Church and State: Worldliness

Text: Colossians 3:1-11

 

I.         When people blended the church and the state, the ramifications are broad

            A.        The belief was that society cannot hold together without everyone being bound together by a common religion

            B.        When it is expected that everyone living in a nation belongs to the church, what happens to the call for no longer living in sin? - Matthew 3:8

                        1.         After all, people are entering the church without repentance!

            C.        Seek the things above - Colossians 3:1-2

            D.        If all in a locality are considered in the church, then the world is no longer surrounding the church but is within it!

II.        In the early days, after Constantine made Christianity the state religion

            A.        Salvation was no longer a result of belief - Romans 10:17

                        1.         You were expected to be members simply by being born in a land. Thus, Jeremiah 31:33-34 was lost.

            B.        It meant that those rising to leadership and clergy roles were no longer tested in regards to their faith.

            C.        Instead, salvation was supposedly granted based on keeping rituals (sacraments)

            D.        Donatists objected to the blending of the church and state and a significant part of the objection was because it caused a watering down of righteousness.

            E.        Augustine tried to argue that you can’t judge the whole by the behavior of some. “The unity of the church dispersed through the whole world must on no account be forsaken because of other men’s sins.”

                        1.         It sounds good if we were talking about one or two. But the problem was a general decline of morality throughout the church and particularly seen in its leadership.

                        2.         Augustine is arguing that because they have a few good men, you can’t judge the church by the bad.

III.       In the Middle Ages

            A.        “Ralph of Coggeshal, a notorious inquisitor, himself relates the story of a virtuous young woman suspected of heresy because she resisted the amorous advances of a priest and who was also burned as a heretic (cf. Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, p. 35ff.). This inquisitor tells the story with the understanding that his readers will side with the priest rather than with the girl! That such situations were by no means unusual is apparent from the writings of Peter the Precentor, who speaks of ‘certain honest matrons, refusing to consent to the lasciviousness of the priests ... who have by such priests been written into the book of death, and accused as heretics and even condemned.’” [Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1964, p.96-97]

IV.      In the Reformation

            A.        In their rejection of the ritualism of the Catholic Church, the reformers went to an extreme of claiming it was all faith without works.

                        1.         When people objected that you cannot claim to be Christians unless you live a Christian life, the response was that they were trying to impose perfectionism.

                        2.         The problem, in their view, was that you can’t have a cohesive society with everyone belonging to the church if you tossed out those in sin.

                        3.         Calvin said, “We must think so highly of the Word and the Sacraments that wherever we see them we are to conclude without a doubt that the Church is there, regardless of how much vice and evil there may be in the corporate life of men.”

            B.        “Like the Donatists of long ago, they seek to rend the Church because we allow evil men in the Church. They seek to assemble a pure Church and wherever that is undertaken the public order is sure to be overthrown, for a pure church is not possible, as Christ cautioned often enough – we must therefore put up with them.” [Justus Menius, associate of Martin Luther, via Schmidt, Justus Menius, v. I, p. 165].

            C.        What was being ignored is that there is a difference between those living in sin and Christians who occasionally give into sin.

                        1.         Yes, everyone sins at times - I John 1:8-10

                        2.         However, we are not to wallow in sin - Romans 6:1-2

            D.        “While we were still in the national church, we obtained much instruction from the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and others ... Yet we were aware of a great lack in regard to repentance, conversion, and the true Christian life. It was on these things that my heart was set. I waited and hoped for a year or two, since the minister had much to say about amendment of life ... But I could not close my eyes to the fact that the doctrine which was preached ... was not carried out; no beginning was made toward true Christian conduct ... true repentance and Christian love were not in evidence.” [cited by Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1964, p. 106].

            E.        Martin Bucer complained, “The magistrates are rather coarse and carnal men and the preachers are very neglectful; many of them frequently get drunk. Since the lords and the council-men are that kind of people ... they drive the poor people away with their wild way of life. The plain man cannot bring himself to recognize the Church of Christ among such wild persons, and to distinguish correctly between doctrine and life.”

            F.        One man complained, “One does not find among the Turks and the Tartars such godless conduct as one sees in those so taught ... And if one rebukes such behavior, he is dubbed a heaven-stormer, a Shwarmer, a work-saint, or an Anabaptist.”

