True Christianity: A Quote from almost 300 years ago

The other day I was re-reading Richard Lovelace's Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (I will be highlighting things I'm learning from this over the coming months) and found some quotes by a Pietist pastor from nearly 300 years ago (1712). So I went to the source and discovered a treasure: Anthony William Boehm's Introduction to the English translation of John Ardnt's True Christianity. [I am not all that impressed with Ardnt's book, for it is marked too heavily by the great weaknesses of the Pietist approach (namely, an overly-individualized Christianity), but Boehm's Intro comments are golden.]

Here are a few:

"true Christianity is, to be principally concerned with the essentials and substantials of religion; such as is the great work of faith and of the new birth, with the rest of the Christian virtues freely accompanying it, as resignation, mortification, imitation of CHRIST, self-abnegation, contrition, and others relating to the inward principle of grace, and its various motions and operations"

In other words, Biblical Christianity focuses on the centrality of the Gospel and the chief fruits that always flow from the Gospel.

But he continues: "but false Christianity is chiefly, if not only, busy about the ceremonial part, and some accessory and circumstantial points. It brings forth every age new schemes, new’ models, new projects-of religion. And hence it is, that what religion produces now, is often contrary to what it is designed to produce, and to what it brought forth actually, when it first came to be known among men."

In other words, the fake version of Christianity is caught up into the ceremonies of the faith or controversial tangents that are exciting for the moment but can easily distract us from the Glory of Christ and the immeasurable beauty and depth of the Gospel. False Christianity focuses on new schemes, models, and projects. That this was written almost 300 years ago is amazing, because this describes Evangelical Christianity over the past 50 years and especially today. Virtually all churches are so into finding the newest scheme, model, or project that will be the solution to fixing the church and especially to igniting church growth. Meanwhile, Christ and His Person and Work get left in the shadows. And necessarily, true Christian growth (real sanctification) and the radically sacrificial life of Faith is by-passed. By focusing on diversions, this imitation of Biblical Christianity prolongs immaturity and keeps people away from Christ rather than leading them to Him (even though the schemes, models, and projects may have actually led people to Jesus initially, but once they become the focus, Christ becomes an afterthought). We see this profoundly played out in the book of Colossians. This is why Paul calls them back to the wonders of Christ and the true Christian life, which is rooted in Him who is the Treasure of all wisdom and understanding.

"false Christian is apt to lean on an outward compliance with some set duties and modes of worship".

This danger includes looking to both aesthetically-moving high liturgy and emotionally-moving contemporary forms of worship to be what gives life. [Worship should be both aesthetically & emotionally moving, but these are not to be what gives worship life.]

"True Christianity requires that the word of the gospel, as the ordinary means of man's recovery, should become an ingrafted word; a word mixed with faith in the hearer; that so it may be able to save the soul"

The life giving source for us is the Gospel that looks to Christ for life both initially and as we seek to grow.

Col 2:6-10a "Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete"