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T4G 2010: Thabiti Anyabwile

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This is another quick-and-dirty summary taken down on the run by my wonderfully accommodating wife.

Kelly’s Notes on Thabiti Anyabwile’s Conference Session

“Fine-Sounding Arguments”—How Wrongly “Engaging the Culture” adjusts the Gospel

A lot has been said about engaging in the culture. It is fraught with pitfalls. What is culture? Is it pop culture? Is it the things a society produces? Is it ethnic culture, political culture, or high culture meaning beliefs and ideas? If we engage in the culture how do we know we’ve won or changed it? We can’t predict the outcome if we do change it. What are the terms if we do engage in changing the culture? Is it what Christians are called to do? Col. 1:24-2:?

1- Paul’s pastoral purpose
His purpose was to make the word of God fully known and to make every Christian mature in Christ. His purpose is that everyone embody Christ. He joyfully suffers, preaches, and toils for this purpose. He relates the care for all the churches weighs heavily on him. He desires to make them conform to Christ. Is this our burden? Does this consume us? We need to be gripped by the beauty and splendor of this task. 2:4 a danger false arguments. It is possible for ideas to displace the goal. We must be ruthless in holding to the Gospel. We need to be gospel men. Paul’s social context was complicated. Slavery, Roman occupation and idolatry were practices of his day. He writes to address the church, God’s people. Paul wants God’s people to think of slavery as inconsistent with the Gospel. He wants the Gospel to change how you address that issue. He engages the culture by engaging the church and lets the gospel change the culture. 2:6-7 Paul wants his people to be rooted in Christ. How do we do that? He begins by talking about the person of Christ. He reminds us of benefits and promises of the Gospel. Then Paul talks about baptism, new life. Then he talks about forgiveness through the cross. Paul wants his people to wake up in the morning and hear the nails of the cross.

2- Paul’s philosophy.
His concern is are we captured by Christ or the world’s ideas. If we depend on human wisdom we do not need the cross. Paul sets the gospel over and against human philosophies of the world. Christ cannot be blended with the world. The world is not a safe place. It manipulates. We need to be prayerful and discerning. We cannot hobnob with the world. Scripture talks of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. The world is at warfare with God. Paul commends us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Paul wants us not to be carried away by other philosophies.

3- paul’s practice Paul wants us to not let others judge us by our practices. Such an approach is futile. How do our various cultures affect our pursuit of the gospel? All our cultures are basically apostate. We need to shed the skin of our culture. We notice different peoples and their different cultures What then does it means to be God’s people. God gives us a culture. God gives his people law and sets them apart. The gentiles question, Acts 15: the Jerusalem council. How do we include these people? The council said don’t put any other burden on them then what the gospel says. All the other things are a shadow but the substance is Christ. There is a unique threat to the gospel that says let me just be with people like me. Think of the church as not the building but people. Multiethnic but not multicultural.

4- Paul’s perspective His ambition was to present them with Christ and to see Him because that’s where we should live. We need to set our minds on Christ’s coming. We need to raise our gaze form the culture and look at Christ.

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