Ordering Society (2 Timothy 3:1-17)

Introduction

I’ve recently begun introducing my youngest son to old western movies and TV shows. Friday is our movie night (for Malachi and me), and we’ve started working our way through some western classics. We’ve watched John Wayne teach young boys to become men in The Cowboys. We’ve watched the Lone Ranger save a US president from captivity and certain death. And we’ve watched Lucas McCain carve out a new life with his pre-teen son, Mark, near the frontier town of North Fork.

McCain is better known as The Rifleman, and this old TV series is a fascinating look at traditional American ideals from a bygone era (it ran from 1958 to 1963). It’s amazing to think that within living memory, American culture was once so Christianized that Hollywood scriptwriters put the Bible stories and principles in the mouth of a lead actor. In one of the first few episodes, Lucas McCain taught his son the responsibility men have to remain faithful during hardship by summarizing the entire book of Job (a monologue that went on for about two or three minutes!). This was a full-throated affirmation of significant biblical principles – touching on God’s providence and the importance of character and faithfulness.

What’s really struck me about The Rifleman (after having re-watched many of the shows now as a dad) is that Lucas McCain repeatedly has to make the decision to enter a fight that is not his own. Sometimes bad guys bring the fight to him, but often, some bad guy is acting scandalously or unjustly in a way that does not directly affect McCain. The offense is against the town more generally – its culture, its order, and/or its propriety. And the rising action of the episode often focuses on McCain himself facing the decision to (1) either “live and let live” or (2) to step up and take responsibility for preserving the justice and virtue of his community.

Again and again, McCain decides that he must intervene. Others are too weak, they are overwhelmed, or they are unwilling to fight for themselves. Rather than sit by, McCain decides that he will not abide such injustice or wrongdoing in his society.

Friends, this was once a basic Christian understanding in American culture. Christians once believed that it was their duty (their responsibility) not only to order themselves aright (according to God’s law and character), but also to actively influence the world around them - pushing others toward virtue and away from vice.

There is a tension here, of course – no one can make another person become a Christian, and no one can force another to actually be virtuous. However, we all participate in the building and maintaining of the culture in which we live. We will either tolerate and allow vice (or sin) to become normal, or we will make use of whatever influence we have to obstruct it and to shame it.

Today we are continuing our topical series on the well-ordered life, and our focus this time is on the ordering of society – especially the responsibility Christians have to be disciples and to make disciples (both in the true Christian sense and also in the generally virtuous sense).

May God help us to better understand and more actively embrace both our privilege and our responsibility to be salt and light in the world.

Scripture Reading

2 Timothy 3:1–17 (ESV)

1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. 12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Main Idea:

Christians must be disciples and make disciples, working to order their own lives and the lives of others according to God’s commands and wisdom.

Sermon

1. The Well-Ordered Life

We’ve covered a lot of ground this year, so let me give a quick recap of the path we’ve traveled so far.

The Way of Wisdom

God wants us to live, and He commands us to live a life of order.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (or “wisdom”); fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Prov. 1:7).

This begins with fearing or revering or honoring God as God.

We submit to Him.

We trust Him.

We listen to Him (His word).

We obey Him.

Friends, we must choose the path of wisdom, fearing God and ordering our lives according to His teaching and His commands.

Starting the Journey

Since Adam sinned, we are naturally bent away from fearing God, so we must turn from our sin and unbelief toward repentance and faith.

Unbelievers (or non-Christians) are “futile” in their “minds,” they are “darkened in their understanding,” and they are “alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:17-18).

“But that is not the way you learned Christ! – assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him” (Eph. 4:20-21).

We must hear the gospel – which includes both condemnation and hope.

We must believe the gospel – which includes turning from our sin and trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Trusting Christ means becoming His disciple, taking on His name, and obeying Him as Lord.

This is displayed in Christian baptism.

When the gospel was first proclaimed by the earliest Christians, some of the hearers asked, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).

