We are indigenous people living in this world, but we are also pilgrims, passing through going to another home.

2 Timothy 3–4:8

3:1This know also: that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, without self control, fierce, despisers of those who are good, 4 traitors, headstrong, arrogant, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. From such turn away. 6 For of this sort are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, 7 ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth—men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

Not always, but very often in the New Testament, it is important to recognize that the Bible’s treatment of the last days often is covering the entire period from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ. When the Bible speaks of the last days, it is very often not talking about the very, very, very last days but the entire period from Christ’s first coming to his second coming.

Many texts speak about these things, and this is one of them. “But mark this: there will be terrible times in the last day.” 2 Timothy 3:1 does not mean, “So you don’t need to worry about it now; wait until then.”

The whole context shows that what Paul means when he tells Timothy to mark the terrible times of the last days is he has to take certain action right now because the last days have already begun.

In light of that look what Jesus says in Matthew 6:19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust does corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Jesus says, “Watch your treasure, because your heart will follow your treasure.”

If you don’t really treasure a new heaven and a new earth, or you don’t really treasure seeing Christ face to face, or you don’t really treasure the final consummation of all things, or you don’t really love the idea of a resurrection body on the last day and real holiness before God, then your heart is not going to go in that direction, because what you treasure, your heart will go after.

You are either looking and living for the world or for Jesus and his kingdom. Where do you live?

Romans 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

How does the command not to be conformed to this world relate to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 9:22, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some”?

How is becoming all things to all people not conforming to the world?

How does the command not to conform to the world, that is, to be counter-cultural, relate to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:32–33? “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.”

How does not being conformed to the world fit with not giving offense to the world?

You can’t always do both. How does not being conformed to the world fit with pleasing everyone for the sake of salvation?

We are Indigenous and we are pilgrims.

These two principles push in opposite directions, and the great challenge is to find the biblical balance.

The gospel can and must become indigenous in every fallen culture in the world. It can and must find a home in the culture, it has to fit in.

At the same time, the gospel produces a pilgrim mindset. It loosens people from their culture, it criticizes and corrects culture. It also turns people into pilgrims and aliens and exiles in their own land.

There are several ways to describe this tension. We say, Christians are in the world but not of the world. Jesus prays, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” John 17:15–16. They are in the world, that’s the indigenous side, they are not of the world, that’s the pilgrim side.

We say Christians should be separate from the world and yet participate in the world.

2 Corinthians 6:17, “Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing.” That’s the pilgrim principle. But in another place Paul limits the meaning of separation and says, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually
immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality. 1 Corinthians 5:9 That’s the indigenous principle. Don’t go out of the world. One impulse is separation, and one impulse is participation.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12, “Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” In other words, adapt and don’t make waves; do what’s fitting and seemly, live properly. Paul prays in 1 Timothy 2:2 “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.”

But then Paul has a very different word to say in Ephesians 5:6–11, namely, confrontation. “The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not associate with them.… 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Expose them! This is not going to going to be peaceful. Which is why Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That happens when you are “not conformed” to the world.

Christ became a human being, that is indigenous. He was one of us. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” John 1:14. He shared our same nature Hebrews 2:14. He was tempted the way we are Hebrews 4:15.

But he came to his own, and his own did not receive him, John 1:11. We killed him. This is the way Christianity has spread incarnationally for 2,000 years. Missionaries are human, they learn the language, they learn the culture. They fit in, indigenous, and then they suffer, and sometimes get killed. They follow their Lord. They are pilgrims, yet Indigenous.
Pilgrims and Heaven

Romans 3:28, “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” God counts you righteous in Christ the moment you put your faith in Christ alone as your Savior from sin and the Lord of your life and your supreme Treasure. In the twinkling of an eye you are counted righteous in God’s eyes by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. Justification unleashed the indigenous principle. You are counted indigenous to heaven before you are morally fit for heaven.

When we trust Christ our pilgrimage is unleashed: we must change, we cannot be at home in our present condition, in this present world. If then you have been raised with Christ, then you have become indigenous to heaven! So now, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have become a pilgrim to and on this earth. Colossians 3:1–2.

We are righteous in Christ, indigenous, at home. Now we must become what we are, the pilgrim must make progress.

The kingdom of God has already come in Jesus Christ, yet not fully here. Promise has arrived, but consummation remains future. At the Last Supper Jesus says, “I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). It’s not here yet. So that shows again that we are pilgrims. We are waiting, Yearning, Longing, we are Aliens, Exiles, we are not at home yet!

How do we keep the balance?

Romans 12:2 be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Do not be conformed to this world, is one side of the tension, the paradox, of the Christian life. Non-conformity to the age in which we live. There’s tension of Christian living in fallen American culture.

Christians are not in their primary home. We are out of step, out of sync with the culture. On the other hand, we are called to be indigenous, taking on, in some measure, the culture where we live. If we simply conform to the culture, we would not be salt and light to the culture. If we don’t conform at all, the salt would remain in it the salt shaker and the light under a basket.

The Tension exists for Christians.

Balance of Conviction and Compassion

One example, is the gender and sexual issues in our present Time.

We must continue to say what the world, by and large, will not believe, namely, that it is possible to describe homosexual behavior and gender change as sinful, perverse, abnormal, and destructive to persons and culture while at the same time being willing to lay down our lives in love for these people living in these distorted lifestyles.

We must say something even more radical and unbelievable to the world, namely, that you must believe homosexual behavior and gender manipulation is sin and harmful in order to love and care for these people.

God tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:6, Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. If you deny the truth that these behaviors are sin, but instead approve of it or rejoice in it, what you bring to the these people will not be love, no matter how affirming, kind, or tolerant.

2Thess 2:10 And with all delusion of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
Discerning the God’s Will

Romans 12:2, by testing you may discern. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.

Romans 1:28 says, “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

The renewal of mind has to happen in order to discern the will of God in Romans 12:2. It is a renewal that embraces the worth of God. It sees God is the center of our ideas, values, choices and emotions, so that while he is there in the center, everything stays in its proper orbit. When we or man gets at the center, especially in our thinking, everything else is out of place.

It is crucial to see in the flow of Paul’s thought is that this exchange, women exchanging men for other women, men exchanging women for other men, is an image and echo of man’s exchange of the glory of God for images like man himself.

Verse 23: They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. Paul treats the unnatural sexual exchange as an expression of the exchange of God’s glory for the glory of ourselves. When the glory of God ceases to be our supreme treasure, that distortion will be expressed in distortions in every area of life, gender change and homosexuality are just two of the disordered forms.

The Renewing of Our Mind

Not being conformed to this world, Romans 12:2, involves a renewed mind that reverses the exchange of the glory of God for the glory of man. It involves a change of mind that embraces God as its supreme treasure and authority. And out of this renewed mind, with God as our supreme treasure and authority, we are able to by testing discern that sinful passions are a tragic disorder of God’s creation, just other sinful acts.

What has changed dramatically in the last fifty years is the concept of meaning and truth in our culture. Once it was the responsibility of historical scholars and judges and preachers to find the fixed meaning of a text (an essay, the Constitution, the Bible) and justify it with grammatical and historical arguments, and then explain it. Everybody knew that if a person wrote “no” and someone else creatively interpreted it to mean “yes,” something was wrong.

It appears we no longer have that integrity. In historical scholarship and in constitutional law and in biblical interpretation, it is common today to say that meaning is whatever you see, not what the author said or intended.

Today the Constitution is being “amended,” whether we like it or not. Courts are finding there what never was there in any of the authors’ minds, namely, a right to make it ok to sin in any form, marriage between two men or two women, or just change your gender, or use the bathroom you want to.

This kind of so-called interpretation creates out of nothing a definition of gender and marriage that has never existed.

What Should Christians Do?

On the indigenous side we should be involved with the processes of law-making. We should pray and work to shape our culture, its customs and laws, so that it reflects the revealed will of God, even if that reflection is only external and dim and embraced by unbelievers with wrong motives.

If someone asks, Why do you impose your religious conviction on the whole culture, we answer: all laws impose convictions on a culture. And all convictions come from worldviews.

They don’t come out of nowhere. People argue for laws on the basis of a certain view of the world. What needs to be kept clear is that voting for a law (a prescribed or proscribed behavior) does not mean voting for the worldview behind it.

Being an indigenous Christian in that setting means working to shape the culture into behaviors that reflect the revealed will of God, even if only externally, and dimly, and embraced by mercy for very different reasons than our own.

On the pilgrim side of the tension, we make our Christ-exalting, cross-centered, soul-saving biblical worldview known with brokenhearted joy. Brokenhearted because we share in the pain and misery of what sin has brought on this world. “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” Romans 8:23. The pilgrims groan with the whole creation as we witness to our true homeland: the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Being Christian pilgrims in American culture does not end our influence. We are not to get cranky when evil triumphs for a season. We should not whine when things don’t go our way. We can not get hardened with anger. Because we understand what’s happening is not new.

The early Christians were profoundly out of step with their culture. The Imperial words of Christ were ringing in their ears: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” Mark 13:13. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44).

The greatness of Christian pilgrims is not success but service. Whether we win or lose, we witness to the way of truth and beauty and joy. We don’t own culture, and we don’t rule it. We serve it with brokenhearted joy and longsuffering mercy, for the good of man and the glory of Jesus Christ.

To that end we must be transformed in the renewal of our minds. We must be pure in heart, trusting Christ.
“The Will of God”

The term “the will of God” has at least two and possibly three biblical meanings. First, there is the sovereign will of God, that always comes to pass without fail.

Second, there is the revealed will of God in the Bible, do not steal, do not lie, do not kill, do not covet, and this will of God often does not come to pass.

Third, there is the path of wisdom and spontaneous godliness, wisdom where we consciously apply the word of God with our renewed minds to complex moral circumstances, and spontaneous godliness where we live most of our lives without conscious reflection on.
We live in a constant tension of now and the not yet as believers. It is a difficult task to keep the balance but keeping the truth in front of us, renewing our minds to see the will of God is possible and Christ honoring.

Let’s do it, Together.