"Living the Antithesis "
'This is the text of the keynote address to the Convention of Protestant Reformed young people at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan on July 20, 1998.
0f all the opportunities that I have to speak to different groups (other than preaching on the Lord's Day, of course), speaking to you, young people at a Protestant Reformed young people's convention, means the most to me. This is because of who you are: not simply young people, but young people who are God's children and, therefore, precious to God and to me. This is not flattery (the Bible abhors flattery), but the truth.
This truth about you is basic to the theme of the convention, "Living the Antithesis."
If we take as our working definition of the "antithesis" that the antithesis is the real, spiritual separation that God has put between His children and the ungodly world, it is plain to everyone that the antithesis, and particularly living the antithesis by His children, is one of the main teachings of Scripture.
The antithesis was not invented by a few Reformed ministers in the early 1920's; it is not a pet doctrine of the Protestant Reformed Churches. It is a prominent, emphasized, essential part of the Christian faith and life. Deny the antithesis, and you endanger the entire Christian faith. Lose the antithesis, and you can say "goodbye" to the Christian life.
The fifth chapter of Ephesians, from which the convention-text is taken, is all about the antithesis and living the antithesis. Do not let fornication, uncleanness, or covetousness even be named among you (v. 3). Keep yourself from filthiness, foolish talking, and dirty jokes (v. 4). Do not share in the life of the disobedient world upon whom the wrath of God is coming (v. 6). Do not have fellowship even with the unfruitful and shameful works of darkness (vv. 11, 12).
What is the Holy Spirit saying to the church and every member today as in the first century? Live in separation from the wicked world! Or, live apart from the wicked world! Live apart from the people! Live apart from their wicked deeds, their way of life!
For this reason, I have phrased one part of the topic of my speech, "Living ... apart from the World." Note the preposition, "apart from."
There is another aspect to living the antithesis that may not be overlooked. This is positive. This is the reason why the children of God must live apart from the world. It is that you live with God-in close, warm, delightful friendship with the triune, living God. Note the preposition, "with."
This aspect of the antithesis is also found in Ephesians 5. The chapter opens with the words, "Be followers (or, imitators) of God, as dear children."
This then is what is meant by the
antithesis, specifically; living the antithesis: you live with God and apart
from the world.
Basic to this is who you are.
Who You Are
You are children of God. This is how I must view you tonight, and this is how I must address you. I must urge you to live antithetically, because you are children of God. This is the viewpoint of the (well-chosen) theme text, Ephesians 5:8: "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light." First, who we are: "light in the Lord." Then, how to live: "walk as children of light."
The Spirit does not say to us, "Live in the right way, and then you may become the children of light," or, "If you live the right way, God will make you His children." Rather: "This is who you are: light and children of light. Know this about yourselves! Know who you are! Now, since this is who you are, walk, or live, this way-the only way fitting for such people!"
Light is holiness: separation from sin and devotion to the good God. To be a child of light is the same as to be a child of God, for God is light. He is the God of holiness, entirely separate from sin and devoted to Himself as Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. We are children in the full, real sense: we share God's life; we have His characteristic; we are like Him in being holy.
This was God's gracious act. He made us children of light. We had nothing to do with it, anymore than we had something to do with becoming children of our earthly parents. He saved us by His almighty grace in our heart. What moved Him to do this was His own electing love in eternity. The basis was the cross of Jesus Christ.
By this gracious, saving act, God put the
antithesis in our lives. He made us light, which is holiness, and holiness is separation
from wickedness and devotion to God.
This is who you are. The antithesis is built into you.
The Young People are Children of Light
The great question, though, at a Protestant Reformed Young People's Convention is this: what right does the speaker have to view a convention of young people as light and as children of light? What right do the young people have to know themselves that way?
Why do I not look out over the crowd of young people tonight and see children of darkness, children of the devil, to whom the only thing I can say is, "Repent! Be converted!" and, "I hope that someday some of you may become children of light."
I do not view you this way. I do not address you this way. You may not know yourselves this way. If I did view you this way, I could not exhort you, "Walk as children of light." At the most I could say, "Try not to live too devilishly," or, "Try to be a little decent in your outward behavior, so as not to embarrass your family and church." One cannot call children of darkness to walk as children of light. And if the church insists on telling her young people, "You are unsaved children of darkness," the young people will naturally-and certainly---conclude, "If this is what we are, we might as well live this way."
You are children of light and must know
yourselves as children of light, because of God's grace to your parents and to you in His
covenant. You are children of believers, baptized in infancy and trained in the Word of
God. God includes you in His covenant. In this covenant He made his promise to you, to
make you His children of light. And He has kept this promise, regenerating you,
sanctifying you, and giving you faith in Jesus Christ by His Spirit. As a rule He saved
you in earliest childhood. You are "in the Lord," as the theme-text wonderfully
announces.