The Apostle Peter responded, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

Friends, we must begin walking the path of wisdom by hearing the gospel, by believing or trusting in Christ, and by giving ourselves to a new life of discipleship (this is Christian conversion, which is displayed in Christian baptism).

Personal Disciplines

Because our natural inclination is toward sin, and because our default setting is ignorance and confusion, we must strive to put on the new self.

The Apostle Paul told Timothy, “train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8).

We must practice daily disciplines that will cultivate renewal (both practical and spiritual, in our acting and in our thinking, in our behaving and in our believing).

We must read, study, and ponder God’s word.

We must pray – asking for God’s help, confessing our sin, and recalibrate our minds and our affections toward loving and trusting God.

We must surround ourselves with other people who believe and aim to live as we do.

We must welcome real accountability, engage in genuine fellowship, and both give and receive encouragement… so that we may persevere.

Friends, we must discipline ourselves for godliness, for spiritual maturity, and so that we might remain faithful to the end.

The Ordering Institution of Marriage

Marriage is the normal passage from childhood to adulthood, and it is the shaping environment for biblical masculinity and femininity.

When the Apostle Paul commanded Christians to “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil… Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:15), the first relationship Paul addressed was that of husband and wife: “wives submit to your own husbands… Husbands, love your wives” (Eph. 5:22, 25).

Most of us should get married (sooner than later).

Most of us should have children (sooner than later, and as many as the Lord would grant us).

And we should grow as men and women by embracing the responsibilities of marriage – primarily the raising and training of children… so that our children may grow up to do as we have done.

Ordering the Family

In our effort to enjoy the benefits of marriage (and for our children to enjoy these benefits too), we must order our marital relationship as God designed it… Not any old definition or arrangement of marriage will do.

Husbands must love and lead.

Wives must respect and submit.

Fathers and mothers must train and discipline their children.

And children must honor and obey.

Friends, we must take seriously (1) our privilege to know what God has said about marriage and the family… and (2) our obligation to align ourselves with the way God has designed marriage and the family.

Even as we have gospel conversations with our friends and co-workers and neighbors, we ought to recognize that the most common way (throughout the centuries) that sinners come to faith in Christ is by family discipleship… in the home and the church.

It may surprise you just how many Christians have come to faith in Christ as children or teenagers.

All of this leads us up to our subject for today – the right order of our broader societal relationships.

What sort of people deserve respect in our society?

Who should be our heroes?

To whom should we give our time and attention?

Who should we seek to know and to emulate?

Should we ever publicly shame or oppose others? And if so, then who?

Is it only Christian conversion we’re after, or are we to make efforts to build societies where the gospel makes sense and the biblical perspective seems plausible?

2. Avoid and Rebuke Lawless People (v1-9)

Friends, for a long time now, many Christians in America have seemed to take a passive role in society. A small percentage of those who claim to be Christians actually attend church on a regular basis. Those who neglect the regular gathering of the saints are being passive in whatever they think is their Christian life. They seem oblivious to the facts (1) that we are prone to wonder, (2) that we are naturally ignorant of God’s teaching, and (3) that we are constantly tempted by sin.

Brothers and sisters, even as Christians, we need accountability, we need instruction, and we need encouragement to stay the course.

So too, very few Christians in America have seemed to show any interest at all in actually affecting the broader culture. Some of us may passively consume all sorts of un-Christian media (i.e., talking heads and pagan stories designed to undermine our trust in Christ and distract or hinder our willingness to obey Him). Some of us may perceive that we live beside non-Christians, and therefore, we must simply accept their God-hating words and ways. Some of us may even have a pessimistic view of what to expect in the world, and we may let that negative expectation paralyze us from taking any active stand for Christian truth or biblical virtue.

Brothers and sisters, we are exiles and strangers in this world, but we are also ambassadors for Christ! We do not have to just lay down and show our bellies to lawless sinners who mean to do harm… to us or to the societal structures that benefit both us and them.

