If you missed last week’s blog entry from me, I’d suggest you go back and read it because it serves as an introduction to the next few posts I’ll be giving focusing on the reality of living out the Christian life as a citizen of a kingdom that is not of this world.

I haven’t travelled very much to foreign countries. My wife definitely wins the competition in that department. But I’ve been to a few foreign destinations over the years. Living near the border as a kid, my family and I travelled once or twice to Tecate, Mexico for a few day trips. After Natasha and I were married, we travelled to Rugby, England with ministry team to preach in local churches in the region. As a recent college graduate, I visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a short-term ministry team, which I wrote about in a previous blog. And I also spent several weeks in Sofia, Bulgaria participating in some orchestral conducting workshops.

Now, as I survey these destinations and contemplate my experiences there, on the one hand there are some countries that felt more foreign than others. Certainty, Ethiopia was the most patently exotic and “foreign” of the locations I have visited. Meanwhile, my time in England lacked much of the comparative “foreignness,” save for the accents and the traffic patterns.

But on the other hand, there was no getting around the fact that, regardless of the country I was in, it felt like a foreign country. I was an outsider, and I was well aware of it. Not only were they strange places with unfamiliar sights and customs, but I knew was visiting places which subjected me to foreign laws. I lacked the protections of U.S. citizenship. I was aware that my actions were representative of my national identity.

That’s the tension of the believer’s life. As a Christian, you are a citizen of heaven living on foreign soil. You travel through this world as a visitor, a sojourner, an alien. And because of that, life here will never feel quite like home. There will always be tension. And as people who don’t like to feel tension, we will always resist the temptation to relieve that tension either by (1) retreating and disengaging from the world, or (2) bridging the gap by living like we’re full-up citizens of this world. Neither of these are options for us.

The Corinthian Predicament

There’s probably no group of Christians in the NT who wrestled with this tension more than the church in Corinth. They felt the tension. They lived in a city that was dripping with the pollution of the world. It was, for one, a center for pagan idolatry. The city was home to the temple of Aphrodite, an enormous complex which served as the economic and religious center for the city. And as part of its cultic system, it employed as many as 1,000 prostitutes who would descend upon the city each night. The city had such a reputation for materialism and sexual immorality that Plato, in his work Republic, referred to a prostitute as a “Corinthian girl,” and Aristophanes coined the term to corinthianize as a euphemism for fornication.

Naturally, most of the believers in Corinth had come out of that system—idolatry and fornication. And it’s pretty apparent as we look back at his letters to them that these Christians struggled to live in the tension that we’re talking about. They had a deep propensity to blur the lines—to bridge the gap between believer and unbeliever, between this world and the world they now belonged to.

So when a group of men entered the church calling themselves “apostles,” and bearing “letters of recommendation,” the church received them without a second thought. And when these men began to criticize Paul, to denounce his apostleship, condemn his ministry and his gospel, the Corinthians began to align themselves with them.

Of course, they weren’t apostles. They were “false apostles,” as Paul calls them, “deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” just like Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:13-14).

And so Paul’s command to them is this: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14). That statement, taken from Deuteronomy 22:10, pictures someone attempting to work a field with two different kinds of animals. Paul uses that OT command just as it was originally intended: to reinforce the spiritual reality that there are certain things that do not belong. Believers and unbelievers engaged in common enterprise, like two different types of animals trying to plow a field, cannot yield spiritual productivity.

That really is the guiding principle of Paul’s command. Believers and unbelievers are fundamentally different—don’t destroy the difference. Maintain the tension—so as you…

• …spend time with people at work
• …have that Mormon couple down the street over for dinner
• …talk to uncle Joe at that family reunion in October
• …hang out with your roommate on Friday night…

…it’s very clear that to you and to them that you are a Christian and they are not.

Now, to help us do that, I want to give us some questions to think about as we enter into these kinds of circumstances. They’re going to happen. You are going to have conversations and relationships where the tension is real, and you have to make decisions about what you’re going to say, what you’re going to do, how far you’re going to go, and when you’re going to have to say “no” in order to maintain the tension of living in this world while not belonging to it. Some of these decisions are not going to be easy. It’s going to take a great amount of wisdom to discern what to do. But these are questions that can guide us toward keeping and feeling the tension.

Gospel Clarity

The first question you can ask yourself is whether the relationship you have with a person or the decision you’re about to make is something that is going to cause the gospel to become unclear. In others words, will it obscure the gospel?

There is only one thing that has the power to save a person—the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom 1:16). And if there’s one thing you never want to do as a Christian, it’s communicate something that makes it unclear what you believe about Christ and his work on the cross. You never want to communicate to an unbeliever that you somehow affirm something false that they believe.

This is difficult. Sometimes it means (re)evaluating the relationships you have and the associations you make. Sometimes it means drawing the line at a certain level about what you’ll do or what you’ll say. Each of these decisions points starts with carefully considering the impact of your words and actions on the clarity of the gospel.

On September 23, 2001, less than two weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Oprah Winfrey hosted a gathering in Yankee Stadium called “Prayer for America.” It was simulcast on television screens in stadiums in Staten Island and Brooklyn, was televised on four national networks, and attended by New Yorkers of all different faiths.

Invited to participate in this event were the Roman Catholic archbishop, a number of rabbis, the priest of a Sikh Temple, a Muslim imam, a Hindu leader, an archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, and as many as six Protestant clergymen.

Now, let’s transport ourselves back to that time for a moment. The nation is hurting. The city is in shock. You live there. You may have friends who were affected by the attacks. And someone from work, or one of your friends invites you to join them at that event. What do you do? Are you feeling the tension?

On the one hand, you believe prayer matters. You also know it would mean a lot to this person if you attended. You know they won’t understand why you wouldn’t. After all, you’re a Christian, you believe in prayer. Is it okay? What would be at stake?

There are a number of interfaith fellowships that meet around town. The celebrating factor of these kinds of groups is the acknowledgement that we’re different and yet the same. We may have different beliefs, but we can still pray together. But the problem is that I think you end up giving up more ground than you gain.

Like a said earlier, I NEVER want to communicate to someone that I affirm something false about what they believe. And if I’m going to an event like that, my presence there and my participation in that is going to make it look like I affirm that despite our immense differences, we can all pray to God together in harmony.

But here’s the reality—we’re not praying to the same God. Or let’s even assume everyone there believers we are praying to the same God. But according to passages like Proverbs 15:8, God does not regard their prayers:

The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him. (Proverbs 15:8)

By participating in this kind of ecumenical event, I am effectively communicating to everyone around me that you get to approach God on your terms and not his. God will hear the prayer of a Muslim as a Muslim, a Mormon as a Mormon, a Catholic as a Catholic, a Hindu as a Hindu. If that is the case, then what need is there of the gospel?

The gospel demands that we come to God only on his terms. And his terms are very clearly spelled out. Only full repentance from sin and clinging to the Lord Jesus Christ in full trust in his death and resurrection will grant forgiveness and acceptance before God. There are no alternatives to that path. There’s only one gate, only one road, and I risk obscuring the exclusivity of the gospel by participating in something that seems to affirm the opposite.

Now fast-forward to the present. The issues facing us today are different and yet the same. But the guiding principle of feeling the tension starts with making sure that whatever we do leads to gospel clarity and not gospel confusion.

Next week, we’ll take up the second question to ask as we think through these important issues. In the meantime, keep feeling the tension.