The Need for Renewal
At our Men’s Breakfast on Saturday, I shared one main idea I hoped each of us could take home: true renewal only comes by the word of God.
I tried to get us there in three steps:
First, what is renewal and why do we need it?
Second, what effect does renewal have?
Third, what means for renewal is necessary?
1) What is renewal and why do we need it?
Renewal is a Bible word.
Romans 12:2, “be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
2 Corinthians 4:16, though our outer self is wasting away, “our inner self is being renewed day by day.”
Colossians 3:10, Christians are described as those “being renewed in knowledge after the image of [their] creator.”
For the individual, renewal in the NT is what we often call “sanctification” — it is the present and progressive experience of glorification through the Spirit (and it anticipates the glorification that will come with the resurrection of our bodies). It is basically becoming more and more who God intended you to be.
Other words for this are growth, progress, transformation — all the same idea.
Overall, we could just call it positive change.
In the quest of the Christian life, we are becoming more and more like Christ from the heart. We trend Christlike. Over time, as we avail ourselves to the means of grace God provides, we find ourselves being more like Jesus, not less.
And that can feel discouraging, I get it. Growth is slow. Sometimes it even feels backward. But we must learn to take the long view. If you are united to Christ by faith, God is at work in you. You are being transformed “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
And we need that renewal because indwelling sin remains! The penalty of sin has been paid; the power of sin has been broken; but the presence of sin remains … on top of us being surrounded by a fallen world. We leak. We drift. We get dull.
So we need renewed minds, rekindled affections, strengthened obedience.
The Bible calls us to this until either we die or Jesus returns and we see him face to face — 1 John 3:2, “and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” That is when glorification is complete. And we long for that day. But until then, renewal it is.
2) What effect does renewal have?
Above, I mentioned the phrase “positive change” — but the question here is more where does that change take place?
If a bunch of individual men are renewed, what kind of impact would that have on families, communities, society? Those are the classical concentric circles: household, city, civilization.
Let’s zoom out for a minute and think about this … Does our civilization need renewal?
Easy answer: Absolutely.
Creation itself groans for renewal. It “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19) — that’s our glorification, the final redemption of our bodies. Civilization is an aspect of creation — it’s how humans inhabit creation under God (another word for it is culture, but on a grander scale). For example, we live in Western Civilization. You’ve had the class. We’re all a part of it — and Western civilization has been … groaning. Wailing.
For at least the last 130 years, and especially the last ten, there has been a growing sense of fracture, instability, and exhaustion. We are in today what’s been called a liminal period — a threshold moment when drastic change is coming.
Very smart men have made this observation, more than I can read in a lifetime, but think of Charles Taylor, Joshua Mitchell, Carl Truman, and Os Guinness.
Guinness, in Our Civilizational Moment, says the coming change will be in one of three ways: renewal, replacement, or decline:
Renewal is a fresh, deepened commitment to the ideas and ideals that first inspired our culture.
Replacement is to swap in a different but equally totalizing idea and ideal for culture.
Decline is spiraling beyond any hope of recovery — just ruins.
In sum, I think we’d all agree that renewal is what Christians want.
Replacement is what Islam and Marxism want.
Decline is what nobody wants, but is most likely to happen when the first two endlessly clash.
Decline is basically where we are now, and it’s why you’ve heard about Christian Nationalism in recent years. That camp has looked around at the decline and it says, “Oh no. It’s bad. We better do something.”
Now let me say very clearly: I do not agree with the conclusions of Christian Nationalism. We are not that.
But, what they get right is their assessment that says, “It’s bad.”
It would be a terrible mistake for us if, in the effort to distance ourselves from Christian Nationalism’s treatment, we also ignore our country’s disease.
The moral free fall of our nation in recent years is staggering.
Back in 2014, I wrote an article titled, “Why Homosexuality Is Not Like Other Sins.” I claimed that what makes sodomy especially evil, and unlike other sins, is the way our culture celebrates it, promotes it, and defends it. That was 12 years ago. And honestly, back then, I could never have imagined where we are now. On this same point, Carl Truman writes,
Yesterday’s heroic champion of gay marriage who thinks biological sex is important has become today’s transphobic bigot. Who twenty years ago could have predicted the acrimonious split within radical feminist circles over who exactly qualifies as a woman? Even the value of life itself has become questioned, with many Western democracies legalizing assisted suicide. Such a move would have been impossible to imagine fifty years ago. (Desecration of Man, 2)
I’d add to his depressing list the rise of gambling, forthcoming ‘bathhouses’ in Minneapolis, and the invasion of churches. And it wasn’t fifty years ago that these things seemed unthinkable, it was more like ten. And where does it stop?
To look around at this world, our world, and to shrug it off, or to ignore it, or say “Peace! Peace!” — is not only foolish, but it is dishonest, and therefore morally wrong. We must be able to read our times and be clear about the prognosis: “It’s bad.”
The rub comes in what we do about it.
And I would argue that the way is not an established metanarrative takeover, but it is maximum Christian influence (through moral persuasion, faithful institutions, and clear prophetic witness).
Just do the simple math here: if true renewal happens in men, what is the ripple effect?
It must go from men to their households (and as an extension of households is the church), from the church to the city, and from the city to the civilization.
This is straightforward. The harder question is:
If so many men are being renewed, why has it not had a greater impact?
There are a lot of theories here. But in basic terms, or consciously simplistic terms, it amounts to a failure of men to fulfill our calling, to exercise male agency, to deploy masculine strength. Passivity is the evil (and for the past three years, at these men’s events we’ve basically just said that same thing in different ways). “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for good men to do nothing.”
What we need — the repeated call again and again — is for men to be men … as renewed men.
And we, the men of Cities Church, are in an unusual spot. Because of our response to the invasion, countless churches and individuals have been inspired by you. They’re pay attention. They’re interested. They want to know, “How are y’all doing it? How are you getting through this?”
I’ve been asked that directly, and I reply: we are still standing by the word of God.
The Bible is such a gift to us.
3) What means for renewal is necessary?
Well, I’ve just said it: The Bible.
First, we are all creatures of the word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). We are Christians only by the word. And then also, we grow and are transformed only by the word. The word does everything.
Y’all heard before what Luther said. Reflecting on the Reformation, he quipped:
I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends … the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
I really believe that. And I promise you, in the coming weeks and months, as we are still standing, and seeking to discern how to steward our witness, we must be saturated with the Word.
Read the Bible everyday. I mean it. It’s a discipline that we all know is a good thing, but look, more is at stake now than ever. Be a man of the Book.
But don’t just read it, cling to it. Have your Shackleton page.
Your Shackleton Page
You guys know the story of Earnest Shackleton? I wrote about it recently.
When facing incredible uncertainty, what part of God’s word would you carry with you … if all you could take was a page?
Let’s call it our “Shackleton page.” What’s yours?
[Truly, take a few minutes and find one. Write out the main verses and get them on the tip of your tongue.]
True renewal only comes by the word of God. And I want every man at Cities Church to name his ‘Shackleton Page’ and I want us to share it with one another. I want you men to know I’m Romans 5:8. I want to know yours. Let’s make this our culture — men rooted deeply in God’s word.
Men who are renewed by the word,
who lead families anchored in the word,
who make up churches standing by the word,
who change a city by the word,
who shape civilization by the word.
