The Sanctifying Shepherd

By John MacArthur
[from The Master’s Mantle, Summer 2009, Vol. 16:2, page 1, 3]

There is a growing but false legend that churches are designed for non-believers--a "contextualization movement," according to David Wells, founded on sola cultura, not sola scriptura. As a result, true Christianity hides its face, resulting in the death of sanctification. Seeking only numbers and affirmation, he adds, this new evangelicalism uses the culture to attract, with no interest in the deadly poison that lies below the surface of it.

Contextualization is nothing but an overexpo¬sure to the world, the flesh, and the devil, leading to a rise in antinomianism. History shows that antinomianism follows hard on the heels of a recovery of the doctrines of grace. Because the doctrines of grace can be pressed hard in the direction that everything is settled and secured, it leads easily to blatant and out-rageous antinomianism.

Contextualization of the gospel today has infected the church with the spirit of the age. It has opened the church's doors wide for worldliness, shallowness, and in some cases a crass party atmosphere. The world now sets the agenda for the church-it has done it musically, and is now doing it in terms of the message. A survey by James Davidson Hunter, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, found that young evangelicals have become significantly more tolerant of activi¬ties once viewed as worldly or immoral, including smoking, using marijuana, attend¬ing R-rated movies, and premarital sex.

In No Place for Truth, David Wells writes, "The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now dammed up by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural inno¬cence with which it presents itself It may be that Christian faith, which has made many alliances with modern culture in the past few decades, is also living in a fool's paradise, com¬forting itself about all the things God is doing, while it is losing its character, if not its soul."

Clearly the NT church is focused on godliness and the edification of the saints so that they might reflect the image of Christ. That was Paul's foundational principle of ministry. In 2 Corinthians 11:29, he asks, "Who is led into sin without my intense concern?" In Galatians 4: 19 he adds, "I am in labor pains until Christ is fully formed in you." The sanctification of God's people involves agonizing, excruciating pain, in a world without anesthesia. It's not about how clever you can be to reach the cul¬ture by looking like the culture, because then you've just opened the sewer and let it seep in.

Today, everything seems directed away from this. We want to get as close to the world as possible. But we don't need culture to define the life of the church. When Paul says he became all things to all people, he simply means he would make any personal sacrifice to reach a person. Holiness of the church is Paul's objective, and must be ours. To fulfill this mandate, the shepherd must recognize seven things:
The power of the flesh. Do you understand the power of the flesh, how easily temptation is excited? Your people need to be protected from their own flesh, from inciting the flesh by painting word pictures of sex organs. The battle has to be won on the inside (Rom 7; James 1). I never want to be a person who is used to solicit any kind of evil in the mind of anyone. Because "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt 18:6). That's the first instruction given to the church-protection from temptation. The church should be a haven, not a place peo¬ple are tempted.

The power of the world. Whatever you borrow from the world has the potential to corrupt. Friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4; 1 John 2). The last thing you want to do is kick the church doors open and bring the world in-rubbing out the line between the world and the church. I want to build a wall so when you come to church your experience is disconnected from the world.

The power of Satan. "The devil prowls around like a roar¬ing lion, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet 5:8; 2 Cor 2:11; John 17:15). Shepherds not only feed and water sheep; they also protect them. You never want to be the instrument by which the devil gains access to your flock. The sanctifying shepherd recognizes that his people have a high level of susceptibility to corruption through the world, the flesh, and the devil, to which they're overexposed con¬stantly. The battle is fierce in their hearts-at work, at school, watching television, etc. The shepherd must be their protector.

The power of the Scripture. A sanctifying shepherd recog¬nizes the power of the Scriptures to sanctify. "Sanctify them by Thy truth: Thy Word is truth" (John 17:17; c[ Ps 119:11; Tit 3:5). We are pruned and purged by the Word, and that is why the shepherd is committed to the exposition of Scripture and thereby unleashing its sanctifying power.

The power of the Holy Spirit. "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh" (Gal. 5: 16). Being filled with the Spirit basically means to let the Word dwell richly within you (cp. Eph 5:18 with Col 3:16). As shepherds, we want our people to come under the sanctifying power of the Scripture and the sanctifying power of the Spirit. They go together.

The power of confrontation. There is power in confronta¬tion (Matt 18:15-17). How can you do that in a church where the members aren't Christians? That's impossible by definition. How can you do that in a church where you just want everybody to feel good about being there?

The power of example. Your people know what's in your heart by what you say. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matt 12:34). You can tell what a man thinks by his speech. Furthermore, when you stand in your pulpit, your people are getting the most sanitized version of you. The real you is not that sanitized! There's a reality about our fallenness that we don't need to display. But when you see someone who is openly flagrant, coarse, and profane (and that's the most sanitized version of him?), the conclu¬sion is obvious.

Christ-likeness is the goal of ministry in the church (Eph 4:13). Martin Luther, noting that the power of your min¬istry is inseparable from your character, called antinomian teaching the "crassest error, designed to grind me underfoot and throw the gospel into confusion. Such teaching," he contended, "kicks the bottom out of the barrel of God's sav¬ing work." We need to be sure that we understand that we have been called to shepherd the flock of God (1 Pet 5:2), which means to travail in pain, until they come to Christ¬likeness.

My prayer for you is that you would be sanctifying shepherds.

[from The Master’s Mantle, Summer 2009, Vol. 16:2, page 1, 3]