The portion of Scripture we’re focusing on this morning is especially aimed at directing the relational order that ought to be maintained by and among Christians. Timothy was pastoring a church in Ephesus, and the Apostle Paul was writing to Timothy about how to persevere in faithfulness amid the difficulties created by lawless people. This certainly has applications for how to order the culture of a local church, but the application goes farther than that – right out into our communities.

Note how Paul describes what Timothy should expect from lawless people. Paul says, “understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty” (2 Tim. 3:1). For the NT writers, “the last days” are referring to all the time between Christ’s first coming and His second. These days (back then and still now) are the “last days” before that final day when Christ shall return both to judge and to save.

And how does Paul describe the “times of difficulty” that Christians will face while they aim to know and follow Christ in a world that is largely un-Christian?

He says that “people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:2-5).

In other words, people will be lawless – they will not love God and His commands, but rather they will love pleasure and disorder.

Non-Christians (both from within the visible church and in the world around us) will display their twisted love (i.e., their affection for sin and chaos) by embracing all manner of lawlessness and disorder.

They are disordered in their relationship to God – they are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (v4).

They are disordered in their relationship to authority (especially parental authority) – they are “disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, [and] slanderous” (v2).

They are disordered in their relationship with everyone else – they are “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, [and] abusive” (v2).

And they are disordered in their own lives – they are “without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, [and] reckless” (v3-4).

Friends, sin is not just offensive to God, it’s not only deserving of God’s final judgment, but sin is also destructive to every aspect of life right now. Sin is the reason we experience confusion in our affections and actions (we love and do what is wrong even though we know it’s wrong). Sin is the reason for every disorder we experience – with God, with others, and in our own loves and deeds.

So, what does Paul tell Timothy to do with lawless people who are presently giving themselves over to sin? See it there at the end of v5. Paul says, “Avoid such people” (v5). He says that their “folly will be plain to all” (v9), and Christians ought not take part in it. Instead, Christians are to rebuke and oppose lawlessness.

As I’ve said already, this admonition is certainly applicable to our relationships in the local church.

We must call one another to repentance when we sin.

We must not tolerate lawlessness in those who claim the name of Christ.

We must bear with one another when we sin and forgive one another; but we must never enable our brothers and sisters in Christ to go on sinning without warning them that this practice is a danger to their soul… and it is a danger to the souls of others around them.

Friends, we want an ordered church – members who take seriously their love for Christ and their desire and obligation to obey Him – not because we are legalists, but because we know that disorder and lawlessness leads to destruction.

But this admonition to “Avoid” lawless people and to rebuke them is also applicable to our relationships in the world around us. Disorder and lawlessness are not only destructive in the church, but also in the world outside!

We must not praise sinners for sinning but instead rebuke them for it.

We must not join sinners in their sin but instead shame them for it.

We must not welcome into our minds and hearts the ungodly deeds and twisted affections that so pervade the lives of non-Christians around us.

The Bible directs Christians, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?…Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?” (1 Cor. 6:14-15). Brothers and sisters, we must commit ourselves to knowing and following Christ, and we must avoid joining in with lawless people (to the degree we can).

Now, I’m not saying that we should completely separate ourselves from non-Christians, build Christian compounds, or abandon any involvement in the affairs of our communities. The earliest Christians did no such thing, and faithful Christians throughout the centuries have been deeply involved as laborers, business owners, citizens, lawmakers, statesmen, institution-builders, and culture-creators.

It’s hard to find a hospital in America that does not have some Christian name or history attached to it. Children’s welfare institutions – foster care, feeding programs, and recreation organizations – in America, these have been overwhelmingly established, funded, and operated by Christians. Social outreach programs too – help for the homeless, resources for recovering criminals, and aid to the vulnerable – these have largely resulted from Christians selflessly investing their time and effort for the good of others.

I believe that such efforts (formal and informal) are the natural outgrowth of biblical ethics and Christian love, and I hope many Christians will not only maintain these good works but also improve upon them in the days to come.

