praising or criticizing men. But do not seek after virtues which are no such thing, nor insist that others do the same. And if you find two professors at our denomination’s college praising someone for being winsome, chalk it up to the gentlemen speaking unworthily of their position and task and pray they exercise better taste in judgment in future; for “a servant is not greater than his master” (Jn. 15:20), and our Lord did not “come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.
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Written by J. Chase Davis |
Thursday, July 11, 2024
A church that is hospitable and yet confident of its own identity and tradition is naturally attractive without trying to be. But even if it was not pleasing to degenerates, since when did the marketability of the “gospel” to the lost become the litmus test for faithfulness? The fact that we have conceived of the church in terms of its attractiveness to the world is, how do they say, “problematic.” On the other hand, a church that seems like it would change its very beliefs and traditions for you to join comes across as desperate, needy, and clingy (because they are).

No strategy is more central to the leftist blitzkrieg than the deracination and destruction of the unchosen bonds, such as family ties, our cultural heritage, and the common way of life of the American people. Once you alienate man from himself and his people, he quickly succumbs to the total state. He will believe lies so long as he can feel the cold blue glow of his pixelated screen.
A fundamental way the left has accomplished the deracination and alienation of the American people from themselves and their roots is through mass-scaled consumerism. No, “In and Out” coming to your Texas town is not a wonderful sign of progress. It is a sign of just how bad things are. Rootlessness is the goal, and particularity is in the way. However, the average American consumer does not think this way. For them, the convenience of consuming foods and products from foreign cultures is very en-vogue and cosmopolitan. This is the end goal of the left, a rootless people “free” from unchosen bonds. No longer do we have regional cuisine. Go to your local Trader Joe’s and eat the same beans as everyone else, you rube.
The average American’s rootlessness has produced a sad state of affairs. Children move away to college. At best, they can find a spouse, from a different location often, and then get a job in another location far from home. They then attempt to plant roots in this new local economic zone but are frequently moved to another economic zone before any relationships can form. If statistics are to be believed, 60% of evangelicals never return to church after college. Before they know it, they have drifted far from home. Depression and anxiety are salved by mass-produced happy pills by corporations spending billions of ad dollars on the very same devices that promise freedom but only make us more isolated and disconnected. Rootlessness is now a blessing of liberty and the way of life for many young evangelical Christians.
The church has not resisted this mass market rootless consumerism. In fact, it has simply given itself over to managerial Christianity. Now, you can go to your local Life “Baptist” Church in 12 different states, piping in the same sermon and music. You can turn on the radio and listen to positive and encouraging music that your worship band will knock out of the park next Sunday during the worship experience. Did you miss church for the fourth week in a row because you just had to get brunch with the girls? Don’t worry; catch the latest worship experience on your phone!
In this religious climate, the youth are looking for something more rooted. The rootless American has tried the cosmopolitan buffet and is still hungry. Many realize that this is no life. In fact, it seems that the entire world is anti-life. Where can these rootless people find roots?
It is no wonder that younger generations are flocking to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Evangelical churches often have the temperament of a desperate woman or a “pick me” church looking for approval from outsiders. The American evangelical church reeks of desperation. Like a prostitute on a street corner, they adorn themselves to look pleasing. And for the right amount of attendance, they aim to please.
However, churches aiming to pass down their tradition have the cool indifference of a man who says, “Take it or leave it; this is who we are.”
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