            G.        It was so bad that if anyone lived a good life, he was accused of being an Anabaptist

                        1.         “Because their children are being so carefully and devoutly reared and because they do not have the practice of cursing and swearing, therefore they are suspected of being Anabaptists.”

                        2.         “He is not commonly by the rank and file thought to be an Anabaptist because he is a churlish fellow who can’t get along with others, starts fights and discord, swears and curses, disturbs the peace and carries weapons on his person.”

                        3.         Preachers in the Reformed Church admitted: “The Anabaptists have the semblance of outward piety to a far greater degree than we and all the other churches which in union with us confess Christ; and they avoid the offensive sins that are very common among us.” [William Joseph McGlothlin, Die Berner Taufer bis 1532, Berlin, 1902, p. 36]

                        4.         To avoid their own shortcomings, those in the state churches charged the Anabaptists with being hypocrites. “Those who unite with them will by their ministers be received into their church by rebaptism and repentance and newness of life. They henceforth lead their lives under a semblance of quiet spiritual conduct. They denounce covetousness, pride, profanity, the lewd conversation, and immorality of the world, the drinking and the gluttony. In fine, their hypocrisy is great and manifold.” [Henry Bullinger, Det Widertaufferen Ursprung]

            H.        One way of dealing with the problem is to claim that there was a church of true believers within the church of all within a community

                        1.         Terms were coined: The “visible” church referred to the all in a community church while the “invisible” church were those who are actually faithful

                        2.         “When men talk about the marks of the Christian Church, the characteristics by which men may find it, so as to be joined to it, then we call the Church that mass among which the Word of God is purely preached and the Sacraments are administered according to the institution of Christ. Where these two marks are in evidence there we are not to question it but that God has most certainly, among this unwieldy mass of called ones, His own little group of true believers, let them be few or many ... Christ has taught in parables how it stands with Christ’s Church on earth: ‘The kingdom of God is like a man who sowed good seed on his field but ...’”

                        3.         This view is still taught among the Reformed Churches, even though it isn’t based on the Scriptures.

V.        Somehow, the supporters of state churches had to explain why they allowed sinners in their midst

            A.        After all, if the church is made up of all people in an area, then not all are truly going to be converted to Christianity

            B.        One justification was to cite Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares - Matthew 13:24-30

                        1.         Martin Luther said, “From the beginning of the church heretics have maintained that the church must be holy and without sin. Because they saw that some in the church were the servants of sin, they organized sects ... All these cry out in angry chorus that the true church is not the church because they see that sinners and godless folk are mixed in her and they have separated from her ... It is the part of wisdom not to be offended at it when evil men go in and out of the church ... The greatest comfort of all is the knowledge that they do no harm but that we must allow the tares to be mixed in ... The Schwarmer, who do not allow tares among them, really bring about that there is no wheat among themselves – by this zeal for only wheat and a pure church, they bring about, by this too great holiness, that they are not even a church but just a sect of the devil.” [Martin Luther, Werke, Vol. VII, p. 200].

                        2.         Calvin said that in the field (the church), “the good grain is so mixed with the evil that frequently you can’t see it at all.” [Institutes, IV, 1:2].

                        3.         What Luther and others overlooked is that the field in the parable is not the church. It is the world! - Matthew 13:37-38

                                    a.         Christians live in a world filled with evil people, but this does not mean evil is to be tolerated within the church - I Corinthians 5:9-13

