Core Values of GCF
Core Values of Grace Christian Fellowship
Grace Christian Fellowship emphasizes six important core values. We haven’t discussed them in five years. So, I thought a refresher would remind the old timers and instruct those that are new.
These values presume faith in our doctrinal statement, and will be presented in the form of bothaffirmations and denials.
Why this discussion? First, although all Evangelical churches believe and preach the gospel, each local congregation emphasizes different aspects of the gospel. These six affirmations comprise our emphases.
Second, if you are a member of this church, or are thinking about becoming a member of this church, it is important for you to understand what we value.
I.The Glory of God is our goal
Although all Christian churches believe that the glory of God is important, practically they tend to emphasize one of two different objectives—either the happiness of people or the glory of God.
A.Affirmation: God is God-centered.
God is centered in the glory of God first and foremost. This is not to the exclusion of the happiness of people. God’s glory is our happiness. Therefore, God’s pursuit of his glory is the most loving thing he can do for us.
This is a difficult teaching. Our fallen natures, focused on self, assume that God is preoccupied with us. We assume that God needs us and dotes upon us.
But the truth is the exact opposite. God doesn’t need us, and his universe does not revolve around us. We exist for God: He does not exist for us. He saves us to fulfill a specific purpose—in the words of Ephesians 1:6 to“live for the praise of his glorious grace.”
Have you ever noticed that the Bible constantly describes God acting for “His Name’s Sake,” or “for the sake of his glory?” You should read these passages asking this question, “Is God selfish?” because that is how these passages sound. For example, God created us for his glory.
(Is 43:6-7) "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”"
God saves and forgives for his name’s sake.
(Ps 25:11) "For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great."
(Ps 106:8) "Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power."
He sanctifies us for his name’s sake.
(Ps 23:3) " He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake."
(Ezek. 20:9) "But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived."
We have a New Covenant for God’s name’s sake.
(Eze 36:22) " “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came."
This theme continues in the New Covenant.
(Col 1:18) "And [Christ] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent."
These texts, and many others, convince us that life is about God’s glory, even at my expense. But that is good news because Jesus said he who loses his life will save it.
B.We deny that God is Man-Centered
We reject the concept that God needs anything that he has created. God is infinitely glorious, and we are just a very tiny part of God’s creation. He is completely independent and self-sufficient.
ESV Study Bible: Astronomers now estimate that there are more than 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and that there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe. The total number of stars is estimated at 1x1022 or 10 billion trillions. Moreover, the God who created all of these, the Holy One of Israel, even calls them all by name and ensures that “not one is missing.[1]
God does not need us or anything that he has made.
Our happiness matters greatly to God, but my point is that there is something even more important to God. However, we reject the idea that God is anything but an infinitely good and unselfish being.
This means that for Christians all of life is radically God centered.
(Rom. 11:36) "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen."
C.Application:
First, the worship and exaltation of God is at the center of all true virtue.
Second, the most unloving thing we can do for people is to make God small and make life primarily about people and their needs.
Third, because God is our happiness, the most loving thing God can do for us is exalt himself in our eyes. Those who lose their lives in God find the ultimate source of all human happiness.
Fourth, this posture, God-centeredness,will equip us to disappoint people to please God and honor God. It will motivate us to be willing to offend people if it is for the glory of God. This agenda will constantly reinforce the truth that theChristianity is not primarily about comforting people or making them happy. Our main goal is always the honor, glory, and exaltation of God. However, ironically, when we do this people get happy, and they feel loved.
In summary: God is God’s happiness, and God is also our happiness. It follows that the most loving thing God can do for us is to glorify himself for us.
Fuller: “So whereas for human beings self-worship is the worst sin, for God it is the epitome of his righteousness... [2]
Hannah: “Why did God create the world and mankind? I answer: God’s chief end is to be known in all his glory...God values Himself above all else, and because he does, he is himself the end of creation.”[3]
II.The Cross of Christ is our focus
This follows the first affirmation. God-centered people are cross-centered. Why? Because Jesus death on a Roman cross was the most important display of God’s glory in human history. God’s glory is his essential, internal nature and character displayed outwardly. God’s glory is his love, his wrath, his mercy, his justice, his kindness, and his holiness, etc.
