Christianity is so much bigger than any one thing that we might try to emphasize. Now, let me change course here, and hit it from another direction. Your Christianity, when someone looked at it, what would be the emphasis?
Now, let’s talk about some practical illustrations here. I’m a homeschooler, I teach people about homeschooling, I believe that homeschooling is very very correct, very very proper, a very good thing to do. Alright? I had a pastor call me, years ago, and he goes, “Brother Paul, I want you to come out, and preach to my Church.” I said, “Well, why?” He said “I’m afraid that there are many people here in this Church that are lost.” I said, “Why?” “Why do you feel that way?” He said, “Cos’ they’re home-schoolers.” I said, “Brother, you home-school.” He goes, “Yes, but homeschooling is not my banner.” He goes, “I got people in this Church that if I asked them to stand up and give their testimony,” “I think they would say something like this,” “‘Five years ago I discovered homeschooling.'”
Homeschooling is not Christianity. It is not the badge of you being godly, it is not the great means in order to raise great children. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Morality, let’s look at that for a moment. We want to teach our children manners, and we want to teach them how to walk, and how to talk, we want to teach them how to think, we want to teach them proper logic. All these different things. We want them to know how to say “yes sir, no sir,” stand up straight, shake men’s hands, look people in the eye, act like a lady, dress like a lady, all these different things, but if that’s the emphasis of your Christianity, you’re teaching doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). All those things ought to be taught, they ought to be taught. But they are a small thing.
What must be taught is, look wife, look children, look son, look daughter, at this great God, and what He has done for you. All your piety, all your loyalty, all your Christianity, must come forth from this one thing; He shed His own blood for your soul (Revelation 1:5). My greatest, if I could say, and it’s almost unbiblical to talk this way, but, if I could transmit anything of myself, to my wife, to my children, any truth that is central in my life, to you as a congregation, it would be the magnificence of the person of Jesus Christ, the unfathomable work that He has done for us, and cause you all to pledge your hearts in loyalty to Him, and to love Him, and be mesmerized by this thing, by this person, by Jesus Christ.
Now all these things I’ve mentioned, yes they’re important, but the substance of Christianity is not ethics, it’s not morality. It is what? It is faith in Christ (Galatians 2:16), love for God (Matthew 22:37), and love for people (Matthew 22:39), that begins to change and transform your behavior, and since we do not have perfect minds, since we are not completely discerning with regard to the will of God, of course we need all the Scriptures, and of course we need principles, and of course we need Proverbs, and of course we need all the different truths of Scripture to help us, the Law is beneficial (Romans 7:12), and all these things are wonderful aids, but the thing I want to transmit, is the Gospel.
“Why dad are you faithful to our mother?” Not because I want to be an ethical, upstanding man like the founders of this country. I am faithful to their mother, because Jesus Christ died for my sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). “Dad, why do you spend time with us?” It just provides an opportunity to say, at one time your father was an extremely wicked man, who would not be able to do any of the things he is doing right now in this family, but Jesus Christ. Loyalty to Him, that must be first in everything or we create a family full of Pharisees, a Church full of Pharisees, and a lot of people emphasizing, and talking about things that just aren’t that important. Is it important to dress decently? Absolutely. Absolutely. But from where should that come? We should have the wisdom of Scripture to guard us in this because we live in a culture that doesn’t even know how to spell the word decency or modesty. But it flows from the fact of what? That Christ died for me (Galatians 2:20). Do we want young men to act like young men, and young ladies to act like young ladies, and do we go to the Scriptures in order to discover what that’s like? Absolutely. But it’s not about that primarily. It’s about Jesus Christ, and His Gospel. And that’s what Paul is getting at here for all of us is, let’s not ever be distracted from what is the corpus, what is the main, what is the core, what is the foundation of our Christian life.