But what Christians must not do is pretend that the social ills of our culture come from nowhere. The reason we need foster homes is because of sin – sinfully irresponsible men and women create children only to neglect and/or abuse them. The reason we need food programs is because of sin – in many cases lazy adults don’t take responsibility for themselves and/or their own family members. The reason we need good men and women to bear more responsibilities than just their own is because sinful men and women are not bearing the responsibilities they should.

And when we encounter the destructive consequences of sinful people doing sinful things, we must not be silent in our condemnation of them. Of course, we ought not turn a blind eye to those suffering from the sins of others, but we must not join in with perpetrators – enabling them to continue in their society-destroying actions. To the degree we can, we ought to stand up for what is right, we ought to condemn what is wrong, and we ought to shame those who insist upon doing wrong.

These times are difficult, and we will not be free of sin (personally or societally) until Christ returns to make all things right. But this should not dissuade us from putting our shoulder to the plow in an effort to get our own rows in order.

If we want a crop of virtue and morality to bloom, then we must put in the work. We cannot sit back and wait for our non-Christian neighbors to do it for us. And we cannot lay all the blame on them, if all we are doing is sitting around fussing about the decline of our civilization.

Brothers and sisters, we must neither join in with sinners (in their sin) nor abandon our society to sinners. We must take up the Christian responsibility of being disciples of Jesus Christ and making disciples of Jesus Christ. We must give ourselves to following Jesus and following other faithful men and women, and we must urge and help others to do the same.

3. Be and Make Disciples (v10-17)

In the first half of our main passage for today, the Apostle Paul warns his young Christian apprentice about the “times of difficulty” (2 Tim. 3:1), and Paul calls Timothy to “avoid” and “rebuke” those sinners who create difficulty by their sin – their disordered love and disordered actions (2 Tim. 3:5, 4:2).

But there is a turn – a contrast – in v10. Paul says there, “You, however…”

Timothy (as a Christian example and leader) is not to be like those lawless ones, but rather he is to do something different. Let’s consider what Paul said about Timothy, and let’s try to apply this to our focus for today – ordering society.

First, Paul reminds Timothy that he had already “followed [Pauls] teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness” (v10). In other words, Timothy had already embraced the wise path of discipleship, which includes both learning and living. And the implication is that Timothy was prepared to meet the challenges of the “times of difficulty” (2 Tim. 3:1) by “following” or being discipled by Paul’s teaching and example.

Christian discipleship is more than information transfer, but it is not less. Paul taught Timothy the content of the gospel, Paul explained to Timothy the practical implications of Christ’s commands, Paul commissioned Timothy to bear witness to Christ (in his speech and life) just as Paul did, and he put upon Timothy the obligation to believe and to behave accordingly.

Friends, there is so much for us to learn. When we come into this world, we are ignorant, untaught, and unlearned. By our nature and by creation, we can know some things about God, about ourselves, about sin, and about God’s demands upon us… but because we are born sinners, we naturally “suppress [that] truth” (Rom. 1:18). We naturally dishonor God, we refuse Him the gratitude He is due, and we reject the wisdom God has displayed all around us (Rom. 1:18-27).

When we first hear the gospel and believe it (by God’s grace), this natural tendency toward sin and ignorance is upended, but it is not eradicated. Christians (who are indwelt by God’s Spirit) now love and trust the God they once hated and denied, but our love for sin and our lack of understanding is not gone. We must be taught, we must be informed, we must be discipled.

Like Timothy, and like every Christian before us, we must follow the teaching that is laid out for us in the Bible. We must become learners under those Christians who have wrestled with the divine truths of the Bible and come to some experiential understanding of them. We must hear and receive the good instruction of Christian doctrine, and we must learn to believe it and to obey it.

This is why Paul lists a lot more than mere “teaching” here (v10). Paul tells Timothy that his discipleship included both “teaching” and example – “You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, [and] my steadfastness” (v10). Paul practiced what he preached, and Timothy followed both Paul’s teaching and Paul’s life.