That is why we emphasize the cross. It is the focal point of the gospel. At the foot of the cross we come to know God as he really is.
A.We affirm that the Cross is Central to Vibrant Christianity.
We believe that the Cross is the heart and soul of Christianity (1 Cor 1:18-25, 2:2). There Christ unveiled himself. Salvation means seeing something of God’s unveiling.
(2 Co 4:6) " God…has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
At the cross God also displayed his glory for our sanctification.
(2 Co 3:18) "And we all…beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."
It is no understatement to say that “I learn everything I need to know about God, man, how to live a god-pleasing life, and what to expect in eternity, by looking at the cross.” Therefore, we attempt to integrate the cross into every facet of Christian living and teaching. We are big on the basics, what Paul called “sound doctrine” (Tit 1:9).
The work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ by turning our attention to the Cross.
Piper: “Christ is the glory of God. His blood-soaked cross is the blazing center of that glory...And thus a cross-centered, cross-exalting, cross-saturated life is a God-glorifying life—the only God glorifying life. All others are wasted.” [4]
B.We deny that you can assume the Cross and retain its power.
We confess that the cross of Christ is not a doctrine for new converts that the mature move beyond. In fact, the more mature we become the more time we will spend at the foot of the cross. The more mature we become the more we will need the cross.
Those who assume the cross is for new Christians eventually lose it potency. When it is assumed Christianity is in deep trouble. As D. A. Carson wrote,
“I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry.” D.A. Carson, The Cross and the Christian Ministry, pg26
C.Application
Think much about the cross. If you want to know what God is like, look at the cross.
If you want to know who and what you are, look at the cross.
Preach the gospel, i.e. the cross and resurrection, to yourself everyday.
Dr. George Findlay: “Let the cross of Christ once lose its spell for us, let its influence fail to hold and rule the soul, and we are at the mercy of every wind of doctrine. We are like sailors in a dark night on a perilous coast, who have lost sight of the lighthouse beacon. Our Christianity will go to pieces if Christ crucified should cease to be sovereign attraction. From that moment the Church is doomed.” [5]...The cross is the focus of the Christian revelation. This gives to the gospel its saving virtue. Round this centre all other acts and offices of the Savior revolve, and from it receive their healing grace.” [6]
III.Humility is our pursuit
If we agree that God is infinitely glorious, and that his glory is his ultimate end, and that God is loving to pursue that end, if the cross of Christ is the display of God’s glory to us and for us, and if we really see our fallen sinfulness there then we will grow increasingly,delightfully, and deliciously, humble.
A.We affirm that Humility is the Most Important Virtue.
The gospel is profoundly humbling.
Man’s fundamental sin is pride. Pride is blindness to reality. We enter the world saturated in pride. The proud think they are their own masters. The proud think that they are autonomous and self determining. Every sin has its origin in pride. God always humbles the proud.
By contrast, humility is the ability to see self in God’s light, to see reality clearly. Humility is the root of all virtue. Humility precedes conversion. Humility precedes sanctification. God exalts the humble.
We affirm that the cross is the rationale for humility. It shows us what we and our sin deserve. Jesus died in our place. He took the judgment that we deserve. This means that the best of us deserves only crucifixion. The cross is the measure of our humiliation. Our pride must be humbled. Jesus came to be humbled in our place, that we might be exalted on the basis of his humility.
Belief in these truths provokes lives of growing gratitude. To the degree that we grow in humility God sends grace. God exalts the humble. God gives grace to the humble. God reveals himself to the humble. But God abases the proud.
B.We deny that Self-Esteem is rooted in anything but the grace of God
True humility brings peace and rest. It is the root and foundation of a healthy self-esteem. However, its basis of this self-esteem is the exact opposite of cultural norms. Secular self-esteem is grounded in our performance and achievement.