Not every one!
God does not elect every boy and girl born to believing parents. Christ did not die for every one. Not every one receives the new birth from above by the Holy Spirit. Nor is every elect child born again and converted in childhood.
There may be some at the convention who are not light, but darkness. They attend the convention for the wrong reason: to raise hell, not to live the life of heaven with other children of light. I hope not, but it may be.
I warn them: hate your darkness; sorrow over it; seek forgiveness in Jesus; walk with the others here as children of light. If you refuse, you face God's wrath. He knows how to handle you.
The others must reprove them, just as in the life of the congregation at home.
The children of darkness that may be among you do not determne who you are, how you view yourselves, and how I must view you. God has settled that in His covenant with you: children of light. Since this is who you are, live this way. This makes sense, doesn't it? Be what you are! Be what God has made you! Don't try to be what you are not. How crazy can we get that a child of light tries to live like a child of darkness, especially when darkness is folly, shame, misery, and death!
To live the antithesis, you must know who you are. You must also know what the ungodly world is, the world outside the church.
What the World Is
It is important that you know what the world is, because living the life of the antithesis consists of separating yourselves from the world. If the world is good, if it is light too, just as you are, or if the world is not completely evil, why then you need not be separate from it, but may have fellowship with the world, may live with it, just as you are to live with God.
This is exactly what the world wants us to think about it. Especially the young people make serious mistakes here, to their own misery and to the dishonor of God. We adults have our characteristic sins also, and they are not less wicked and stupid than those that are characteristic of youth. But young people tend to underestimate the evil and danger of the world. This is why I beseech you to get advice from and listen to your parents, your minister, and other older members of the church. In God's name and for your own good, listen to your parents, your grandparents, your minister, and your elders!
The ungodly young man seems so friendly and loving, but his motive is fornication with the young woman in the church. The unbelieving young woman seems so nice, much nicer in fact than the young women in the church, but her intention is to lure the young man of the church away from the church, the truth, and, ultimately, from Christ.
The sexually filthy, violent videos, movies, and television programs present themselves to you merely as harmless entertainment, but their purpose is to control your thinking and feeling, then to capture your behavior, and finally to enslave you.
The anti-Christian education of the state schools, especially in higher education, appeals to you as being tolerant, broadminded, and even as pursuing truth, but its power is to weaken, and if it were possible, to destroy your faith.
You must know what the world is. By the world here I do not mean God's creation, which is good, nor the ordinances of creation, such as marriage and civil government, which are also good. But I mean all unbelieving, ungodly people, whether "decent," or indecent. I mean also the works, or system of life, produced by the ungodly. These works and system of life include music that blasphemes God, promotes disobedience to God, and glorifies what is shameful. This system of life also includes the thinking, advertising, heroes, and way of life of a nation that promote the idea that man's happiness is everything, and that this happiness is purely and simply earthly.
The world is darkness, only darkness, that is, sinful, opposed to God, unholy.
This is the faithful witness by the Protestant Reformed Churches. These churches (of which most of you are members) began some 75 years ago now with a protest against the false teaching of "common grace." This exceedingly harmful doctrine was approved at that time by the church to which the founders of the Protestant Reformed Churches belonged. The doctrine of "common grace" teaches that God works in ungodly men and women, who are outside of Christ, by His grace, to keep them from being totally depraved, to make them good in part, and to enable them to do good works in everyday life.
According to "common grace," the church is light, but the world is light also.
Because the world is good, the people of God may have some friendship with the world, may cooperate with the world, can even learn from the world-learn what the Bible is, learn how the universe came into being, learn how to structure the family, learn about right enjoyment of sex.
"Common grace" is the death of the antithesis. For the antithesis, by definition, is separation from the world.
History has proved that "common grace" is the death of the antithesis. History has proved this in that church from which the Protestant Reformed Churches were put out. "Common grace" has permitted all kinds of friendship with unbelieving people, especially for the young people. "Common grace" has opened that church up to evolution, feminism, and homosexuality, which is the burning issue in that church today. "Common grace" threw the door open to worldly pleasures, such as movies and dancing. "Common grace" has powerfully affected that church's young people's convention. It has introduced non-Reformed, heretical speakers; comedians; rock bands; and, in general, a worldly program.
You must know and embrace and carry on the life-and-death struggle of the Protestant Reformed Churches against "common grace".
You must do so on behalf of the antithesis for yourselves and your children in days to come and, thus, for the continuing of the Protestant Reformed Churches as sound, faithful, true churches of God.
Ephesians 5 gives a clear testimony that the world of the ungodly is darkness, only darkness. According to verse 8-your theme-text-it is either/or: darkness or light. The unbelieving world is darkness; the believing church is light. According to verse 6, not the grace of God but the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience, and this is why we are not to be partakers with them.
