No Time for Compromise

No Time for Compromise

Millions of professing Christians waiver, when confronted with the need to follow Christ whole-heartedly. Millions more excuse themselves by saying, “I am thinking about it. Perhaps one day I will decide.” The latter group is deceived more than any other because there is no neutral zone in which we can survey our options at leisure. Life goes on. Even the postponement of a decision for Christ is, in itself, a choice.

One of the jobs of the church in our day is to confront the millions who attend church and make it clear that loyalty to Christ means separation from the beliefs and practices of pagan culture. A.W. Tozer put it this way: “Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name. He calls them to forsake the world. We assure them that if they but accept Jesus, the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comfort modern civilization affords. He calls them to holiness; we call them to cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers” (Draper, Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World, Tyndale).

The general moral decline in our day is accompanied with the cry for tolerance. Christians are being called mean-spirited and are being accused of hate speech because they will not accommodate evil. Christians are constantly reminded that there are always two sides to every question. It is also true that there are two sides to a sheet of flypaper, and it makes a big difference to the fly what side it chooses. The only solution is for Christians to live lives of such purity, freedom, and joy that they stand out in shining contrast to the surrounding darkness.

Missionaries are daily confronted by decisions on the field. Often they must turn their backs on the comforts, customs, and habits they have come to know so well in the West. They know that compromise will jeopardize their effectiveness in communicating the gospel.

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