            C.        The parable of the dragnet was used in a similar way - Matthew 13:47-50

                        1.         Urbanus Rhegius, an associate of Martin Luther, tried to use Augustine’s approach to say that as long as there are some good people, then you have to ignore the bad. “Aha, there Bernhard resorts to a genuinely Donatist trick. They condemned and abandoned Christendom on account of some evil and false Christians ... Nevertheless there have always been some true and devout Christians in the masses, and we hope they are present also with us ... does not concern us; we haven’t told them to drink and gourmandize, to be immoral or covetous ... We don’t want to rend the net because there are some bad fish in it, as the super-saintly Anabaptist Bernhard is doing. He gives himself away at this point and shows that he has the Anabaptist devil in him which blinded also the Donatists in Africa. They also opened their eyes wide and saw with a hypocritical face that many wicked people were wearing the name of Christ, folk who were in reality genuine heathen; and they proceeded to go off by themselves, apart from Christendom, and made off that they wanted to build up a truly reformed Church, one in which there were nothing but saints. And they were so pure in their own eyes that they declared the baptism performed in Christendom by evil priests to be no baptism, and baptized anew. By this method, they thought to raise up genuine holiness. They scolded Augustine for abiding in the gathering of the wicked – to which Augustine replied that there were indeed evil people in his fellowship ... and saying that external fellowship of good with evil does not harm the former’s salvation, seeing that they don’t approve of the latter’s evil and godless way of existing. We are not to cause a separation; he who separates from the Church becomes a heretic and a schismatic. Let Bernhard consider himself told off – for he is a neo-Donatist who has taken offence at the evil lives and has ... tried to raise up a holy and unspotted Church, one in which there are only saints, a pure net without a foul fish, he and his company, cut loose from Christendom ... I would forsooth prefer to be a coarse publican in the Christian Church, or a patent sinner, rather than be the most holy Pharisee of all in Bishop Bernhard’s spleunk.” [Widderlegung der Munsterischen newen Valentianer un Donatisten, 1535]

                        2.         I recall what God charged the Israelites of doing - Ezekiel 22:26

                        3.         Again, through Paul, God told Christians the same thing - II Corinthians 6:14-7:1

                        4.         Yet, these people make striving for holiness a crime - I Peter 1:14-16

                        5.         Are there bad people in the church? Yes, some enter in.

                        6.         Does that mean most of the church is bad? It should not be this way - I Corinthians 5:6

                        7.         What is happening is the assumption that entire sea is in the net. It is overlooked that the net separates from the majority of the sea.

            D.        Another verse cited was II Corinthians 11:13-15

                        1.         Henry Bullinger claimed that those leaving for non-State Churches are hypocrites for “even Satan can transform himself into an angel of light ... he who wishes to catch fish does not throw out an unbaited hook.” He agreed that they were “people of devout and blameless lives ... But this is an old trick of the devil, with which he has in all churches, from the days of the Apostle Paul, sought to catch his fish.”

                        2.         Living godly lives was labeled a ploy to draw people away from the State Churches. It reminds me of Isaiah’s warning - Isaiah 5:20-23

                        3.         Living righteously wasn’t what Paul was warning against. He warned that you couldn’t always tell a false teach just by his correct application of Christian living.

VI.      The church invites people to enter, but we are not omniscient. People will enter who are not truly converted. People will enter but return to the ways of the world.

            A.        This is what the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 is truly about

            B.        There are going to be times when sinners have to be dismissed from the church, such as Matthew 18:17 or I Corinthians 5:4-7,11

            C.        How is that done if the whole community is the church?

                        1.         Exile?

                        2.         This is why so many of these state churches issued death sentences for those they disapproved of. But ironically, they allowed sinners to remain. They only went after those who said the whole system was wrong, which they labeled “heresy.”

            D.        Thomas Aquinas, a Roman Catholic, said that those guilty of heresy deserve “not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication but also barred from the world by death.” [Summa, II, 2, Q. 11, Art. 3].

            E.        “Our view of the Church of God is diverse from that of ‘the men;’ they exclude the office of the magistrate from the Church and they refuse to ascribe to the civil power any punitive function in the Church of God. But we, in keeping with the Word of God, include the office of the magistracy in the Church of God. For this reason, they say that in the Church punishment over and above that of excommunication shall not and may not be employed. To the question whether a minister and a Church are bound by the Word of God to admonish the civil government to pursue the heretic and put him to death, we say ‘yes,’ but they say ‘no.’” [Embder Protocol, fol. 300 verso.]

VII.     Becoming a Christian requires dying to the world and its sins

            A.        Romans 6:1-7 - Baptism represents a death, burial, and resurrection

            B.        This is why Peter said to the Jews to repent and be baptized.

            C.        You have to die before you are buried.

            D.        Have you died to world? Are you ready to put on Christ and have a new life?