[Vision2020] sects in the city

[Joel Wilhelm]

Sects in the City (of God)

by Jeffery J. Ventrella

 

If one thing is plain from redemptive history, it is that God is active in
fallen creation in drawing a redeemed people to Himself. Time and time
again, as history progresses, God divides, God delivers those who are His,
and then God destroys His enemies. He does so to serve redemption and the
expansion of the Kingdom. This occurs from Genesis to Revelation. A little
reflection makes this point plain: Cain and Abel, Noah and the world, Isaac
and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, Elijah
and Baal, Daniel and Babylon, Jesus and the Pharisees.

Scripture's metaphors likewise depict this continuing antithetical clash in
vivid terms: light and darkness (Col. 1:13), sheep and goats (Matt. 25:33),
wheat and tares (Matt. 13:30), spirit and flesh (Gal. 5:16), alive and dead
(Eph. 2:5), and the wise and the fool (Proverbs passim). Augustine describes
this enduring conflict-one that serves redemption-as a clash between the
City of God, on the one hand, and the City of Man on the other. 

 

When battle lines are drawn in the wrong places

Sadly, what is too often forgotten is that this conflict occurs by design
along covenantal lines-covenant-keepers battling covenant-breakers.
Consequently, when division and factions (sects) predominate the City of
God, effective cultural engagement-again, conflict that serves redemption-is
quenched, as is the Spirit.

The "covenant debates" of today often fail to recognize this critical
component to the covenant: that the war's battle lines exist between
covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers-not between brothers. Covenant-more
than conditionality vel non, election, objectivity, justification, works,
inclusion, et. al.-is about relationship first and foremost: first to God
and then among His people. When the covenant debate is factionalized and
relationships thereby crumble, the antagonists cease to be covenantal
despite the propriety of their propositions.

Today's "covenant wars" fail to appreciate that any community characterized
by biting and devouring one another is a community that has dispensed with
the gospel of grace, and hence the covenant. Any methodology that fails to
place relational restoration as the predominant goal of the
discussion-rather than a rush to judicial jihad-is manifestly, in a word,
antinomian. Note that Jesus' description of covenantal ethics is entirely
relational:

 

And [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and
first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as
yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
(Matt. 22:37-40 ESV, emphasis added)

 

Paul makes these points quite plain even (especially!) when dealing with the
serious covenantal matters facing the churches in Galatia:

 

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become
conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brothers, if anyone
is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in
a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone
thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (Gal.
5:25-6:3 ESV, emphasis added)

 

Covenantal debating

Failing to adhere to this ethical mandate produces the biting and devouring
Paul previously describes (5:15). The covenant's method must match the
covenant's propositions. Absent this trait, there is no true covenant and no
valid covenantal theory. The controlling question is very simple: do we who
participate in the covenantal debate seek more to be in the right club, or
do we seek to truly win the culture for Christ. The covenant is the conduit
for cultural victory because God develops the covenant along the lines of
the covenantal antithesis. As a result, those in the covenant together-in
relationship and in community-assail the gates of Hades-not each other. Any
conduct that blunts this God-ordained pathway likewise truncates and retards
cultural and hence, redemptive, progress. One cannot truly think
covenantally while simultaneously promoting sects in the City of God. Such
divisive conduct, no matter how it is labeled, is patently non-covenantal.