What the Church Should Do...and Be

Final installment on "The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age"

Such things (moralism and politicking or social engineering) you cannot expect from a true Christian Church. But there are other things which you may expect…

Machen will now preach the gospel to his audience of political and social scientists, a gospel he cannot separate from the church. The church is where the gospel is heard, lived, preserved, and deployed. This close association of the church and the gospel would also have been unpopular in his day when many (as now) would aver that the gospel is for everyone and all the world: What the world needed was not a churchy gospel, word and sacrament, and missionaries carrying a message of an exclusive Christ, but what was really needed was nice gospel people doing and saying “good” gospel things in the world—good universal truths and deeds that were common to all cultures and (nearly) all religions.

If you are dissatisfied with a relative goodness, which is no goodness at all; if you are conscious of your sin and if you hunger and thirst after righteousness; if you are dissatisfied with the world and are seeking the living God, then turn to the Church of Jesus Christ.

The exclusive Savior was the only hope for those “hopeless under the load of sin” (a phrase Machen often used). Liberalism and the social gospel told sinners they had hope in themselves and had hope of success in whatever universally “good” works they chose to be about. Machen pressed the need for a righteousness from without that is imparted, not achieved or merited by any “relative goodness.” And he insisted that the visible church, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation,¹ is where Jesus’ righteousness could be heard of and had.

Again, he could hardly separate the medium (the church) from the message (the good news), but—extolling the church as he did—he had to admit and warn of the church’s present, apparent weakness and smallness.

That Church is not always easy to distinguish today. It does not always present itself to you in powerful organizations; it is often hidden away here and there, in individual congregations resisting the central ecclesiastical mechanism; it is found in groups, large or small, of those who have been redeemed from sin and are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. But wherever it is found, you must turn to that true Church of Jesus Christ for a message from God. The message will not be enforced by human authority or by the pomp of numbers. Yet some of you may hear it. If you do hear it and heed it, you will possess riches greater than the riches of all the world.

His audience of worldly wisemen would still have found the mainline churches impressive and attractive in 1935 because the churches were undeniably rich in financial and cultural assets, in majoritarian numbers of members that equaled undoubted influence.²

Do you think that if you heed the message you will be less successful students of political and social science; do you think that by becoming citizens of another world you will become less fitted to solve this world’s problems; do you think that acceptance of the Christian message will hinder political or social advance? No, my friends. I will present to you a strange paradox but an assured truth—this world’s problems can never be solved by those who make this world the object of their desires. This world cannot ultimately be bettered if you think that this world is all. To move the world you must have a place to stand.

The danger of putting the world, society, culture, or country (intentionally or not, wittingly or unwittingly) before the church is just as great in 2024. And not just before but even next to/on par with. We ought to avoid pragmatic “church-and” thinking just as we should avoid “Jesus-and” thinking. Cultural Christianity (or any other kind of adjectival Christianity or Christian “ism”) will never be enough and will almost always be detrimental in some way.

The gospel message is the mission. Propagation of this message (and being a home for all who receive it) is the responsibility of the church in every age:

This, then, is the answer that I give to the question before us. The responsibility of the Church in the new age is the same as its responsibility in every age. It is to testify that this world is lost in sin; that the span of human life—nay, all the length of human history—is an infinitesimal isgland in the awful depths of eternity; that there is a mysterious, holy, living God, Creator of all, Upholder of all, infinitely beyond all; that He has revealed Himself to us in His Word and offered us communion with Himself through Jesus Christ the Lord; that there is no other salvation, for individuals or for nations, save this, but that this salvation is full and free, and that whosoever possesses it has for himself and for all others to whom he may be the instrument of bringing it a treasure compared with which all the kingdoms of the earth—nay, all the wonders of the starry heavens—are as the dust of the street.

Note that Machen’s gospel preaching was never church-free, nor was it theology-free. It was a full gospel that Machen preached, doctrinally and ecclesially rich, and the church was an essential element of the gospel. Thus the church has a huge responsibility, and compared to this church—“the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God”—the kingdoms of the earth were as nothing.

Machen was a preacher. Though he admitted the perceived foolishness of his message, he ended with a confident and solemn exhortation:

An unpopular message it is—an impractical message, we are told. But it is the message of the Christian Church. Neglect it, and you will have destruction; heed it, and you will have life.

His Trinitarian, Reformed, covenantal theology taught him that the gospel would succeed because of the immutable Father’s sovereign, loving plan, the God-Man’s perfect obedience, and the Spirit’s great power. He knew that the three Persons agreed in every respect and would not fail God’s chosen family—a family with a nursery, home, and fortress in every age: the Church.

Read The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age in full.
Listen to a fine reading of the article (39 minutes) by Bob Tarullo.

Final installment - by Brad Isbell

READ PART 14:

1. Westminster Confession of Faith 25-2 (https://www.opc.org/wcf.html)

2. Earlier in the article, Machen had put gospel liberty before such societal and political influence: “It would, indeed, be an interference with liberty for a church, through the ballot box or otherwise, to use the power of the state to compel men to assent to the church’s creed or conform to the church’s program.”