Brothers and sisters, the purpose of Christian teaching is not merely to make us better thinkers. We are to become wise, and wisdom is the practiced and experienced application of true biblical teaching – not just the intellectual grasp of it.

When I first became a Christian, my mind was turned on to a new fascination. I wanted to know about God, about Christ, and about what it means to be saved. For several years, my main focus was on the gospel and the God who saves. Of course, we should never leave these as our main focus, but as time has gone on, I have also become deeply interested in Christian living… And the only way to truly understand what it means to live as a Christian is to watch others do it well.

Friends, we need to know God’s standard of morality (this is sin, and that is righteous), but we must do more than simply know it – we must apply it. We must make it our aim to apply the gospel to all of our failures and to apply God’s moral law to every area of our lives. We want to live as those who obey God, not because He is our judge, but because He is our heavenly Father. We want to obey Christ, not because He condemns us in our sin, but because He has saved us from it and brought us into a whole new way of living.

The way I’m talking about all of this today is not something we can learn by simply attending a Christian conference or a Sunday school class. No, we must live in the shadow of faithful brothers and sisters who model the Christian life well. We must be disciples (and not mere classmates) under the tutelage of those who have experienced Christian living for longer and through more than we have.

Brothers and sisters, this is one of the main reasons why we ring the bell so hard for church-centered Christianity here at FBC Diana. If we are church members, then we have signed up for the sort of gritty and invasive and life-on-life discipleship that I’m talking about this morning. We need each other, and we must lean into both our dependence and our responsibility.

If you’re a church member here, and you don’t have meaningful relationship with at least 2-3 other church members, then make it a priority to remedy that situation. Invite others into your life, invite yourself into the lives of others, and let’s form the kind of relationships that will help us survive the seasons of doubt and hardship and coldness and outright opposition that are sure to come.

So, first, Paul noted that Timothy was different from lawless ones by the way he gave himself to be a disciple – following Paul’s teaching and living. And the second way Timothy was different was by the way everyday Christians gave time and effort to discipling him – others committed to make a disciple of Timothy.

At the beginning of this letter, Paul said to Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well” (2 Tim. 1:5). And here, in our main passage, Paul told Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14-15).

The emphasis here is on the discipling efforts of older saints (in this case Lois and Eunice) for the benefit of those under their care (namely young Timothy).

Brothers and sisters, if we are Christians today, then it is because other Christians before us have given themselves to our discipleship. God must graciously save and sanctify; but He uses means to do it. Older and/or more mature Christians have shared the gospel with us, they have explained basic Christian truths, and they have modeled repentance and faith in front of us. Sometimes in daily and practical ways, sometimes profoundly confronting or comforting us, and sometimes explaining or helping us apply some biblical teaching that we didn’t quite understand before.

And since we have benefitted so greatly from the discipling efforts of others, we ought to pay it forward – we out to give our time and effort to make disciples.

Friends, this might be hard for some of us to understand, but discipling others is not something we only begin to do at conversion (as though we only evangelize sinners, and then we disciple Christians). Discipling non-Christians certainly includes evangelism, and we definitely pray for their conversion to Christ and their spiritual growth over time. But discipling others begins with our introduction of Christian truth and biblical commands to anyone who is not right now believing and living in accordance with them.

In our passage, Timothy’s mother and grandmother did not wait for him to repent and believe in order to “acquaint” him with the “sacred writings” (v15). No, they made the Scriptures familiar to him “from childhood” (v15). No doubt, Lois and Eunice also lived out their own “sincere faith” in Christ as they raised Timothy with an expectation that he too would live in faith and submission to Jesus (2 Tim. 1:5).

And this is what all Christians must do in their relationships with others under their influence – especially our children. This, of course, is not to say that raising children in faith-filled and bible-saturated homes will most certainly make them Christ-followers. But this example of everyday Christian discipleship is quite common today and throughout the centuries.

Very seldom are Christian converts plucked from utterly hostile cultures. Missionary efforts in pagan lands often require years or even decades of faithful ministry before converts are made and a true church is established. Of course, the gospel and God’s Spirit are powerful beyond measure. And God can and does change the hearts of the most rebellious and ignorant sinners.