Christian self esteem radically rejects performance and achievement as its basis. Instead, Christians feel self-worth despite the complete absence of merit. Our self-worth rests upon God’s dying love for unworthy sinners by nature God’s enemies, subject to his just wrath.
Wm. Law: (1686-1761) Humility “is so essential to the right state of our souls, that there is no pretending to a reasonable or pious life without it. We may as well think to see without eyes, or live without breath, as to live in the spirit of religion without the spirit of humility. And although it is thus the soul and essence of all religious duties, yet is it, generally speaking, the least understood, the least regarded, the least intended, the least desired and sought after, of all other virtues, amongst all sorts of Christians.”[7]
Law is right. Humility is generally the most important virtue, but it is the least pursued. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. We want God to be recipients of God’s grace. That is why we pursue humility.
IV.The Local Church is our Program:
A.Affirmation: Christianity is social and communal
The Christian life is more than me and my Bible. It is a team sport. It is corporate. It is a life shared together as a people. That is because the local church exists to display the life of the Trinity (God’s glory) in a fallen world. God saves families and individuals in order to join them to local churches.
(1 Co 12:13) "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit."
We are baptized into the church because God accomplishes all of His purposes through the local church (Acts 13-28, Rev 2,3). That is why Christians not committed to a local church are a contradiction in terms. Christians that value the local church honor church membership, practice church discipline, and honor church government.
Martin: “The goal of the Christian mission was not to save individuals, though it involved this, but to call out a people for God’s name… for the early Christians, belonging to the one community established by Christ was the primary reality. The modern Western individualistic spectacles through which we read the early Christian writings all too often blind us to seeing the profound communalism of early Christianity.”[8]
B.Denial: We reject Churchless Christianity
Selfish individualism is the scourge of the modern Western world. We bring it into our assumptions about Christianity.
Bolsinger: “[Our individualism] “is so much a part of who we are that our trying to talk about it is like a fish trying to discuss water. [It is] a worldview that puts all the emphasis on the solitary person, a worldview that says that since we are created as individuals we must live as independently as possible in order to be fully human.”[9]
Individualism is good. In fact, Christianity is the father of individualism. Only cultures rooted in Christianity have ever really honored and cared for individuals. God creates each individual in his image and likeness. This truth is the root of human dignity. It is the basis for healthy individualism.
However, the individualism rooted in the Bible is unselfish. That means it forgoes it rights and privileges for a larger social good—family, church, team, or country.
The western world has morphedChristian individualism into “selfish individualism.” The individual is autonomous and owes no obligation to anyone but self. Churchless Christianity is a by product of this kind of worldly individualism. Selfish individualism opposes the ethic revealed at the cross. As Cyprian (died 258) famously quipped.
“He can no longer have God for his father who has not the church for his mother.”
V.The practice of biblical manhood and womanhoodis our goal!
A.We affirm that men and women are equal in value but differentin function.
During the Reformation Martin Luther noted that if a Christian was orthodox on every matter but unwilling to take a stand on the crucial issue facing his generation, he was really heretical.
In Luther’s day the issue was justification by faith alone. Today the issue is Men and Women’s roles in church and home. In addition we could add the homosexualissue.
The Biblical teachings on this subject are clear and straightforward.
(Eph 5:22-25) "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,"
(1 Ti 2:11-14) "Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor."
Almost no teaching affects the practical way we relate in home and church more than this subject. The strength, stability, and vitality of the church rests upon our willingness to hold this doctrinefirm despite immense social pressure.
Most importantly, if we compromise here we will incur God’s displeasure, and that would not be safe or rational.
Practically, this means God calls men to love their wives by leading them and to lead their wives by loving them (Eph 5:25ff). It also means that God calls wives to submit to their husbands and respect them (Eph 5:22-24, 33). Last, it means that God has given the task of public preaching and teaching to men (1Tim 2:11-15). It also means that the office of Eldership is limited to men (1 Tim 3:1-7).