Fact is, the world is becoming darker. There is development of unholiness. You can see this today. Ephesians 5:12 teaches that in the time of the apostle the world did certain shameful deeds "in secret." Now they perform these same deeds publicly: in the sight of everybody on television. The wicked world is filling the cup of their iniquity. The kingdom of Antichrist is forming before your eyes. There is defiant, shameless, lawlessness.
Know who you are, and know what the world is. Only then will you live the antithesis, actually live it.
What Living the Antithesis IsPhysical separation is unbiblical. God's salvation is not that He takes us out of the world, but that in the world He keeps us from the evil (John 17:15).
No, living apart from the world is not physical, but spiritual, and a spiritual separation is very simply this: a separation worked in your heart by the Holy Spirit that expresses itself in your life in these ways.
First, you never have fellowship with an unbeliever, regarding him as a friend and behaving with him the way a friend behaves with a friend. Never! You have contact with him, whether at school, or at work, or in the neighborhood. You are civil and kind: you greet him, you speak with him; you help him when there is need; if he asks, you tell him the reason for your hope, that is, the truth of the gospel. But you are no friend, nor do you let him think so. In fact, you tell him that you cannot be his friend, and why. "Friendship evangelism," as it is called, is disobedience to the calling that God gives us to live the antithesis.
One tremendously important aspect of living apart from the world, for young people, is dating and marriage, as another speaker will show.
You may not be a member of an organization of unbelievers that regards itself as a "brotherhood" of friends, e.g., lodges and labor unions.
You may not become part of the contemporary religious organizations, existing for spiritual ends, whether Bible study, growth in grace, or faithfulness in Christian duty, that include unbelieving people. And remember, members of cults, e.g., the Mormons, and members of false churches, e.g., the Roman Catholic Church and the Vineyard, are to be regarded as unbelieving persons.
A second way that spiritual separation expresses itself is that you not share in or cooperate with the wicked deeds of unbelievers. To use the very example that Paul uses in Ephesians 5, if at work or at school or in the neighborhood or at the barber shop, a group amuses itself by telling filthy stories or jokes, you may not join in by laughing, or even telling one yourself.
I am told that retirement parties for men who work in shops and businesses where our men also work sometimes consist of bringing in a stripper. Living the antithesis means that the child of light is not there, or walks out condemning what Paul calls "filthiness." For a young person, the modern form of this evil is watching pornography on the Internet.
The warning of Ephesians 5 is that if we do take part in the sin, or if we do amuse ourselves with watching or listening to some wickedness, we actually have fellowship with it. When Ephesians 5:11 admonishes, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," it implies that one can have real fellowship with these works-not now with people, but with wicked works. Then we are not living the antithesis. We give the world an opening to influence and destroy us.
Instead, we are to reprove those evil works: "...but rather reprove them." We must speak out to condemn them.
Do this among yourselves, when someone
says that he got drunk, or that she slept with somebody, or that he breaks the law of God
and his parents some other way.
Do this at this convention.
You leaders, do this-you young people whom the others look up to, whom Christ gives a natural position of leadership. Don't laugh along, or say, "that's cool." (Do young people still say, "That's cool"?) Don't just stand there in silence, because you are embarrassed to reprove the works of darkness. Live the antithesis!
In this matter of not sharing in the wicked deeds of the ungodly, you must use discretion. Everything that the wicked man does is a sin on his part, whether he plows a field, or writes a poem, or assembles a new car in Detroit. He does not do it to the glory of God, and that makes it a sin for him.
But many things that the wicked invent and make, we may use and enjoy. Things are not sinful in themselves. You may eat bread that comes from the farm of a wicked man through a wicked baker and a wicked owner of a grocery store. You may listen to classical music that has been composed by the ungodly Mozart. You may read books written by ungodly authors.
The act of the wicked in growing the wheat or writing the symphony was a sin, but the product is not sinful.
In your use of the cultural products of the world, you must exercise wisdom.
Is the thing so full of the corruption of sin as to make it impossible for you to use it rightly and safely, e.g., a book full of cursing, obscenities, and violence for the sake of violence?
Does the thing have the effect on you, to stir up sinful desires, to weaken you spiritually, and to make you fall into sin, e.g., certain kinds of music.
Can you use and enjoy the thing as a child of light to the glory of the Light?
Even as regards the thing that you can use and enjoy properly, you must use it carefully and critically. When you read Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, you must not allow yourself to be overcome by the lust for and delight in revenge, which is the theme of the book.
One gross evil of the world that we must
avoid like the black plague is an evil often overlooked, especially in speeches to young
people. It is an evil every bit as destructive as drunkenness and fornication. It is an
evil that adults in the church are prone to. I refer to covetousness, the craving for
things as the main purpose of life. Because money gets all things, covetousness is the
craving for money, lots of money. More than anything else, this is characteristic of our
society, of our world. is in the churches.