But God (most often) uses ordinary means in the conversion of unbelievers. God uses the everyday means of Bible familiarity, exposure to real Christian living, at least a basic understanding of God’s law, and some comprehension of Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord of those who repent and believe.

Friends, we want our children, our grandchildren, our neighbors, our co-workers, and our friends to have a basic familiarity with the overarching story of the Bible. We want them to know what it looks like for everyday Christians to live in keeping with genuine repentance and faith. We want them to understand that God’s law is the universal standard for human morality (i.e., for right and wrong), and we want them to know that sin is detrimental, it is destructive, and it is damnable.

Only when sinners begin to understand the seriousness of sin will they ever be able to comprehend (even in the slightest) the wonder and beauty of God’s grace.

What I’m trying to say is that we ought to recover a tone and posture of loving condemnation. And we ought to recover this… not only in our homes… but in our broader society. If drunkards and adulterers and homosexuals and thieves and liars and sluggards only hear empathy in our voices, then they will likely only perceive themselves as victims… victims of circumstance… victims of societal structures… victims of other sinners… victims of their own disordered desires.

But, brothers and sisters, all of us live in a world that is marred by sin, and all of us have experienced the hardship and confusion and maltreatment that sinners are bound to inflict upon one another. What we must recover is a sense of personal responsibility and culpability before God.

Ok, but how?

Conclusion

In order to recover this sense of responsibility, of obligation, of propriety, we must rediscover the good use of God’s law. God has told us what is good and bad (right and wrong), and we must work to order our own lives accordingly. We ought to respect and emulate others who do this well… we ought to be intentional and active disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So too, we must (to the degree we are able) urge and help others to know and believe Christ. We must take responsibility to train those under our influence to honor and obey the Lord. We must not affirm their sin, but instead identify and condemn it. And when they are ready to acknowledge their sin as sin, then we must point them toward the only Savior who can address their sin with grace and mercy.

In our homes, we must help our children understand that their disobedience is sin. We must establish structures and expectations that teach them what God requires of them, and we must hold them accountable to it. And when they sin, we must condemn their sin as sin, demand right behavior in the future, and repeatedly remind them that there is One who has lived and died for sinners just like them.

In our relationships with others in the church and in the world, I think we ought to speak up (when it’s appropriate) when we see them acting out in sinful ways. This will require charity and wisdom, but I think we can establish a certain level of expectation for words and deeds that are based on God’s moral standard… and I think we can make it clear that we will not passively stand by while sinners destroy the societal norms that God Himself has designed for our good – for all our good.

In the church, this is the sort of accountability we’ve signed up for. In the world, we will have to earn respect by living well, and we will have to be wise to decide how and when to confront sin.

This may or may not lead to the conversion of many sinners, but this is the ordinary context in which many sinners are usually transformed by the gospel and the power of God. Sinners must feel and know that their disordered and sinful lives deserve God’s wrath (and not His kindness), and only then they can understand that Christ’s life and death on behalf of sinners is an immeasurable gift of grace.

And consider this too. Even if my neighbor never comes to love and trust and follow Christ as a genuine believer, I still want my neighbor to order his life according to God’s commands. Only God can change his heart, and I cannot control his eternal destiny, but my life and his in this world will be better if we both respect Christian virtue and try to live according to it.

Brothers and sisters, the wild frontier of the American landscape may be gone, but there is still a wild out there. Order and stability are not the default setting of our world, but rather disorder and chaos.

Christians of every generation have the opportunity and the responsibility to cultivate a society wherein the law of God is known and so is His gospel. The question before us today is whether we will rise to meet the wild with love and grit, with charity and firmness, and with the kind of Christian witness that both orders society and points people toward the God who both judges and saves.

I’ve argued that Christians must be disciples and make disciples (in our homes, in the church, and in the world), working to order our lives and the lives of others according to God’s commands and wisdom.

May God help us to do it.