Smelling Like the Spirit of the Age
When I was in my late teens and early twenties I was living in rebellion to God but periodically getting up to teach teens as a part of youth groups I was in. Acting as a church leader of any kind while I was a drunk and living in sexual sin was despicable on my part, and if it weren’t for Jesus Christ’s blood I would have nothing to look forward to but God’s just eternal wrath for it. But I bring it up now for this reason: If I were able to go back to 2004 or so and find myself teaching to a gathered youth group one night, what I’d like get across to that proud young man, a man who merely used the Bible to support conclusions he’d already reached, is this: You smell like the spirit of the age.
I’ve found that these days there is a way to be wrong on a doctrinal matter that does not scare me as much as that young me would scare me now. Picture a sixty-year-old Christian man sitting in church with you on Sunday. He has been married for thirty or forty years to the same Godly woman, loves his children and has taught them faithfully about Jesus. He volunteers at the monthly food pantry his church maintains, and he’s quick to help church members when they need a hand with a home repair or meals during a health crisis. He would elicit eyerolls from about half of the congregation when he hands out Christian tracts at football games, and they would be eyerolls that go almost as high to the ceiling as when he claims Fran Tarkenton was a better quarterback than Aaron Rodgers. Now, suppose this hypothetical man disagrees with me on unconditional election. He believes that God predestined people not on the basis of His own free, electing love (as I do), but on the basis of looking down the halls of time and foreseeing that a person would choose to trust in Christ. This man and I have a fundamental, bedrock disagreement there. It’s a disagreement that has implications for life and prayer and all sorts of other things. And yet the man I just described doesn’t scare me so much when it comes to the health of the church or maintaining a faithful witness to unbelievers.
Now picture a forty-year-old Christian man sitting two rows in front of him. He reads many of the same pastors and theologians I admire, and he endorses God’s sovereignty in salvation and the so-called five points of Calvinism (as I do). He is smart, communicates well, and is likable. He leads a small group that people enjoy. He’s done a very good job helping with announcements and church communications. But while this hypothetical man quotes verses from the prophets about “justice,” he never quotes from the prophets about “wrath” or “judgment.” He talks endlessly about Christ’s love, but he has never called an individual person to repent of his sins. He has tweeted dozens of time this year about the church’s mistreatment of homosexuals, but he has not ever said out loud or posted anywhere about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior. He is incredibly vocal on social justice except when it comes to abortion.
This second hypothetical man does scare me when it comes to the health of the church and the church’s faithfully testifying to the world.
Why?
Well, it has to do with aroma.
When you are devoted to something or someone, when it has your heart captive, your life will begin to smell like it. In all the little unconsidered details of your life, what you laugh at and what you instinctively say when you’re angry and what you think about when your mind wanders and what makes you concerned about your neighborhood and your state, in all of the millions of little actions and words that make up your lived out day-to-day walk in this world, you will have the scent of the thing you most treasure. If it is Christ, if it is the actual risen King and all He is and all His Word says, you will (imperfectly and yet undeniably) look more and more like Him. Your mercy and your ruthlessness in striving for personal holiness and your confrontations and your reconciliations will all look increasingly like Christ’s. But if the world has your heart, your speech and your impulses and your desires will be more and more in line with the world’s. Or if a segment of the world owns your heart, your words and instincts will be more and more congruent with those of that segment.
If there are commands of God or words that He speaks in Scripture that you would never post on social media though at the same time there is almost nothing you disagree with from your favorite non-Christian commentator, your heart is in the wrong hands. And whether it is Sean Hannity or John Oliver or Joe Rogan, if your heart is being primarily crafted by someone other than the living God, you are a danger to yourself and the church. You are being shaped to be a round peg that will fit in quite nicely with one of the world’s round holes.
Our Lord is not congruent with all of the world’s demands and desires. To a big slice of my culture, Jesus’ unrelenting mercy to the sexually sinful and depraved whom He draws to Himself in repentance and faith is uncomfortable. They recoil at Jesus saving moms with four children by three fathers and reclaiming transgendered twenty-somethings for His Father. To a different slice (a slice purchased at Whole Foods and best eaten while listening to NPR), His call to sexual holiness and His absolute claim that He is the only way to God are offensive. They would be furious that Jesus would call unmarital sex sinful or Mohammed a false prophet.
If I am being formed by God, if a thirst for His glory is the driving affection of my life, I will not have the overwhelming aroma of any part of this world. I will be a sojourner here, meant to bless this world but not be defined by it. And a counterintuitive truth worth pointing out is that if you want to bless this world eternally you must be foreign to it. You must be a pilgrim who can speak the language of Heaven if you would bless a world in need of better vocabulary. Our Lord entered into this world to save it, and to save it He could not allow His love and His will to be conformed to its.
I want to carry the scent of Christ into all the world.
The world needs it more than it knows.