Covetousness is a monstrous wickedness: it is idoltry.
In the ungodly, covetousness is the result of not hating God. One who does not have God as his God will set his heart on money and possessions instead.
In us, covetousness is the practical rejection of the true God whom we profess.
This is not the same as being rich. It is having our hearts set on being rich. When riches increase, it is setting our hearts on those riches.
Avoiding covetousness will prove itself by our use of our money for the kingdom of Christ: our Christian schools, missions, publishing Reformed materials, the poor.
Live apart from the world! You are light, and the world is darkness. Darkness detests the light and tries to swallow it up, even in nature. Light hates the darkness and chases it away.
There is also a positive aspect to living the antithesis: living with God.
This is first. This is the main thing. If you live with God, you will live apart from the world. If you do no live with God, your outward separation from the world has no value; you might as well run with the world. But then do not call yourself a Christian.
As children of light, love and have friendship with your Father, just as earthly children enjoy friendship with their earthly parents. (You do enjoy friendship with your parents, don't you?) In the covenant, in the church, Go is your friend. He wants to live in friendship with you and He wants you to live in friendship with Him. You do this by His grace, by gathering for worship every Lord Day; by partaking of the Lord's Supper, which means that you confess your faith (have all of you confess your faith? are you thinking about confessing you faith?); by prayer; by reading the Bible; by friendship with the other children of God; and by actively participating in the fruitful works of God on earth.
The antithesis must be lived. Do not be deceived. In the end, a young person born into and reared in the sphere of the covenant who refuses to live the antithesis shows that he or she is no real covenant child at all, no child of light. One who is determined to be a friend of the world shows that he is no friend of God. But if one is no friend of God, he is an enemy of God. And if he is an enemy he is darkness, and will perish as darkness.
So serious is the antithesis.
There are, therefore, incentives to encourage you live the antithesis
What the Incentives AreThere are terrific pressures from the world and its god to destroy you by swallowing you up in the world.
This has always been the case. The days have always been evil for Reformed young people. I attended conventions as a young person from about 1955-1960 or so-some 40 years ago. A few got drunk during the convention. There were some that sneaked off to a motel in the area to fornicate. Some who attended conventions in those days later left the Protestant Reformed Churches for churches that are violently opposed to the truth. Some fell away to the world altogether.
But there were no drugs. Television was just becoming available to the people. The big hit was Johnny Cash's innocent "I Walk the Line." Elvis was just coming on the scene, and television hesitated to show his gyrating hips. There were no videos. Even worldly society frowned on drunkenness, fornication, adultery, and divorce.
Compare the pressures on young people of
convention-age today!
Live the antithesis, because the days are evil.
Live the antithesis also because you are deeply thankful that God has saved you from the darkness. Once you too were darkness. You are not naturally light. You were totally unholy. Just as God is the light, the personal source of darkness is Satan, so that you were a slave, a plaything of Satan-a kid in Satan's service.
This is why you cannot be proud that now
you are light. This is why you should be compassionate to some of your own number who
falls into the darkness.
How dreadful to be darkness!
Hating God and the good!
Darkness is death, and it leads to the everlasting, outer darkness of hell.
From this, God rescued you.
Don't go back! Don't play around with the darkness
The story of the interview with applicants to be driver of the carriage of the Queen of the Netherlands is instructive here. The question to each was: to prove how good a driver you are, how close to the edge of the precipice could you safely drive the queen's carriage? The first said, "Ten feet." The second said, "Three feet." The third said, "So do I love and reverence my queen that I would always drive as far from the edge as possible." He was hired.
How close can you get to the world, and still not be swallowed up?
If you love and adore God, who rescued you from sin, death, and hell by His own Son, you will stay as far away from the world as you can.
Then, there is the incentive that it is a
privilege to be light in this dark world. It is nothing to be ashamed of that you are
light. Light is holiness, truth, strength, beauty, and life. To be light is to be like
God.
Walk as light.
You can!
It is tough going. It is for me too. In fact, it is tougher now than it was 40-odd years ago when I sat where you are sitting tonight.
What makes it especially tough is that we
still have the darkness in us. We are light, but not perfectly. I like the world. The
world appeals to me. Some ungodly people attract me. Certain works of darkness look good
to me-they tempt me strongly.
But we are able to live the antithesis.
For we are light, by the sovereign work of the gracious, almighty God.
All of the physical darkness of night cannot put out the light of one candle.
All of the spiritual darkness of the wicked world cannot snuff out the light of God on earth: you.
From Beacon Lights, Nov-Dec 1998
A monthly magazine for young people:
P.O. Box 375,
Jenison, MI 49428 USA
Sample copies are available free.
Prof. Engelsma is Professor of
Dogmatics at the Protestant Reformed Seminary.
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